Newsweek poll: Religious in America

William Atkins
Wednesday, 06 May 2009 20:03

Science - Biology

The magazine Newsweek conducted a poll about religious views of people in the United States. Its title "A Post-Christian Nation?" raises some interesting thoughts on religious views, and their trends over time.


The poll was released on April 3, 2009. Newsweek surveyors polled 1,003 adults who were eighteen years or older. The poll was conducted on April 1 and 2, 2009. All percentages from trends of past years are from Gallup polls.

The results of the poll are found at the “A Post-Christian Nation?” website (pdf file).

Some of its conclusions are:

Almost 90% of Americans have “faith in a spiritual being” (and this figure has not changed much in over the last two decades)

78% said, “prayer was an important part of daily life” (which has increased 2% since 1987)

85% stated that religion is “very important” or “fairly important” in their lives (and this figure has not changed much since 1992)

Generally,

48% of Americans describe themselves as “religious and spiritual”

30% of Americans describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”

9% of Americans describe themselves as “religious but not spiritual”

9% of Americans describe themselves as “neither religious nor spiritual”

4% of Americans responded “I don’t know”

Page two contains some interesting percentages based on some quite interesting questions.