While the number of Americans who celebrate Christmas as a cultural holiday is going strong, there has been a shocking rise in the number of people ditching Christianity — what sociologists call “nonverts.”
Pew Research Center estimates that Christians will be a minority of Americans by 2070 if current trends continue.
And it likely will, with the largest percentage of those losing their religion being young adults who are about as old as that REM reference: people around 30 and under.
It’s a kind of “cultural whiplash” from religion to secularism that’s hit the United States much faster than it has other parts of the world, said theology and sociology professor Stephen Bullivant.