Study examines decline in American religiosity (American Enterprise Institute)

“The present decline is striking in its speed and uniformity across different measures of religiosity,” writes Lyman Stone of the American Enterprise Institute. “But a longer historical perspective suggests some caution in making overbold statements about what such a decline might portend. At the dawn of the American republic in the 1780s, probably just a third of Americans were members in any religious body, and just a fifth could be found at church on a given Sunday. This was a historic low ebb in American religiosity.”