Essay Example on Religion in the News Report

The United States is made up of a wide variety of religious beliefs and practices. This wide variety of religious groups and denominations is brought about by the broad range of racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. Most of the United States citizens assert that religion plays a very vital role in the day to day lives. Christianity makes up a majority of the U.S. citizens taking up about 70.6% of the adult population while the other religions which include Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism make up about 6% of the population (Albanese 2012). In the Christian population, about 46.5% are Protestants while about 20.8% are Catholic believers.

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Our study will focus on an article that appeared in The Independent on September 7th, 2017 and it was published by Rachel Zoll. The title of the article is White Christians now a minority among US population, study finds. According to the article, the Christian population in the U.S. remains the largest at about 70%. However, the white Christians who were once the largest group in the country now make up about 43% of the population. This is a massive drop due to the fact that four decades ago, out of every 10 Americans 8 were white Christians. The white evangelical Christian population has also dropped from 23% to 175 in one decade. The decrease has also affected the largest Protestant group in the US, the Southern Baptist Convention, with the group currently at 15.2 million which is their lowest since 1990. In the Catholic denomination, the white Catholics have reduced from 87% to about 55% in a span of 25 years. The study also found out that the white Christians minority has also affected the Democratic Party with their population reducing from 50% to 29%. This survey was undertaken with over 100,000 people and it allows a margin of error of 0.4%.

It is crucial for Christians to note this change in their population. The United States has been built on a Christian foundation, and the decrease in the numbers of white Christians will affect some things. During the campaign of the current U.S. president Donald Trump, he promised to defend the religious liberty of Christians, and this gave him over 80% of the votes of the white evangelicals (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2014). These white Christians form one of the strongest supporters of President Trump, and their decrease will affect the politics of the United States. This decline is numbers is also leading to anxiety regarding the place of Christians in the society. The drop has been met with an increase in the number of Americans who do not identify with any religion. There has also been an increase in support of gay marriages in the country.

It is very surprising to note the composition of Christians in the United States political parties. The article highlights that the Republican population is made up of three quarters who identify as white Christians and a third state that they are white evangelicals. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is made up of 29% white Christians although the number has reduced from the previous 50% (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2014). In the Democratic Party, we have another 40% who claim they have no religious affiliations.

Even with the decrease in white Christians, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world with about 31% of total world population. There should be no cause for alarm if people change religions because there is freedom of worship. However, we should be worried if the numbers of the atheists and those who are not affiliated with any religion are on the rise.

Works cited

Albanese, Catherine L. America: Religions and religion. Cengage Learning, 2012.

Wald, Kenneth D., and Allison Calhoun-Brown. Religion and politics in the United States. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.