News Service from House Harris

US: More Americans say they have no religion

NEW YORK, March 8 AP - A wide-ranging study on American religious life has found the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen per cent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 per cent in 2001 and 8.2 per cent in 1990, the American Religious Identification Survey showed.

The trend was seen across every US state.

"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 per cent.

Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.

In 2008, Christians comprised 76 per cent of US adults, compared to about 77 per cent in 2001 and about 86 per cent in 1990.

Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, largely explains the shift.

Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 per cent to 12.9 per cent of the population.

The study surveyed 54,461 adults in English or Spanish from February to November last year.

It has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. The findings are part of a series of studies on American religion that will later look more closely at reasons behind the trends.

The current survey, to be released on Monday, found traditional organised religion was playing less of a role in many lives.

Thirty per cent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 per cent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.

About 12 per cent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths. And, since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents (1.2 per cent) said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca and Santeria.

The study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group.

Respondents who called themselves "non-denominational Christian" grew from 0.1 per cent in 1990 to 3.5 per cent last year.

Congregations that most often use the term are megachurches that use rock style music and less structured prayer to attract people who don't usually attend church.

Mormon numbers also held steady over the period at 1.4 per cent of the population, while the number of Jews who described themselves as religiously observant continued to drop, from 1.8 per cent in 1990 to 1.2 per cent, or 2.7 million people, last year.

Researchers plan a broader survey on people who consider themselves culturally Jewish but aren't religious.

The study found that the percentage of Americans who identified themselves as Muslim grew to 0.6 per cent of the population, while growth in Eastern religions such as Buddhism slightly slowed.