While the overall trend has been downward, recent years have seen a stabilization in the percentage of the public that identifies as Christian. After dropping from 78% to 71% between 2007 and 2014, the share of U.S. adults identifying as Christian has now dropped to 62%, according to this particular report. However, it notes this figure has been relatively stable since 2019, oscillating between 60% and 64%.
Protestants are still the largest subgroup of Christians, with 40% of American adults identifying as such. However, all major Protestant denominations have declined since the first Pew RLS report in 2007. The percentage of respondents who identify as evangelical Protestants dropped from 26% to 23%; those who identify as mainline Protestants dropped from 18% to 11%; and those in historically Black Protestant denominations decreased from 7% to 5%.
However, those identifying as non-Christian religious adults rose from 4.9% in 2007, to 5.9% in 2014, and to 7.1% in 2023-24. Among them, 1.7% identified as Jewish, 1.2% as Muslim, 1.1% as Buddhist and 0.9% as Hindu, in addition to 2.2% who identified as “other non-Christian religions.”
