[Note: Published in Secular Politics on March 21, 2025]

The Secular Boom Continues

Pew’s third Religion Landscape Survey shows that the Secular Boom (the fast growth among secular people) mostly happened between the 2007 and 2014 surveys. In that period, the share of the adult population that identifies as secular grew from 16% to 23% or seven percentage points. However, the number of people who identify as nonreligious nearly doubled from about 36 million to 56 million, a 56% increase.

It is still happening in some ways, but it has slowed down a bit. Between the 2014 and 2023-24 surveys, the secular population grew from 56 million to 76 million, a 20 million-person increase, or 36%. While not as fast as in the previous 7-year period between the first and second surveys, the secular population still raced far ahead of population growth.

Christianity Continues its Decline

The secular population has fared far better than Christians. Still, the US dominant religious group, Christians, lost about 3 million adherents between 2007 and 2014, or about 2%, even as the US population grew 8% in that period.

The decline between 2014 and 2023-24 is even worse. While the secular population kept pace with overall population growth, the number of Christian adherents declined by 7% (the total opposite of the overall growth in the adult population. This means there are about 8 million fewer Christians in 2024 than in 2014.

Conclusion

Secularism continues growing. As I noted in my previous newsletter, atheists and agnostics now make up a larger share of the population and of the secular cohort than ever before. In the upcoming entries, I will focus on how the secular population changes demographically.