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US Christian population becoming smaller, poll shows

Friday, 25 December 2015 10:36 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 26 December 2015 12:39 PM ]

The Christian population in the United States has gotten smaller since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first administration, poll shows.

The Christian population in the United States has declined since the beginning of President Barack Obama’s first tenure, a new poll finds.

According to the poll released by Gallup on Thursday, only three-quarters of Americans identify themselves as Christians, down five percent from 2008 when Obama took office.

This is while the number of people with no religious affiliation has seen a sharp increase, rising from 14.6 percent in 2008, to 19.6 percent this year.

"The general trends in the data over this eight-year period are clear: As the percentage of Americans identifying with a Christian religion has decreased, the percentage with no formal religious identification has increased," Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote.

The survey also found that American youths are less likely to follow Christianity as they are more leaned toward having no religion at all. Only 62 percent of 18- to 29-year-old Americans identify themselves as Christians today, while among people older than 50, the figure stands at 80 percent.

According to the poll, about 5% of Americans are committed to a non-Christian religion, while 20% have no formal religious identification at all, up five percentage points since 2008.

The downtick in the Christian population over the past eight years is a continuation of a trend that has been ongoing through decades. Gallup surveys from the 1950s showed that over 90% of the adult population identified as Christian, with only a small percentage claiming no religious identification at all or identifying with a non-Christian religion.

"Traditionally, Americans have become more likely to identify with a religion as they age through their 30s and 40s and get married and have children," Newport noted. "If this pattern does not occur in the same way it has in the past, the percentage of Christians nationwide will likely continue to shrink."

The Gallup poll found that in 2015, 24% of American Christians were Catholic, 50% were Protestants or as members of another non-Catholic Christian religion, and 2% were Mormons.

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