About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion. That includes 51% who said they were Protestant, 5% who were "other Christian," 23% Roman Catholic, and 3% who named another Christian faith, including 2% Mormon.
Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn't answer, these results suggest that well more than 8 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.
Has this changed over time?
Yes. The percentage of Americans who identify with a Christian religion is down some over the decades. This is not so much because Americans have shifted to other religions, but because a significantly higher percentage of Americans today say they don't have a religious identity. In the late 1940s, when Gallup began summarizing these data, a very small percentage explicitly told interviewers they did not identify with any religion. But of those who did have a religion, Gallup classified -- in 1948, for example -- 69% as Protestant and 22% as Roman Catholic, or about 91% Christian.
It's one thing to identify with a religion, and another to be actively religious. What percentage of Americans are actually members of a church?
Sixty-two percent of Americans in Gallup's latest poll, conducted in December, say they are members of a "church or synagogue," a question Gallup has been asking since 1937.
And yet we have candidates and politicians who bend over backwards not to offend non-believers who make up a very small portion of our society, or go out of their way to pander to the minority religions which make up maybe 5% of the population. They'll ban any mention of Christianity in reference to the Christmas season while actively promoting Ramadan or EID. This poll would suggest that such actions are foolish, and they would be if the electorate acted on what they claim their beliefs to be.
There's more info here.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment