Protestant majority on downward trend

Protestants could cease to be the majority religious group in the United States within the next year, a new study by the National Opinion Research Center says.

The Protestant share of the population remained constant at around 63 percent from 1972, when the University of Chicago-based NORC began its General Social Survey, until 1993. It then began to show a decline, reaching 52.4 percent in 2002.

The study attributed the decline to, among other things, the fact that fewer children were being raised in Protestant homes. The share of people who said they were raised as Protestants dropped from 64.7 percent in 1972 to 55.7 percent in 2002.

Among people born after 1980, less than half said they were raised Protestant, suggesting the downward trend would continue.

It also found that the retention rate for Protestants also fell over the years.

In the 20 years leading up to 1993, a steady 90 percent of people raised in Protestant households remained Protestants as adults. That had dropped below 83 percent by the turn of the century.

Immigration is another factor.

The study found that only 24.5 percent of immigrants to the United States are Protestant, but added: “While it helps to sustain the current decline, it cannot explain the start of the decline in the mid-1990s or its recent rapid rate.”