Is America Less Christian ?

It looks like the United States is becoming less of a christian nation than in the past. According to a poll by Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut), 86% of Americans identified themselves as christians in 1990. Nearly twenty years later, they repeated the poll (surveying 54,461 people) and found that now only 75% of the population identifies itself as christian. That's a drop of a full 11% (more than 30 million people).

Out of the 25% who claim not to be christian, 4/5ths of them claim no religion at all and say they will not have a religious funeral when they die. This makes those who claim no religion at all (20%) larger than the total of non-christians twenty years ago (14%).

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, believes the change is due to "a radical shift towards individualism over the last quarter-century." That sounds like an excuse to avoid blaming the behavior many christians to me. America has always been a country that values individualism. Even during the periods of taming the frontier and westward expansion, when individualism was almost a necessity, most Americans claimed to be christians.

I think the reasons many are no longer identifying themselves as christian are two-fold. First is the multiple child sex abuse charges against many priests (and protestant ministers). The second is the evangelicals tying themselves to a single political party and trying to force other Americans to bend to their will. This has turned off many Americans and caused them to no longer want to be identified as christian.

As long as many christians seem more interested in their judgemental dogma than in the teachings of Jesus, I believe ever more people will abandon religion in the coming years.

Here are the religious percentages today in America:

Evangelicals..........33%
Catholics..........25%
Mormons..........1.4%
Other christian sects..........15.6%
Muslim..........0.6%
Other religions..........4.4%
No religion..........20%