A large survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and published this September found that large numbers of Americans have left Christianity since the 1990s to join the growing ranks of American adults who describe their religious identity as “atheist” or “agnostic.” or “Nothing in particular.”
This accelerating trend is reshaping the religious landscape in the United States, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.
The center's report asked, what if Christians continued to leave religion at the same rate observed in recent years?
And what if the pace of religious transformation (a person's religious self-definition changed, especially between childhood and adulthood) continues to accelerate?
To help answer such questions, the Pew Research Center has formulated several hypothetical scenarios describing how the religious landscape in the United States might change over the next half-century.
religious conversion
The study notes that religious conversion rates are concentrated in certain age groups;
As of 2019, for example, it was estimated that 31% of people who grew up converting to Christianity became unaffiliated between the ages of 15 and 29, the turbulent period during which religious conversion is concentrated.
Approximately 7% of people who grew up Christian became unaffiliated later in their lives after the age of 30.
In contrast, about 90 percent of adults in the United States were classified as Christians in the early 1990s, according to the center.
The Center's report laid out 4 possible scenarios for the transformation of religion in American society;
Ranging from the possibility that Christians will lose their majority but will remain the largest religious group in the United States by 2070, or escalating non-religious affiliation in 2070 and form a small or no majority, finally the pace of religious conversion in the country begins to slow or even stop at rates The current scenario, which the Center's report suggests, is unrealistic.
These projections suggest that the United States may follow the path taken over the past 50 years by many countries in Western Europe that had an overwhelming Christian majority in the mid-20th century and no longer do.
In Britain, for example, the percentage of those who do not consider themselves Christians exceeded those who consider themselves Christians to become the largest group in 2009 according to the British Social Attitudes Survey.
In the Netherlands, religious apathy accelerated in the 1970s, and only 47% of adults now say they are Christian.
While the change in affiliation rates in the United States is largely due to people voluntarily leaving religion, conversion is not the only driver of changing religious makeup around the world.
For example, differences in fertility rates explain most of the recent religious changes in India, while immigration has altered the religious make-up of many European countries in the last century, forced conversions, mass expulsions, wars, and genocide have caused changes in religious make-up throughout history.
Furthermore, the scenarios presented in the Pew report are limited to religious identity and do not depict how religious beliefs and practices might change in the coming decades.
Besides the decline in the percentage of American adults who identify themselves as Christians in recent years, Pew Research Center surveys have found a decline in the percentage of the population who say they pray regularly or consider religion very important in their lives, the question remains open about the future.
major religious transformations
In a previous report published by the American magazine "Foreign Affairs" in 2021, the writer Ronald Englehart said that he and his colleague, Pippa Norris, had conducted 12 years of research;
Where they analyzed data related to religious attitudes in 49 countries, the data showed that from approximately 2007 to 2019, the vast majority of the countries under study became less religious, and the weakness of people's belief in religious beliefs was not limited to high-income countries only, as it appeared in most around the world.
A slight majority of American adults said - in another opinion poll in 2020 - that Jesus, the son of Mary, peace be upon them, was a great teacher (nothing more) during his life, and this means that the majority of the respondents do not see that Christ was a "god" according to the prevailing Christian belief, which he considers worthy of worship, according to a previous report by Al-Jazeera Net.
In its coverage of the poll conducted by Ligonier Ministries (an international Christian non-governmental and non-profit organization), the US newspaper "Newsweek" said that the results support the saying of many religious leaders who say that Christians today "are moving away from the teachings." traditional evangelicalism.
"The End of the Christian World"
In her recently published book "The End of the Christian World", the French philosopher Chantal Delsol says that the civilization whose customs and laws depend on Christian beliefs have withered since the end of the 20th century, as Christianity declined as a central reference for laws, customs and morals, at a time when modernity triumphed after the dominance of Christianity for nearly 16 years. Qarn, according to a previous report by Al-Jazeera Net.
Delsol - founder of the Hannah Arendt Research Institute - believes that what she calls "the signs of the collapse of Christian civilization" have begun to form a long time ago, specifically since the rebellion against church customs and laws in the Renaissance, and then during the Enlightenment, when Christianity entered a difficult stage when modernity required recognition Freedom of conscience, which was rejected by Catholicism, which remained hostile to liberalism and individualism.
Thus, for two centuries, Christianity tried to maintain its influence and influence, but it collided with the demands of modernization and the release of personal freedoms.
Philosopher Chantal Delsol describes herself as a "conservative liberal" and founded the Hannah Research Institute in 1993 (Getty Images)
But the Christianity that the French historian and novelist refers to in her book is that civilization whose customs and laws depend on Christian beliefs, and it is clear - according to her opinion in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro - that this civilization has withered since the end of the 20th century.
There are now seldom countries where their laws and customs are based on Christianity with a few exceptions;
In most Christian countries, divorce and abortion have become legal, which means that Christianity as a religion no longer exists, according to the researcher, who was born into a right-wing Catholic Parisian family and studied by conservative liberal sociologist Julian Freund.
Delsol asserts that Western civilization, which was born with the end of the Roman Empire, is a mixture of Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian civilizations, and therefore there is no doubt that the decline of Christianity shakes the pillars of Western civilization and changes its features, but it does not lead to its disappearance.
The French philosopher believes that "humanism" as the reference that took the place of the Christian faith in contemporary societies is a revival of Christian values such as mercy, tolerance, repentance, forgiveness and equality for all, but these values are no longer linked to religion, but are based only on custom and secular applications.