religious diversity

[jenk]

From a "Talking Points" article on "the war on xmas":

The nation is rapidly becoming more religiously diverse. The percentage of the population that describes itself as Christian has declined to 77 percent in 2000, from 86 percent in 1990. The biggest increase has been in people who do not identify themselves with any religion, a group that has more than doubled since 1990.

America is still very much a country of Christians, these numbers show. But nearly a quarter of the country, representing as many as 70 million people, is not Christian. It stands to reason that stores and politicians would try to take into account the inclinations of such a large part of the population. - NYTimes

A nice thing about the "Talking Points" article is that they link to related information - in this case, CUNY summary of religous identification of the US population comparing numbers from 1990 with 2001. The number of Muslims, Buddhists, Native Americans, Baha'I, and Sikh in the US more than doubled over that time span. The number of Hindus & "New Age"ers have tripled. Wiccans have gone from 8,000 to over 100,000. 2001 had some new categories that 1990 didn't, like Santeria, Druid, Pagan, and Spiritualist.