For the first time since the foundation of our country, the United States may have less than 50% of its population as Protestants. From 1993 to 2002, Protestants dropped from 63% of the population to 52% of the population. According to the researchers, it will drop below 50% in the next two years. Catholics remained steady at 25% of the population.Unfortunately, the number of people claiming no religion has climbed from 9% to 14%. We desperately need to pray that these people see Jesus Christ and see the full truth of the Catholic faith! The number of people adhering to Islam, Orthodox Christians, interdenominational Christians and native-American faiths rose from 3% to 7%. The number of people claiming the Jewish faith remains just below 2%.
Note: Protestants are defined as "all post-Reformation Christian churches, such as Baptist, Methodist and Episcopalian, including Mormons and New Age Spirituality adherents."
Source: NORC at the University of Chicago
Image Source: Believed to be in the Public Domain
5 comment(s):
That's interesting. I wonder if there's a source that's not CNA that I could point non-Catholic people to. That way they can't claim that it's biased to the Church. I'm going to have to try and stalk down that survey from the University of Chicago.
My favorite retort when it comes to numbers and all that is that yeah, there are a lot of Catholics; but how many of them are practicing? I'd like to think that the number of practicing Catholics still outnumbers the Protestant numbers, but I have no clue. Yay for numbers!
*off to see what I can find from the UofC*
I'd go beyond "how many of them are practicing" and ask how many of them are authentic.
Good point, Fredi.
Another interesting point is that the Protestant numbers include Mormons and New Age Spirituality adherents. I don't think most Mormons or most Protestants would lump the Mormons in with the Protestants. If you take out the Mormons, the numbers could already be below 50%.
You can ask how many of the Catholics are practicing/authentic, but I can't see how those numbers would be grossly different than the numbers of (especially mainstream) Protestants that are practicing/authentic.
Thank you for pointing that out Rebeca. Mormons are not in Christians in my opinion since they deny the Holy Trinity - the most central part of our faith. I know very little about the New Age movement
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