https://www.axios.com/2024/03/29/americans-lose-religious-affiliation-survey

Americans increasingly are calling themselves "unaffiliated" with any religion — or rejecting religion altogether — at a time when influential Republicans are leaning into Christian nationalism to shape public policies, a new survey finds.

Why it matters: The survey found that 26% of Americans now consider themselves unaffiliated with a religion. That's up 5 percentage points from 2013, and reflects a widening gap between how citizens and lawmakers see religion's role in society.

>The GOP is dominated by white evangelicals who have successfully pushed to limit abortion, ban books and restrict some LGBTQ+ rights. But the general public — especially younger Americans — is rapidly moving away from religions that endorse such policies.
>Just a slim majority of Americans (53%) now say that religion is important in their lives, down from 72% in 2013, the survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute says.
>The findings suggest that Republicans who focus on evangelical priorities — such as former President Trump, who's now hawking Bibles, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who flies a flag favored by Christian nationalists outside his office — are preaching to a loyal but dwindling audience.

The big picture: Among Christian groups, Catholics as a whole continue to lose more members than they gain — and are seeing the largest declines in affiliation of any religious group.

>In 2023, 18% of white Americans said they grew up as Catholics, but one-third of them said they no longer identify as members of their childhood faith.
>12% of Hispanic Americans said they grew up as Catholics; one-third of them also said they no longer identify as such.