The Future of American Religion

The Pew Research Center published a new report titled Modeling the Future of Religion in America (full pdf here).  The main idea is to make projections of religious affiliation rates going forward fifty years.  Making projections is a tricky sort of business because it is all about identifying which of the current trends will continue, which will not, and what not-yet-experienced trends may occur.

This report proceed by considering a few different levels of switching out of Christianity.  With no switching, Christianity remains the majority religious tradition by affiliation in 2070, but with other switching scenarios, Christianity loses its majority status by 2070.

The report also discusses some of the nuts and bolts underlying the projections.  For example, the projections need to make various assumptions about not just rates of religious disaffiliation, but also about fertility, mortality, migration, and intergenerational religious transmission.

With so many moving parts, it is impossible to get everything correct, but making a perfect projection is too high of a standard.  What this report can do -- and does pretty well in my opinion -- is provide a limited number of plausible future scenarios.