New data released in the 2023 Cooperative Election Study suggests that the upward trend in those who claim no particular religion, often described as “nones,” may have peaked in 2022. While the share of Christians in the US has largely remained unchanged, the portion of “nones” in the country may have even showed a downtick in 2023, heading back towards 2019 rates.
The data was accumulated and organized into convenient and easy-to-read graphs by analyst Ryan Burge on his website Graphs About Religion. This time, he sourced data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study, with some supporting figures from Pew Research Center.
Burge’s first graph looks back to compare 2008, when the non-religious accounted for about 21% of the population, to 2013, when it had risen to 30%. A 9-point rise is quite large for the US, where each percentage point counts for about 3.3 million people. This upward trend, however, slowed considerably between 2013 and 2018, when there was only a 2% increase in “nones” over the course of 5 years, leading to a significant 3% bump in 2019, bringing the “nones” up to 35%.
That, however, is where the curve leveled out. Over the last 4 years, there has been no great increase in the portion of US adults who consider themselves non-religious, and in fact it may be starting to decline. In 2020, 34% called themselves “nones,” which rose to 36% in 2021, but fell to 35% in 2022. Last year, in 2023, this figure did not move an inch, remaining at 35%.
While this is still over one-third of US adults – around 116 million people – Burge notes that there is no evidence that there are significantly more “nones” in the US today as there were in 2019. Despite their plurality of the American religious landscape, the cessation of their growth is a significant change all on its own.
Burge breaks down the data in more detail using several other graphs that look at the religious makeup of the US by generation. While Gen Z was found to be about 5% more likely to be “nones” than older generations, there has been no great growth in Gen Z “nones” in recent years. Pew’s data even suggested that the portion of US adults who claim no religion fell by 3% in 2023, and is currently resting at around 28%.
Visit Graphs About Religion to see Ryan Burge’s full breakdown of polling data from 2023.
