The number of adults who consider themselves atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" has increased from about 15 percent to nearly 20 percent in the last five years, the highest percentage ever for that group in Pew polling.<\/a><\/p>\nFifty-eight percent of Americans still say religion is very important in
\ntheir lives, far exceeding the value given to religion by people in
\nBritain, France, Germany or Spain, Pew said.<\/p>\n
The
\nsurvey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life
\nalso found that many of the country's 46 million adults who don't claim a
\nreligion remain religious and spiritual in some way even though most
\nare not seeking a denomination.<\/p>\n
Seventy-three
\npercent of U.S. adults are Christian, but the number of Protestants
\ndropped to 48 percent in 2012 from 50 percent in 2011 and 53 percent in
\n2007, the poll showed. Pew said it was the first time its surveys had
\nfound Protestants to no longer make up at least half of the overall
\npopulation.<\/p>\n
And it's very good news for the Democratic Party –<\/p>\n
Recently the religiously unaffiliated have increasingly voted
\nDemocratic, Pew said, with exit polls conducted by a consortium of news
\norganizations showing a rise from 61 percent in the 2000 presidential
\nelection to 75 percent in 2008.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And it's one in three for adults under 30. Study is by the Pew Research Center and this is a good summary article from yeserday's Chicago Tribune. The number of adults who consider themselves atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" has increased from about 15 percent to nearly 20 percent in the last five years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8554,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions\/8554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}