Americans' faith down sharply over past decade: Gallup poll
Just 49% of Americans participating in the Gallup poll say religion matters to their daily lives, down 17 percentage points from a decade ago.
It’s the first time fewer than half of U.S. adults have given this answer in annual surveys dating back to 2007, the polling company said Thursday.
It also brings Americans closer to the 36% of adults in 38 other wealthy nations who described religion as important to daily life in the latest global survey. That narrows a gap that has long given the U.S. a reputation for piety.
“Such large declines in religiosity are rare,” Gallup analysts Benedict Vigers and Julie Ray wrote in a summary of the findings.
They noted that only 14 of 160 countries participating in the annual survey have reported drops of at least 15 percentage points over any decade since 2007.
Greece, Italy, and Poland were the only wealthy nations with larger declines than the U.S. The numbers in Chile, Turkey and Portugal declined at a similar pace.
Gallup based its U.S. results on a randomized national telephone survey of 1,000 adults ages 15 and older. It administered the poll from June 14 to July 16, yielding a 4.4-point margin of error at the 95% confidence level.
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