Once in a while, I like to take a look at the state of religious belief where I live, the United States. I don’t really think it changes much overall, but it’s always been curious to me how we who live here identify as a Judeo-Christian nation when that couldn’t be further from the truth. If we could be identified with any belief, it would be a Christian nation because out of the 350 million people that live here, some 66% identify as Christian. That’s 231 million Christians. More than any other country in the world.

Note I said identify as Christian and that probably means they believe that a Jewish preacher in Judea, some 2,000 years ago, died for their sins and on the 3rd day, was resurrected unto Eternal Life. According to a lot of modern evangelical preachers, that’s all anyone has to proclaim to become saved and become a Christian. Being saved is having all of your sins (you know, the bad stuff you’ve done in the past) forgiven and securing a place for yourself in Heaven, with Jesus (that Jewish preacher from Judea). But I wonder how many people that make that declaration understand what Christianity is beyond that Declaration of Faith they just made?

How many of those 231 million that profess to be Christians, actually follow precepts of the Christian faith? Of course, it can be difficult with all of the different denominations that comprise the whole of christianity, but just choosing one, how many will follow inn the path directed for them by their local pastor? How many actually attend church, regularly? Protestants claim a 44% weekly or nearly weekly attendance rate for a number close to 30 million out of 150 million, that attend church regularly. Catholics show some 33% attend on a regular basis or about 12 million out of approximately 70 million Catholics. Of course, these data are self reported. The actual numbers are not really known.

The real numbers have been attempted to be calculated based on people’s cell phone data. Of those protestants that attend church regularly, the number, based on this data is much lower: 5% overall. This comes From a large University of Chicago Study that shows, out of a population of 350 million people, only about 18 million attend church weekly. Most of those are protestant. Catholic attendance, according to this study is much worse: .26% or around 900,000. So there’s a huge difference between what people say they do as to attending church and what their phones show.

How accurate is this study? Well, it’s only a single study, and as far as I know, no one’s attempted to replicate it so it’s the information we have currently. Of course, more data means more accuracy. But consider if this study were even close to being accurate. Could we then really call ourselves a Christian nation since so few actually practice the religion they’ve closely identified with, maybe their entire lives?I think it would be more accurate to say that Americans are a country of nones.

That’s right, according to a recent Pew Poll, out of the total population some 75 million people identify as either none (47 million), atheist (13 million), or agnostic (15 million). These too are self reported of course, but if we look at Pew over the years, we can chart the changes that appear to be moving, slowly, away from religious belief.