A new Pew study shows the waning of religious affiliation in America, how a fake wedding led to real arrests in Flint, Michigan, and more.
By: Jake Swearingen and Adam Chandler
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What’s Happening: How Christian Identity in America Is Changing
More and more Americans are spending their Sundays outside of church. A new report by the Pew Research Center revealed a major drop in the number of Americans who identify as Christian, with just 71 percent of people in the United States saying they are affiliated with Christianity in 2014, eight points fewer than in 2007.
The church loses young Americans: The study noted a decrease in many Christian denominations. One-third of Millennials don’t identify with any faith, a 10-percentage-point increase since 2007. Overall, nearly quarter of all Americans now say they are religiously unaffiliated.
Grains of salt: Christianity is also becoming more ethnically diverse, especially as the Hispanic Christian community grows. And religious affiliation doesn’t necessarily explain how religious Americans actually are. As Emma Green writes in the The Atlantic today, “America continues to be a nation under God—just with more flexibility in how its citizens choose to worship.”