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| Silhouette church with couple is standing in Sevilla Photo Credit: Saulgranda/Getty Image |
Washington: The number of
Americans who don’t identify with a religion has grown, with a fifth of adults
saying they are religiously unaffiliated, a new poll released found.
The survey by the Pew
Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, conducted jointly with the
PBS television programme Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, found many of the
country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some
way.
The religiously unaffiliated includes more
than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics as well as nearly 33
million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation, the Pew
Forum on Religion and Public Life survey indicated in the survey released on
Tuesday.
The number of those
who said they aren’t affiliated with a particular religion increased from just
more than 15 percent to just less than 20 percent of all U.S. adults in the
past five years, the survey indicated.
Survey suggests, in
addition to religious behavior, the way that Americans talk about their
connection to religion seems to be changing. Increasingly, Americans describe
their religious affiliation in terms that more closely match their level of
involvement in churches and other religious organisations.
In 2007, 60% of those who said they seldom or
never attend religious services nevertheless described themselves as belonging
to a particular religious tradition. In 2012, just 50% of those who say they
seldom or never attend religious services still retain a religious affiliation
– a 10-point drop in five years.
Two-thirds of them say
they believe in God and more than half said they often feel a deep connection
with nature and the earth. A third said they were “spiritual” but not
“religious” and about a fifth said they pray daily. In addition, most
religiously unaffiliated Americans said they think religious institutions
benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.
These trends suggest
that the ranks of the unaffiliated are swelling in surveys partly because
Americans who rarely go to services are more willing than in the past to drop
their religious attachments altogether.