Vermont is the new “Unchurched” Leader
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Thu, April 02, 2009
- Viewed 37
- (1) comments so far
Here’s more interesting stuff from the survey’s website:
In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million “Nones.” Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent “Nones,” leading all other states by a full 9 points.
“Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly,” Keysar said. We now know it wasn’t. The ‘Nones’ are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union.”
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.
Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as “Christian,” “Evangelical/Born Again,” or “non-denominational Christian.” The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.
“It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing,” said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. “A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States.”
Wow… there’s a lot of information in those paragraphs. How do you interpret the changes?
34% of Vermont residents say they have 'no religious identification'. The national average is around 15%. That's according to results just released from the American Religious Identification Survey. Vermont passed both Washington and Oregon, who led the 2001 survey...
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Ron Myers on Thu, April 02, 2009
Hey, welcome to my world. Been living here and ministering here and trying to spread God’s grace and forgiveness around for about 9 years now. Vermont certainly has its peculiar parts, but all in all, it is an awesome place - full of beauty and lots of great people. I serve at a church that is trying to get the job done. 5 services each Sunday, 2 campuses, about 1800 regular attenders (4000 for Easter and Christmas services). The other churches around seem to have a view that we are a cult, but bottom-line is we are just loving people, preaching God’s grace, living God’s grace, and being a light to a community (region, really) that needs to know there is a God who loves them. This report saying that 34% of the people in my state have no religious id simply means job security for myself and the other pastors that I work with.
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