Christians declining in raw numbers *and* as share of American population

[Famous Mortimer]

We'll see if the Millennial generation continues to be this irreligious when they hit their prime childbearing years and start having to wrangle with religious education or the lack thereof of their kids. Traditionally, having children increased the religiosity of demographic groups.

This trend isn't unexpected, but the speed of it is. I was expecting "None" to place in the high teens by the next Pew survey, not 23%.

EDIT: Thought: maybe the speed with which None is raising also has to do with increased comfort among lapsed/non-practicing people to embrace the None label rather than continuing to identify with a birth religion they don't practice anymore.

Millennials can barely afford to have children at all, let alone send them to private religious schools.

[Famous Mortimer]

We'll see if the Millennial generation continues to be this irreligious when they hit their prime childbearing years and start having to wrangle with religious education or the lack thereof of their kids. Traditionally, having children increased the religiosity of demographic groups.

This trend isn't unexpected, but the speed of it is. I was expecting "None" to place in the high teens by the next Pew survey, not 23%.

EDIT: Thought: maybe the speed with which None is raising also has to do with increased comfort among lapsed/non-practicing people to embrace the None label rather than continuing to identify with a birth religion they don't practice anymore.

Millennials can barely afford to have children at all, let alone send them to private religious schools.

He's talking about things like Sunday school, not religious private schools.

I don't think anyone is going to "wrangle" with the idea of what to do with their kids for one hour every week at 11am on a Sunday. More than likely, they will just sleep in.

[Famous Mortimer]

I don't think anyone is going to "wrangle" with the idea of what to do with their kids for one hour every week at 11am on a Sunday. More than likely, they will just sleep in.

One person at the UU church in the area that I chose to not attend made the suggestion that UU was for atheists and agnostics who wanted their children to get religious education, so that nobody would do so is underestimating the admittedly small number of people today who go to church not for their own sake but that of their children.

Again, these are old people raised by the actually religious. Two generations removed from devout religion, people aren't going to care about "religious education". Also, if for some reason you do just want to educate your children that Christianity is a thing, there's the internet.