America Unchurched: A Sign of the Times

For the first time in its more than eight decades of surveying Americans' religious attitudes and practices, Gallup reports, church members constituted only 47% of the US population in 2020 -- down 23% since 1999, prior to which the percentage seldom dipped below 70%.

Why the precipitous drop, and what might it portend for the future?

"The decline in church membership," the Gallup report says, "is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference." In 2000, Americans who didn't consider themselves religious at all comprised 8% of the population. Tod...