A few days ago the Pew Forum Research Center released some new statistics on faith in America. And what it revealed was not good.

19.6% of Americans claim no religious affiliation. This includes those claiming to be both agnostic and atheist.

And this number has gone up nearly 5% in just the past 5 years.

Even worse, 33% of Americans under the age of 30 claim no religious affiliation.

And of this population, 88% of them claim to have no desire to find a religion that suits their needs.

If we extrapolate these percentages out 15 years — on their current growth trajectory — and we could be looking at almost 50% of those under the age of 30 claiming “NO” religious affiliation.

If, indeed, the trend continues on in this fashion, our work on campus will be all the more challenging — and all the more necessary!

Maybe one of the most interesting (or unexpected) stats I read was that while the population of “Nones” has grown by 11% over the past 40 years, in conjunction by an 11% decline in the Protestant category, Catholics remained relatively unchanged — dropping only 1% point over the course of the last 40 years.

There are a lot more stats to explore in the article. Find it at: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx.

My question for us is simple:

How will we respond?