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

[DC Al Fine]

"Nones" have jumped to 22.8%? Wow! I just want to see "Nones" enter the mainstream, which is what I think they are in the process of doing.

I'm sure that regular church attendees are overwhelmingly 60+, and it'll be interesting to see if this trend continues.

The survey doesn't remotely agree with your assertion.

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.

While there was a genuine decline in the number of believers, a lot of the decline is non-practicers going nominals. (Did anyone really believe that 75% of Americans were actually Christian?) This of course isn't good for the religious, but it's not quite so bad as mass apostasy.

Overall, not a good result for Christianity, although I can take solace that the Evangelical branch of Presbyterianism is gaining on the mainline branch.

[DC Al Fine]

Interestingly, the nones seem to have the opposite problem, a lot of converts but a surprisingly low retention rate.

I wonder (and I really just mean wonder - this could be completely wrong) whether some Evangelicals are reporting that they were raised as "none" when really they were kind of casually Protestant.

I think you are correct. Evangelicals focus on being "born again" and usually require a stricter degree of adherence than most other groups to view someone as a Christian. It makes sense that they would apply this to themselves, so the guy who attended St. Mark's Episcopal Church irregularly before converting would quite logically view themselves as non-Christian before their conversion.