A wide-rangin study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in the 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church.
The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.
Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.
In 2008, Christians compromised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans, and Episcopalains, largely explaints the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.
Here are the other findings:
- The current survey found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.
- About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths. And, since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents - 1.2. percent - said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca, and Santeria.
- The study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group. Researchers also found a small increase in those who prefer being called evangelical or born-again, rather than claim membership in a denomination.
- Evangelical or born-again Americans make up 34 percent of all American adults and 45 percent of all Christians and Catholics, the study found. Researchers found that 18 percent of Catholics consider themselves born-again or evangelical, and nearly 39 percent of mainline Protestants perfer those labels.
- Many mainline Protestants group are driven by conflict over how they should interpret what the Bible says about gay relationships, salvation and other issues.
- The percentage of Pentecostal remained mostly steady since 1990 at 3.5 percent, a surprising finding considering the dramatic spread of the tradition worldwide.
- Mormon numbers also held steady over the period at 1.4 percent of the population, while the number of Jews who described themselves as religiously observant continued to drop, from 1.8 percent in 1990 to 1.2 percent, or 2.7 million people, last year.
- The study found the percentage of Americans who identified themselves as Muslim grew to 0.6 percent of the population, while growth in Eastern religions such as Buddhism slightly slowed. (AP)