The Non-Religious Will Grow As Christianity Shrinks In U.S.

The folks at the Pew Research Center wrote a very good article projecting the religious changes that will happen all over the world between 2010 and 2015. They predicted that worldwide, christianity will stay at about the same percentage while islam will grow substantially. I think that is probably true. Where I disagree with them is their prediction that the percentage of the non-religious will shrink slightly. I don't think that will happen -- although in a lot of muslim and christian countries, the non-religious will probably have to keep their views hidden (or suffer some serious consequences).

But the part of the article I found most interesting is what is projected to happen in the United States. Pew says christianity will drop by 11.9 points (from 77.3% to 66.4%), while the non-religious will rise by 9,2 points (from 16.4% in 2010 to 25.6% in 2050), That means more than a quarter of the U.S. population will be non-religious. I think it may even grow more than that by 2050. Currently (in 2015), it is estimated that between 20% and 22% of the population in non-religious -- and we still have 35 years to go to get to 2050.

Also interesting is that by 2050 eight currently christian-majority countries will lose that christian majority -- and three of those countries will have the non-religious as the largest "religious" group in that country (see the chart below). These countries are France (which will have 44.1% non-religious), New Zealand (which will have 45.1% non-religious), and the Netherlands (which will have 49.1% non-religious).