Surveys in 36 countries find that Christianity and Buddhism have the biggest losses from ‘religious switching’ Light shines through the doors of Zionskirche, a Protestant church in Berlin. (Busà Photography/Getty Images) How we did this Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to examine rates of religious switching in 36 countries across the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East-North Africa region, North America and sub-Saharan Africa. The countries have a variety of historically predominant religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. For non-U.S. data, this analysis draws on nationally representative surveys of 41,503 adults conducted from Jan. 5…
Author: Jcoleman
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Encuestas realizadas en 36 países revelan que el cristianismo y el budismo registran las mayores pérdidas por este “cambio de religión” Este comunicado de prensa se ha traducido del inglés original al español. En muchos países del mundo, una quinta parte o más de todos los adultos ha abandonado el grupo religioso en el que se criaron. El cristianismo y el budismo han experimentado pérdidas especialmente grandes debido a este “cambio de religión”, mientras que un número cada vez mayor de adultos no tiene ninguna afiliación religiosa, según las encuestas realizadas por el Pew Research Center a casi 80.000 personas…
Terminology Throughout this report, religious switching refers to a change between the religious group in which a person says they were raised (during their childhood) and their religious identity now (in adulthood). The rates of religious switching are based on responses to two survey questions we asked of adults ages 18 and older: “What is your current religion, if any?” “Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?” The responses to these two questions allow us to calculate what percentage of the public has left a religious group (or “switched out”) and what…
Far fewer are hearing about the administration’s relationship with the media than was the case early in Trump’s first term President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the White House South Lawn on March 21, 2025. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images) How we did this Pew Research Center conducted this study to track how Americans are paying attention to news about the new Trump administration. For many years we have asked U.S. adults for their views and habits related to news about elections, presidential administrations and policy developments. This study builds on work we did leading up to the…
The American Trends Panel survey methodology Overview Data in this report comes from Wave 164 of the American Trends Panel (ATP), Pew Research Center’s nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. The survey was conducted from Feb. 24 to March 2, 2025. A total of 5,123 panelists responded out of 5,737 who were sampled, for a survey-level response rate of 89%. The cumulative response rate accounting for nonresponse to the recruitment surveys and attrition is 3%. The break-off rate among panelists who logged on to the survey and completed at least one item is 1%. The margin of sampling…
Terminology Throughout this report, religious switching refers to a change between the religious group in which a person says they were raised (during their childhood) and their religious identity now (in adulthood). The rates of religious switching are based on responses to two survey questions we asked of adults ages 18 and older: “What is your current religion, if any?” “Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?” The responses to these two questions allow us to calculate what percentage of the public has left a religious group (or “switched out”) and what…
Terminology Throughout this report, religious switching refers to a change between the religious group in which a person says they were raised (during their childhood) and their religious identity now (in adulthood). The rates of religious switching are based on responses to two survey questions we asked of adults ages 18 and older: “What is your current religion, if any?” “Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?” The responses to these two questions allow us to calculate what percentage of the public has left a religious group (or “switched out”) and what…
Terminology Throughout this report, religious switching refers to a change between the religious group in which a person says they were raised (during their childhood) and their religious identity now (in adulthood). The rates of religious switching are based on responses to two survey questions we asked of adults ages 18 and older: “What is your current religion, if any?” “Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?” The responses to these two questions allow us to calculate what percentage of the public has left a religious group (or “switched out”) and what…
The religious composition of the United States has been fairly stable in half a dozen Pew Research Center surveys conducted since 2020. The Christian share of the adult population has been between 60% and 64% in these surveys, while the religiously unaffiliated share has ranged from 28% to 31%. Adherents of religions other than Christianity have consistently accounted for 6% or 7% of U.S. adults throughout this period. Over the longer term, however, Christians have been declining as a percentage of the U.S. adult population, while the share that is religiously unaffiliated has been rising. (For an extended discussion of…
Millions of Americans have changed their religion over the course of their lifetimes, switching from one religion to another, leaving religion altogether, or choosing to identify with a religion after having grown up without one. If Protestants are counted as a single category – rather than separated into subgroups such as Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. – then the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) finds that 35% of U.S. adults were raised with a different religious identity than the one they have now. This is roughly on par with what we found in the 2014 RLS, using the same definition of…