SAN ANTONIO—Neither pessimists who predict a rising tide of atheism in the United States nor optimists who express confidence Millennials eventually will return to church understand the full picture about the nation’s changing religious landscape, an expert from the Pew Research Center told a crowd at Baptist University of the Américas.

Greg Smith, associate director of research at the Pew Research Center, presented findings from the Religious Landscape Study to a group at Baptist University of the Americas. America remains “a nation of believers,” but the Millennial generation is less religious than their parents and grandparents were at the same age, and there is no guarantee they will return to organized religion, said Greg Smith, associate director at the Pew Research Center.

Smith presented findings from his organization’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study to students and faculty at BUA and to members of the Southern Baptist Research Fellowship, who invited him to address their annual meeting.

Gradually less religious

“It shows that the United States is becoming gradually and modestly—but nevertheless noticeably—less religious,” Smith said, pointing to the rise of the Nones, the segment of the population who claim no religious identity.

“There are big changes under way, but that’s only part of the story. At the same time, it’s also the case that the United States remains a nation of believers, where most people do identify with a religion, and that group is about as religiously observant as at any point in the recent past.”

From 2007 to 2014, Christians nationally declined as share of the population, from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent, with the decline most pronounced among Catholics and Mainline Protestants.

In Texas, 77 percent of the population identified as Christian in 2014, with 31 percent identifying as Evangelical Protestant, 13 percent as Mainline Protestant, 23 percent as Roman Catholic and 10 percent other Christian groups.

Religiously unaffiliated

Sign up for our weekly email newsletter.

The religiously unaffiliated segment of the adult population rose from 16.1 percent in 2007 to 22.8 percent in 2014, he noted. That means the religiously unaffiliated population in the United States increased from about 36.6 million to 55.8 million.

In Texas, the Nones increased from 12 percent of the population in 2007 to 18 percent in 2014.

“It is not the case that the Nones are not uniformly secular, but it is true that they are far less religious than those who do identify with a religion,” Smith observed.

For example, six out of 10 Nones say they believe in God, compared to 97 percent of those who identify with a religion.

Among the unaffiliated, 20 percent say they pray at least daily, and an additional 11 percent say they pray weekly. In contrast, 68 percent of Christians say they pray at least daily, and another 17 percent say they pray weekly.

“Even as the religious Nones have grown in the United States, they have become less religious over time,” he said.

Millennials less religious

The growth of the religiously unaffiliated, combined with the growing secularism of that segment of the population, means the United States is growing modestly but noticeably less religious, Smith said. And this particularly is true among the rising generation.

“Basically, what you have happening in the United States is you have older generations of Americans—people from the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers—who are really quite religious. Those folks are beginning to pass away, and as they do, they are replaced by a new generation of young American adults who are simply far less religious than their parents and grandparents,” he said, noting among Millennials, 35 percent describe themselves as not affiliated with any religion.

The number of Nones who say religion is not important to them increased by about 15 million from 2007 to 2014, while the number of highly religiously observant Americans held steady in that period, he reported.

Statistically, Nones are more likely to be male than female; far more socially and politically liberal than the population as a whole; and most likely to be white, he noted.

Religious institutions seen as forces for good

At the same time, the data reveals religious institutions are widely viewed among Americans as forces for social good—and that holds true even among Nones, Smith said.

However, about half of American adults think religious institutions are too concerned about money and power, too focused on rules or too involved in politics.

“These negative views of religious institutions are especially pronounced among people who don’t identify with any faith,” Smith said. “This is where the reservations Nones have about religious organizations come into play.”

Most not hostile to religion

Still, he noted, atheists account for only 3.1 percent of the U.S. adult population, and the growth of the religiously unaffiliated does not equate to a growth in atheism.

“Most religious Nones are not hostile in any way to religion,” Smith said.

However, that does not mean Millennial Nones automatically will rejoin the churches of their childhood when they settle down and are ready to start families, he insisted. While some measures of religious observance—such as frequent prayer—increase as people age, the tendency to affiliate with a religion does not.

“When generations come of age, they come of age with less religious attachment than the generations that preceded them,” Smith said, noting statistics dating as far back as the 1960s.

“It’s not just that Millennials are less religious than their parents; it’s that they are less religious than their parents and grandparents ever were, even when they were young adults,” he said.

“People do become more religious as they get older, but I think it’s a mistake to assume they will come back to religious organizations or pick up their religious identity.”

‘Just gradually drifted away’

Some Nones who were raised in religious homes point to specific causes—loss of belief, hypocrisy in religious communities or sexual abuse by clergy, he noted.

“But the No. 1 reason people cited? ‘I just gradually drifted away,’” he said. “It’s not even a conscious decision. It’s not as if there is some single precipitating event. It’s a gradual process of drifting away, driven presumably by lack of connection, relevance or roots.”