It made national news today...some seemed surprised, but for many, the statistics simply confirmed what is so clearly evidenced in many aspects of American society today:
America is becoming more secular by the day.
Some concerning statistics from the
American Religious Identification Survey of 2008:
- "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"
- "Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population"
- "Mormons have increased in numbers enough to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 percent of the population"
- "The Muslim proportion of the population continues to grow, from .3 percent in 1990 to .5 percent in 2001 to .6 percent in 2008"
- "Only1.6 percent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic. But based on stated beliefs, 12 percent are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unsure), while 12 percent more are deistic (believe in a higher power but not a personal God)"
- "The number of outright atheists has nearly doubled since 2001, from 900 thousand to 1.6 million"
- "Twenty-seven percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral at their death"
- "Adherents of New Religious movements, including Wiccans and self-described pagans, have grown faster this decade than in the 1990s"
What these statistics don't show could even be more concerning. How many of those claiming to be "Christian" in this survey are only classified as such because they were raised that way? Or because it is more culturally acceptable?
It is a clear reminder that we have plenty of people around us who are in dire need of hearing the Gospel message and accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Isaiah 1:2-4 "2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: 'Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.3The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib,but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.' 4Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged."
1 John 2:19 "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. "
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