A report on American religiosity released by the Pew Research Center earlier this year strongly indicated that South Dakotans in tandem with Americans nationwide have been relentlessly losing faith for years, particularly among Christian denominations.
However, there is (for Christians, at least) a hopeful caveat in the Pew report: The increasing flight from Christianity in the U.S. did appear to slow slightly in the last couple of years. Yet whereas Pew reports showed 78% of Americans in 2007 formally identified as Christian, only 63% did so last year, a sharp and ecclesiastically alarming 15-point plunge in 17 years, according to the Centers latest data.
This unprecedented national de-Christianization trend over decades, starting in the last millennium, has proceeded in tandem with a broader rejection of religion in general in America and throughout the industrialized West, although America was relatively late in catching the secular wave (and later yet, South Dakota).
Today, about 29% of Americans, nearly a third, identify as so-called nones, people who describe their religion, if any, as nothing in particular. These religiously apathetic citizens include atheists and agnostics. By comparison, 18 years ago, in 2007, nones comprised only 16% of Americans.
In South Dakota, the trend away from organized religion and faith is similar to but later than the national slide, yet still stark and worrisome to clergy and the faithful. The Aberdeen American News reported on polling in a 2022 article showing that the number of religiously unaffiliated South Dakotans nearly tripled from 8% in 2001 to 21% in 2021, along with declines in belief in the Bible, God, angels, heaven and hell.
The News reported: Perhaps most worrisome for church leaders in America and South Dakota is that in recent surveys, the people who do not affiliate with any religion, the so-called nones, are the fastest-growing segment of the national population as indicated in surveys about religion, faith and beliefs.
Pew reported in its survey that South Dakotans, at 79%, exceeded the national proportion of citizens identifying as Christian in 2023-24, and that it had fewer self-identifying nones 18% than the 29% nationwide. But that still represented a significant minority of religiously unaffiliated citizens. Of the states nones, 13% described their religion as nothing in particular, 5% claimed agnosticism, and 1% were atheist.
Due to their dramatic growth nationwide, nones are now the largest cohort in the U.S. in the religious sphere, NPR reported. Currently, they are more numerous than American Catholics, who make up 23% of the overall population, and Protestants, 24%, according to a 2024 NPR report citing the latest Pew data.
A number of potential reasons have been cited for the drop-off in Americans affiliation with organized religion, including decades of steadily increasing secularization in the West and, following the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing animosity among Christian denominations, as well as the fact that belief in God among young Americans is lower than ever, the News noted. For example, 46% of the young identify as Christians versus 80% of their elders, according to Pew.
Gregory Smith, the lead researcher in the Pew study, contends that surging legions of nones could have an oversized effect on the nations public life going forward and could change electoral politics in the coming decades.
Although nones are currently less socially and civically engaged and less likely to vote than religious believers affiliated with churches and other faith organizations, they are also the most strongly and consistently liberal and Democratic constituencies in the United States, Smith said.
Their electoral power could exponentially increase if they become politically energized.
The political power of white Evangelicals has been well-reported in recent decades, but their numbers are shrinking while the number of the more liberal Nones is on the rise, he added.
Despite the decades-long secularization trend in Western societies, traditionally devout South Dakotans, and Americans in general, remain a spiritually and supernaturally minded lot. Some 86% of Americans continue to believe in a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body, Pew reported.
Still, churches nationwide struggle to fill their pews.
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