Pew Survey on the U.S. Religious Landscape

The latest Pew Forum Religion and Public Life survey maps out what it calls the U.S. religious landscape. In general the findings aren’t terribly surprising but I’d like to focus on that segment of the population to which I find myself a member.

Pew identifies a segment of the population as “Unaffiliated.” That is they have no particular religious affiliation. Pew further breaks this down into what if calls “The Religious Unaffiliated,” people for whom religion is important but for whatever reason currently have no religious ties, and “Seculars,” people for whom either religion is unimportant or are openly atheist or agnostic.

Of the total U.S. population, Pew places the number of atheists at 2%, the number of agnostics at 2% and the total of other seculars at 6% for a total of 10% of the population. I think these numbers are way under because they don’t include atheists and agnostics which still maintain a religious affiliation. Ignoring that for the moment, we’ll just focus on that 10% of the population that is openly secular.

When education is taken into account, among those with at least a college degree this number jumps to 13% of the population. Among those with a post graduate degree the number is 16%.

Men are more likely to be secular than women. 13.4% of men claim to be secular while only 7.4% of women do.

The most secular region of the country is the West where seculars comprise 16% of the population followed by the Northeast where 12% are secular. In the Northeast, Atheists, Agnostics and Secular Unaffiliated individuals are almost as numerous as evangelical Christians who number only 13% in that region. The least secular region is the South with only 7% of the population claiming to be atheist, agnostic or secular unaffiliated.

16% of the population in the 18-29 year old age range are openly secular while only 5% of those over 70 are.

Like I said before, I find these numbers low. I’m pretty sure there are a large number of folks who will call themselves Catholic, Jewish, Methodist or whatever who are really firmly in the secular camp but are unwilling to shed their traditional label.

The bottom line is that the younger you are and the more educated you are, especially if you live in the West or the Northeast, the more likely you are to be religion free either de jure or de facto and I find that a very encouraging thing for the future.