The number of Americans who consider themselves “nonreligious” has plateaued, according to the Harvard-affiliated 2024 CES Common Content Dataset.
Baby boomers saw the greatest decrease in “nonreligious” identification, down to 24% from 28% between 2023 and 2024. Generation X had a similar decrease, dropping from 34% to 31%. Millennial religious “nones” did not change.
Generation Z, however, increased in nonreligious identification, rising 46% from 42% between 2023 and 2024.
In 2019, 36% of Americans considered themselves nonreligious, research director for Faith Counts Ryan Burge wrote on X. In 2024, 34% of Americans identify as nonreligious.
Similar findings from a February Pew Research Center survey detailed that the number of Americans identifying as Christian is plateauing after several years of decline.
The Religious Landscape Study (RLS), first conducted in 2007, found that 78% of U.S. adults considered themselves Christians. The number moved downward to 71% by 2014. The latest survey conducted between 2023 and 2024 found that 62% of American adults view themselves as being Christian.
Despite the statistic being a 16-point drop from when the survey was first conducted, the number of Christian-identifying adults has been “relatively stable,” Pew Research said, adding, “But for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. The 62% figure in the new Religious Landscape Study is smack in the middle of that recent range.”
A 2024 poll from Pew Research found that 28% of Americans were religious “nones,” down from 31% in 2022.
