Pew Research has released its latest survey of religion in America, and it comes as no surprise that organized religion continues to shrink. Here’s the decline in a nutshell:
There’s something worth noting here: although the number of “religiously unaffiliated” has increased from 16 percent to 26 percent over the past decade, the number identifying as atheist has barely budged, increasing only two percentage points. What this says is that although a quarter of the population is nonreligious, very few of them are aggressive about it. Those of us willing to flatly own up to being atheists make up a tiny, tiny minority.
In other words, feel free to mock religion with your flying spaghetti monster stuff, but don’t act all surprised when most Americans take offense and feel reluctant to vote for your candidates. You know what you’re doing.
