Faith Wanes

Drudge Report provides a link that eventually leads to the report of research into religiosity in the U.S., published today in the peer-reviewed journal Sage Open. The following is quoted from a San Diego State University website where the study's lead author Jean Twenge is located.

A research team (snip) analyzed data from 58,893 respondents to the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults administered between 1972 and 2014. Five times as many Americans in 2014 reported that they never prayed as did Americans in the early 1980s, and nearly twice as many said they did not believe in God.

Americans in recent years were less likely to engage in a wide variety of religious practices, including attending religious services, describing oneself as a religious person, and believing that the Bible is divinely inspired, with the biggest declines seen among 18- to 29-year-old respondents.

This decline in religious practice has not been accompanied by a rise in spirituality, which, according to Twenge, suggests that, rather than spirituality replacing religion, Americans are becoming more secular.

Americans follow a well-worn path trod first by the Japanese and later by the Europeans. Declines of religion and of child bearing are key path elements. That path appears to lead gradually in the direction of ethnic group extinction, an eventuality not yet approached by Japan.