Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States

[Christians4LessGvt]

Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States
Majority still says religion is very important in their lives

by Frank Newport

December 23, 2011

PRINCETON, NJ -- This Christmas season, 78% of American adults identify with some form of Christian religion. Less than 2% are Jewish, less than 1% are Muslim, and 15% do not have a religious identity. This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.

These results are based on a compilation of 327,244 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking from January-November 2011. The detailed breakdown shows that about a third of American Christians are Catholics, while two-thirds identify as Protestants or some other non-Catholic Christian religion. All in all, 82.5% of Americans have some form of religious identity.

Gallup's methods of measuring religious identity have changed over the decades, but one major trend that is clear from Gallup's and other organizations' surveys is the increase in the percentage of Americans who do not have a formal religious identity. Some 60 years ago, in 1951, for example, just 1% of Americans in Gallup surveys said they didn't have a religious identity. At that time, Gallup classified 68% of Americans as identifying with a non-Catholic Christian faith, and 24% who were Catholic.

Separate Gallup questioning earlier this year shows that 92% of Americans say they believe in God. This suggests that the lack of a religious identity is not in and of itself a sign of the total absence of religiosity.

Additionally, in two separate surveys conducted in May and in late November/early December of this year, an average of 55% of Americans said religion is very important in their lives, another 26% said it is fairly important, and 19% said it is not very important.

Americans' self-reported importance of religion has remained broadly stable over the past three or four decades, with a slight increase in the percentage saying religion is not very important, and a slight decrease in the percentage saying it is fairly important. Surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s showed a higher percentage saying religion was very important.

Bottom Line
The United States remains a predominantly Christian nation, with 78% of all adults identifying with a Christian faith, and more than 9 in 10 of those who have a religious identity identifying as Christians. Fifteen percent of Americans do not have a formal religious identity, a continuation of a dramatic change from 50 and 60 years ago, when almost all Americans identified with a particular religion. The precise implications of the increase in the "no religious identity" segment are not clear, given that more than 9 in 10 Americans say they believe in God, and that 8 in 10 say religion is a very or fairly important part of their lives.

Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey Jan. 2-Nov. 30, 2011, with a random sample of 327,244 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2010 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/151760/Christianity-Remains-Dominant-Religion-United-States.aspx

[kimba1]

We couldn't learn that by looking at the non cable channels on sunday? I call it the pass the donation plate show.

[Xavier_Onassis]

So what?

How many think the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost favor less government?

An interesting point about those Trinity Broadcasting preachers: many of them are so deeply weird (Benny Hinn as a prime example) that it would be impossible to do a parody of them. They are already more strange than any possible parody.

Hinn arranges a group of the faithful in a circle, with a helper standing behind each one. Then he taps each one in sequence, and each of them collapses and is stretched out in circle around Hinn. Each collapses in exactly the same way.

It is choreographed, like a Bollywood movie.

[kimba1]

I just look at incredibly good looking people. You'd be hard press to convince me that looks was not on the hiring process.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Channel 51 here in Miami has a popular Latino variety show called Sabado Gigante, and I have been in the studio audience a couple of times. You make a reservation and tell people your age. Then they send you a ticket, which means you get to wait for hours before the up to two hours before the recording. They seat the older people in the top seats, which are never seen on the show. They have people who have never heard of their Argentine, Venezuelan and Chilean sponsors cheer and applaud for bathroom cleansers, toy store chains and department stores that they have never heard of and even sing ad jingles from huge cards they hold up.

They record about 2½ hours at a time, and then they cut and paste different recordings, so segments of the show the viewers see on TV eventually are composed of three or four recording sessions. If anyone sneezes or gets up and runs to the bathroom, it is edited out. On occasion they do a complete retake of a segment.

Before the start of the show, they give everyone a ham and cheese sandwich and a soft drink and at the end, after Don Francisco and the cameramen have all cleared out, they give out four $50 bills and have a drawing for a large flatscreen TV.

It is all pretty tacky: the show, the  silly games they play, the interviews of disaster victims, and so on, but it is amazing that no one really complains about the hard seats, the long waits, and the fact that only five people out of maybe 200 get paid anything at all. As I said, older people are shuttled to the upper back rows, and their faces are not distinguishable on the completed shows in which they participated. There is some very clever planning involved in this.

I am sure that the religious shows you mention are planned in the same way.

[hnumpah]

"Christianity Remains Dominant Religion in the United States"

Big deal. Even bigger is that the First Amendmant to the US Constitution is still in effect.

[Amianthus]

I am sure that the religious shows you mention are planned in the same way.

*All* shows with a live audience are done this way. My wife and I went to a taping of Craig Ferguson, and it was very similar to what you describe. They almost put my wife in "lesbian row" but she didn't want to be separated from me.

[Xavier_Onassis]

*All* shows with a live audience are done this way.

I have not experienced all shows, of course, but I strongly suspect that this is true. No doubt there is a trade manual, followed by everyone or most people in the business that details how to deal with studio audiences. Miami Channel 23 is not a high budget enterprise, there is a major air of tackiness about the entire operation.

[Xavier_Onassis]

This means that 95% of all Americans who have a religious identity are Christians.

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Being as I was raised as a Methodist and my grandfather was a Methodist minister, I would say that I have a religious identity as a Christian. I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible talking to me as though I was unaware of its existence in their usual patronizing tone. I have read both testaments twice with the aid of concordances written by the devout and Isaac Azimov, and can say that it does not seem like the word of  God or divinely inspired to me. I do not believe in the rather silly Book of Revelation, which seems to me to be the delusions of a rather obsessive madman (for lack of a more clinical term). It seems really foolish to me to take the NT and apply it to contemporary US politics, as in the name "Christians for less government". The contemporary US to me seems to have more in common with Star Trek: TNG than with the world of the backwater part of the Roman Empire that is described in the NT.

I would say that regular church attendance is probably a better index of the actual influence of Christianity on the people of this country. Christianity seems to have more influence on this country than any other religion, and I do not see this likely to change in my lifetime, or even that of the following generation.

[BT]

Some interesting poll results of self identifying christians and their levels of church attendance.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm

[kimba1]

I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible

interest you said this. when i was in w,virginia I met alot of very religious people and wasw shocked they never heard of the tower of babylon and thought it was a made up story. I found out later alot of people in the south don`t read the bible and only get thier info exclusively from the preacher.

[Plane]

    The USA should remain Christian for everyone who loves the USA.

     But Christianity is felt in its members one by one ,there is no extra strength for my Christianity in your Christianity nor in the Christianity of thousands.

     The better strength of my Christianity is to have more Christ in it.

      That Christ is good for the USA is not to say that Christ needs the sanction of the USA, rather the other way around .

      Reguardless each one Christian must be a volenteer to Christ , then after that a member of one or another group of believers.

        If offered a choice of betrayals , would I first betray my faith to my savior , or my oath to our constitution?

[Plane]

I dislike evangelists who have never actually read the Bible

interest you said this. when i was in w,virginia I met alot of very religious people and wasw shocked they never heard of the tower of babylon and thought it was a made up story. I found out later alot of people in the south don`t read the bible and only get thier info exclusively from the preacher.

      Why should this be a slander on the South?
        Where isn't it so?

[kimba1]

didn`t know I was slandering the south. I was just stating stuff I witness and was told. the only southern state i`ve been to was w,virgina and was told by a more treligious friend about why the people i met didn`t not know about the tower of babylon.
that same friend was very scared about me going there . she kept thinking I`d get killed going to the south.

[BSB]

Plane "That Christ is good for the USA is not to say that Christ needs the sanction of the USA, rather the other way around."

How, and why, would Christ sanction the USA?


BSB