Survey: USA's Protestant majority might soon be no more

Yahoo! story
Wed Jul 21, 6:59 AM ET

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

New statistics on religious diversity show the USA's historic Protestant majority has plummeted to 52%, and by the end of 2004 it may no longer be the nation's dominant religious group.

The percentage of Americans who said they belong to one of several Protestant denominations, such as Baptist, Methodist or Lutheran, or who called themselves "non-denominational Protestants," hovered around 62% from 1972 until 1993, according to the General Social Survey. It was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Then the number fell steadily to 52% in 2002, survey director Tom Smith says.

"Since colonial times, the United States has been a Protestant nation. But perhaps as early as this year, the country will, for the first time, no longer have a Protestant majority," Smith said in a report Tuesday. It was based on 43,000 interviews with U.S. adults from 1972 to 2002.

How quickly the scales tip depends on how statisticians count the rapidly growing Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Smith says. The survey makes a theologically controversial decision to include them as Protestants. Nearly 2% of Americans said they were Mormons in 2002.

However Mormons are counted, the trend is clear that the Protestant share of the nation faces "imminent disappearance," Smith says. Factors driving the change include:

• A steep rise in the number of people who said they currently have no religion: 14% in 2002, up from 9% in 1992. It's even higher for younger people: Among those born in 1980 or later, 27% said they have no religion. "Each succeeding group is less religious than the preceding," Smith says.

• The number of people who call themselves just "Christian" has nearly doubled. "That category didn't exist in the 1970s. It climbed to 1.2% in the last 10 years and it is 2.3% for 2003 alone. Most were once Protestants, Smith says.

• Among all immigrants - 10% of the U.S. population in 2002 - only one in four are Protestant.

The number of Roman Catholics (25%) and Jews (2%) remained stable over the same period, while the nation's share of other groups, including Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, rose from 3% in 1993 to 7% in 2002.

The loss of a shared Protestant vocabulary and viewpoint has political and cultural implications, says political scientist Corwin Smidt, director of the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich.

"Growing pluralism forces an examination of our commonality," he says. "How do we find basis for agreement" in schools, neighborhoods and voting booths?

"It's a lot more complicated now."