What Is Atheism in America? Understanding the Landscape in 2026
Atheism — broadly defined as the absence of belief in gods or supernatural deities — has been one of the most consistently misrepresented categories in American public life for decades. In casual conversation, “atheist” often functions as a catch-all term for anyone who does not practice religion, but the research data tells a more precise and more interesting story. Surveys by the Pew Research Center, Gallup, and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) consistently find that self-identified atheists — people who explicitly state they do not believe in God — represent only a portion of the much larger population of religiously unaffiliated Americans, commonly known as the “Nones.” This broader Nones category encompasses three distinct subgroups: self-identified atheists, self-identified agnostics, and the largest group by far — people who describe their religion as “nothing in particular.” Together, these three groups accounted for 28% of US adults in 2024, according to Pew’s landmark 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study published in February 2025 — making the religiously unaffiliated the single largest group in the United States, larger than Catholics (19%), evangelical Protestants (23%), or any other religious denomination. The word “atheist” itself is etymologically straightforward — from the ancient Greek atheos, meaning “without god” — but its political and social valence in America has historically been so charged that many people who functionally hold atheistic beliefs choose to identify as agnostic, spiritual-but-not-religious, or simply “nothing in particular” rather than accept the label.
The 2026 landscape for atheism and nonreligion in America is defined by a striking duality: the raw numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans have reached a historic high and stabilised at that plateau, while the pace of growth that defined the previous two decades appears to have levelled off. Pew’s most recent data, published in December 2025, explicitly finds that religion in America has “held steady” since approximately 2020 — meaning the dramatic secularisation trend that saw the Nones grow from 16% in 2007 to 28% by 2019 has not continued at the same rate. Self-identified atheists specifically hold at approximately 4–7% of US adults, depending on survey methodology and question wording — a range that translates to somewhere between 10 million and 23 million Americans who explicitly claim the atheist label. The broader population of people who functionally do not believe in God — including those who say they are “not sure” or who believe in a vague higher power but not a personal god — is substantially larger, with Gallup finding that 17% of Americans answered “No” when asked the binary question “Do you believe in God?” in 2022. All of these numbers are documented in full detail below.
Interesting Key Facts About Atheism in the US 2026
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Self-identified atheists (2023 Pew) | 4% of US adults — Pew Research Center 2023 survey |
| Self-identified atheists (2023 PRRI) | 5% of US adults — Public Religion Research Institute |
| Atheist range across surveys | 4–7% of US adults — depending on methodology and question wording |
| Self-identified agnostics (2023 Pew) | 5% of US adults |
| Self-identified agnostics (2023 PRRI) | 5% of US adults |
| Total “Nones” (2024 Pew RLS) | 28% of US adults — largest single group in the US |
| “Nones” growth: 2007 → 2024 | From 16% to 28% — near-doubling over 17 years |
| Gallup “No religion” growth | From 2% in 1948 to 22% in 2023 — Gallup long-term data |
| Trend since 2020 | Growth has levelled off — Pew surveys find consistent 28–29% since 2019 |
| Gallup binary question (2022) | 17% of Americans answered “No” to “Do you believe in God?” |
| Gallup “Do not believe in God” (2023) | 12% — answered “do not believe in” God (different wording) |
| Gallup “Not sure about God” (2023) | 14% — answered “not sure about” existence of God |
| Gallup: “Is religion important?” (2025) | 49% say yes — down from 66% in 2015 |
| Gen Z Christian share | Only 45% of Gen Z identify as Christian — Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| All generations: US Christian share | 62% of all US adults — down from 78% in 2007 — Pew |
| Gen Z attending church regularly | Only 15% of Gen Z attend church regularly — Pew (2021) |
| Baby Boomers weekly church (1980s) | 55% attended weekly in the 1980s — Pew |
| Atheists’ political lean | 69% identify as Democrat or lean Democratic — Pew 2014 survey |
| Atheists who are liberal | 56% self-describe as politically liberal — Pew |
| Atheists who believe in a higher power | 23% — Pew 2023 |
| Atheists who believe in a spirit or soul | 31% — Pew 2024 |
| “Nones” who believe in God | More than half of “Nones” believe in God or a higher power — Pew 2024 |
| Raised religious but left | 71% of currently unaffiliated Americans were raised in a formal religious tradition — American Survey Center |
| Gen Z raised nonreligious | 43% of currently unaffiliated Gen Zers were raised in nonreligious households — American Survey Center |
| Baby Boomers raised nonreligious | Only 16% of unaffiliated Boomers were raised nonreligious — American Survey Center |
| Left religion before age 18 | 57% of those who no longer identify with their childhood religion left before age 18 — American Survey Center |
| Religious switching: Christianity’s net | For every 6 who leave Christianity, only 1 joins — Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Adults who’ve switched religions | 35% of US adults have switched religions since childhood — Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Global “convinced atheists” growth | From 6% in 2005 to 10% globally in 2024 — Gallup International |
| Global religiously unaffiliated growth | From 1.6 billion to 1.9 billion (2010–2020, +17%) — Pew global study, June 2025 |
| Americans less likely to vote for atheist candidate | 53% in 2014 said they’d be less likely — Pew |
| First openly atheist member of Congress | Pete Stark — California, January 2007 |
| First openly non-theist Congresswoman | Kyrsten Sinema — Arizona, January 2013 |
| Atheists’ education level | Atheists and agnostics have more education than religiously affiliated Americans — Pew |
| “Nothing in particular” education level | Lower educational attainment than religiously affiliated Americans — Pew |
| 2018 indirect-method study | One 2018 research paper estimated 26% of Americans are atheists using indirect methods — widely contested |
| Under-reporting of atheism | Surveys consistently under-report; many non-believers self-identify as “nothing in particular” or even Christian — Pew 2007 finding |
| Nones as % of Democratic voters | Unaffiliated have risen from 17% to 24% of all registered voters who are Democrat or lean Democrat — Pew |
Source: Pew Research Center — 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study (published February 26, 2025); Pew Research Center — Religion Holds Steady in America (December 2025); Pew Research Center — Religious Nones in America (January 2024); PRRI — 2023 Census of American Religion; Gallup — How Religious Are Americans? (2023–2025 data); Wikipedia — Atheism in the United States; Wikipedia — Irreligion in the United States; American Survey Center — Generation Z and the Future of Faith (2025); Dallas Express citing Gallup International (November 2025); NPR (January 2024); CBS News (January 2024)
The facts above reveal a portrait of American atheism that is simultaneously more widespread and more varied than either its critics or its advocates typically acknowledge. The 28% “None” figure that Pew confirmed in 2024 is a number that would have seemed improbable to a sociologist studying American religion in 1990, when only 8% of Americans claimed no religious affiliation. That three-and-a-half-fold growth in 34 years represents one of the most significant cultural transformations in American social history. Yet the same data also reveals the complexity underneath the headline number: of that 28%, only about 17% describe themselves as atheist, 20% as agnostic, and 63% as “nothing in particular.” The “nothing in particular” majority within the Nones do not fit neatly into any ideological category — more than half of all Nones believe in God or a higher power, and many pray regularly. The 2024 Pew finding that 31% of self-described atheists believe in a spirit or soul is perhaps the most striking single fact in this entire dataset: it tells you that the category boundaries between atheism, agnosticism, spirituality, and religion in America are porous in ways that questionnaire checkboxes cannot fully capture.
Atheism & “Nones” Growth Statistics 2007–2026 | The Long-Term Trend
US Religiously Unaffiliated ("Nones") — Historical Growth Trend
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Year Nones % Source Notes
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1948 2% Gallup Post-WWII America; very low
1970s ~10% Gallup/GSS First meaningful uptick
1990 8% GSS Still low single digits
2000 14% GSS Acceleration begins
2007 16% Pew RLS First major Pew Landscape Study
2012 19.6% Pew Nearly 1 in 5 Americans
2014 22.8% Pew RLS Second landscape study
2017 24% PRRI American Values Atlas
2019 26% Pew Growth continuing
2021 28% GSS (mode shift) Post-COVID; higher with online survey
2022 27% GSS Consistent with 28% range
2023 22% Gallup Different question wording
2024 28% Pew RLS 2023–24 Confirmed; growth levelled since 2019
2025 28–29% Pew NPORS Holding steady
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Self-identified ATHEISTS specifically:
1991: 2% | 2007: 1.6% | 2011: 2% | 2014: 3.1%
2021: 4% | 2023: 4–5% | 2024: ~4–7% (survey-dependent)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| Year | Nones % of US Adults | Atheist % Specifically | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 | 2% (Gallup “no religion”) | — | Gallup |
| 1990 | 8% | — | General Social Survey (GSS) |
| 2000 | 14% | — | GSS |
| 2007 | 16% | 1.6% | Pew Research Center RLS 2007 |
| 2011 | — | 2% | Pew |
| 2012 | 19.6% | 2.4% | Pew |
| 2014 | 22.8% | 3.1% | Pew RLS 2014 |
| 2017 | 24% | — | PRRI American Values Atlas |
| 2019 | 26% | 4% | Pew |
| 2021 | 28% (GSS) | 4% | Pew NPORS; GSS |
| 2022 | 27% (GSS); 31% (Pew NPORS) | — | Multiple |
| 2023 | 28% (Pew); 22% (Gallup) | 4% (Pew); 5% (PRRI) | Pew; PRRI; Gallup |
| 2024 | 28% | ~4–7% (survey-dependent) | Pew RLS 2023–24 (Feb 2025) |
| 2025 | ~28–29% | — | Pew NPORS (Dec 2025) |
Source: Pew Research Center — 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study (February 2025); Pew Research Center — Appendix C, Comparing Religion Trends (January 2025); Pew — Religion Holds Steady in America (December 8, 2025); Gallup — How Religious Are Americans?; General Social Survey (GSS) 2022, 2024; PRRI 2023 Census of American Religion; Wikipedia — Irreligion in the United States
The growth trajectory of American irreligion from 2% in 1948 to 28% in 2024 is one of the most dramatic secular shifts ever documented in a wealthy democracy. Two things stand out in the historical data. First, the growth was not linear — it was slow and steady from the 1950s through the 1990s, then sharply accelerated between 2000 and 2019 as the internet era coincided with political polarisation around religion, giving people both more access to secular communities and more social permission to disaffiliate publicly. Second, the post-2019 plateau documented by Pew’s December 2025 “Religion Holds Steady” report is genuinely significant: it suggests the secularisation wave may have reached a natural equilibrium rather than continuing to accelerate toward European-style irreligion levels. The specific data on self-identified atheists — growing from 2% in 1991 to 4–5% in 2023 — shows more modest growth than the overall Nones figure because the cultural and social costs of accepting the atheist label remain higher than simply describing oneself as having “no religion.” Many people who functionally hold atheistic beliefs choose the less charged identity categories of agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
Atheism Demographics in the US 2026 | Age, Gender, Race & Education
Demographic Profile of Self-Identified Atheists/Agnostics — US (Pew 2023–24)
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Gender:
Men more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic
Women more likely to say "nothing in particular"
Overall Nones: roughly even by gender on surface
— but deep split within Nones by gender
Race/Ethnicity (Pew 2023–24 RLS):
Atheists and agnostics: skew significantly WHITE
"Nothing in particular": more likely BLACK, HISPANIC, ASIAN
— racial composition differs sharply within Nones subgroups
Education:
Atheists + Agnostics: MORE educated than religiously affiliated
"Nothing in particular": LESS educated than religiously affiliated
Generation (Christian share by generation, Pew 2023–24):
Silent/Greatest Gen: 75–80%+ Christian
Baby Boomers: 72%+ Christian
Gen X: ~70%+ Christian
Millennials: ~53% Christian
Gen Z: 45% Christian → 55% are non-Christian or Nones
Church attendance by generation (Pew/Barna):
Baby Boomers (1980s): 55% weekly
Millennials: ~38% weekly (Barna 2022)
Gen Z: 15% regularly (Pew 2021)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| Demographic Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Gender — atheists/agnostics | Men significantly more likely to identify as atheist or agnostic | Pew 2023–24 RLS; NPR |
| Gender — “nothing in particular” | Women more likely to describe religion as “nothing in particular” | Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Race — atheists/agnostics | Skew significantly white | Pew 2023–24; NPR |
| Race — “nothing in particular” | More likely to be Black, Hispanic, or Asian | Pew 2023–24 RLS; NPR |
| Education — atheists/agnostics | More educated than religiously affiliated Americans on average | Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Education — “nothing in particular” | Less educated than religiously affiliated Americans | Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Gen Z Christian share | 45% identify as Christian — Pew 2023–24 RLS | Down from 55% in 2014 survey |
| Millennial Christian share | ~53% | Pew 2023–24; CNS Maryland |
| Gen X Christian share | ~70%+ | Pew 2023–24 |
| Baby Boomer Christian share | ~72%+ | Pew 2023–24 |
| Gen Z weekly church attendance | 15% — Pew (2021) | Down from 55% of Boomers in the 1980s |
| Millennial weekly church attendance | ~38% — Barna (2022); up from 21% in 2019 | Barna notes possible Millennial re-engagement |
| Millennials who consider church important | 16% | Barna (2022) |
| Baby Boomers who consider church important | 35% | Barna (2022) |
| Gen Z who are unaffiliated and raised nonreligious | 43% — most distinctive generational feature | American Survey Center |
| Millennials who are unaffiliated and raised nonreligious | 36% | American Survey Center |
| Baby Boomers unaffiliated but raised nonreligious | 16% — majority were raised religious and left | American Survey Center |
| Gen Z — spirituality rate | 65% describe themselves as spiritual | CNS Maryland / Pew |
| Millennials — spirituality rate | Over 70% | CNS Maryland |
| Gen X and older — spirituality rate | ~80% | CNS Maryland |
| Left religion before age 18 | 57% of those who disaffiliated did so before 18 — not in college | American Survey Center |
| Disaffiliation rate (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X) | ~19%, 18%, 19% respectively — very similar rates | American Survey Center |
| Disaffiliation rate — Silent Generation | Only 9% — much lower than younger cohorts | American Survey Center |
Source: Pew Research Center 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study (February 2025); NPR — Religious Nones Now Largest Single Group (January 2024); CBS News (January 2024); American Survey Center — Generation Z and the Future of Faith (2025); CNS Maryland (March 2025); Barna Research (2022) cited in Vanco Payments (April 2025)
The demographic breakdown of American atheism and irreligion cuts across several commonly held assumptions. The finding that men are significantly more likely than women to claim the atheist or agnostic label — while women are more likely to say “nothing in particular” — reflects broader patterns of how the two groups relate to institutional identity and social labelling, not necessarily differences in underlying belief. The racial composition split within the Nones is perhaps even more striking: the subgroup that has the most cultural visibility — self-identified atheists and agnostics — skews heavily white, while the much larger “nothing in particular” group is more racially diverse. This means that media representations of irreligion, which tend to centre the atheist and agnostic label, can give a misleading impression of who the religiously unaffiliated actually are as a whole population. The Gen Z data is the most consequential for long-term forecasting: not only are only 45% of Gen Z identifying as Christian — the lowest of any generation ever recorded — but 43% of currently unaffiliated Gen Zers were raised in non-religious households, compared to just 16% of Baby Boomers. This “stickiness of a nonreligious upbringing,” as Pew described it in their 2025 RLS, means that secularism is beginning to reproduce itself generationally rather than relying solely on adults choosing to leave the religions of their upbringing.
Atheism & Belief in God Statistics 2022–2025 | What Americans Actually Believe
Do Americans Believe in God? — Key Survey Data 2022–2025
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Gallup (2022) — binary question "Do you believe in God?":
Yes: 81%
No: 17%
No opinion: 2%
Gallup (2023) — different wording (3 options):
"Believe in" God: 74%
"Do not believe in" God: 12%
"Not sure about" God: 14%
Gallup: "Is religion important in your life?" (2025):
Yes: 49% ← DOWN from 66% in 2015
No: 51%
Pew (2023): Of self-described atheists:
Believe in higher power (not a god): 23%
Believe in a spirit or soul: 31% (2024)
Pew (2024): Of all "Nones":
More than HALF believe in God or a higher power
Very few attend religious services regularly
Most say religion does SOME harm AND some good
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| Belief Metric | Figure | Source / Year |
|---|---|---|
| Gallup binary “Yes, I believe in God” (2022) | 81% | Gallup 2022 |
| Gallup binary “No, I don’t believe in God” (2022) | 17% | Gallup 2022 |
| Gallup “Believe in God” (2023, 3-option wording) | 74% | Gallup 2023 |
| Gallup “Do not believe in God” (2023) | 12% | Gallup 2023 |
| Gallup “Not sure about God’s existence” (2023) | 14% | Gallup 2023 |
| Gallup “Is religion important?” (2015) | 66% | Gallup |
| Gallup “Is religion important?” (2025) | 49% | Gallup — cited December 2025 |
| Decline in “religion is important” (2015–2025) | –17 percentage points | Gallup |
| Pew: atheists who believe in higher power | 23% | Pew 2023 |
| Pew: atheists who believe in spirit/soul | 31% | Pew 2024 |
| Pew: “Nones” who believe in God or higher power | More than half (50%+) | Pew 2024 |
| Pew: “Nones” who attend religious services regularly | Very few | Pew 2024 |
| Pew (2005): US adults believed in God with certainty | 71% | Pew historical |
| Pew (2024): US adults who pray daily | Varies by cohort; 1950s-born: ~53–57% | Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Pew: “Nones” using logic/reason for moral decisions | Majority | Pew 2024 — vs religiously affiliated using scripture |
| Pew: “Nones” who say religion does harm | Majority say it does SOME harm | Pew 2024 |
| Pew: “Nones” who say religion does some good | Many — not uniformly anti-religious | Pew 2024 |
| Pew: “Nones” who reject idea science explains everything | Majority | Pew 2024 |
| Pew: “Nones” who have more positive views of science | More positive than religiously affiliated | Pew 2024 |
| Gen Z: spiritual but not religious | 65% describe themselves as spiritual | CNS Maryland (Pew data) |
| Gen Z: attend church regularly | Only 15% | Pew 2021 |
Source: Gallup — How Religious Are Americans? (2022–2025); Pew Research Center — Religious Nones in America (January 2024); Pew Research Center — 2023–24 RLS (February 2025); Pew Research Center — Religion Holds Steady in America (December 2025); CNS Maryland (March 2025); factually.co citing Gallup (November 2025)
The belief-in-God data is where the distance between “atheist label” and “functional atheism” becomes most visible. Gallup’s 2022 binary question found 17% saying they don’t believe in God — but when the same pollster used a three-option question in 2023, only 12% said “do not believe in God” with another 14% saying “not sure.” This is not pollster inconsistency — it is the inherent ambiguity of belief itself, where many people occupy positions of uncertainty that do not fit neatly into binary categories. The 31% of self-described atheists who told Pew in 2024 that they believe in a spirit or soul is probably the most counterintuitive data point in modern American religious research — it tells you that the atheist label, even when consciously adopted, does not always correspond to the thoroughgoing naturalistic materialism that its philosophical definition implies. Meanwhile, the Gallup finding that “religion is important” has dropped from 66% to 49% between 2015 and 2025 is arguably more socially significant than any change in the atheist headcount: it means that Americans who nominally claim a religious affiliation are increasingly treating religion as personally unimportant — a soft secularisation that changes daily life without changing a person’s survey response to “what is your religion?”
Political & Social Views of Atheists in the US 2026
Political Profile of US Atheists & Agnostics (Pew Survey Data)
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Party identification:
Democratic or lean Democratic: 69%
No lean: 17%
Republican or lean Republican: 15%
Political ideology:
Liberal: 56%
Moderate: 29%
Conservative: 10%
Don't know: 5%
Policy views (Pew survey data):
Support legal abortion: 72% of "Nones"
Support same-sex marriage: 73% of "Nones"
Registered voter composition (Pew trend):
Nones as share of Dem/lean-Dem voters: 17% (early 2010s) → 24% now
Civic engagement (Pew 2024):
Atheists and agnostics: civic engagement EQUALS or EXCEEDS
religiously affiliated Americans
"Nothing in particular" Nones: LOWER civic engagement, voting rates
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2014 Pew: 53% of Americans said they'd be less likely
to vote for an atheist presidential candidate
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| Political / Social Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Atheists: Democrat or lean Democrat | 69% | Pew 2014 survey — most recent detailed data |
| Atheists: No partisan lean | 17% | Pew 2014 |
| Atheists: Republican or lean Republican | 15% | Pew 2014 |
| Atheists: self-described liberals | 56% | Pew |
| Atheists: self-described moderates | 29% | Pew |
| Atheists: self-described conservatives | 10% | Pew |
| All “Nones” — Democrat or lean Democrat | 63% registered voters who are Dem or lean Dem | Pew |
| Nones’ share of Democratic electorate (early 2010s) | 17% | Pew |
| Nones’ share of Democratic electorate (current) | 24% | Pew — cited in Wikipedia |
| Nones: support legal abortion | 72% | Pew |
| Nones: support same-sex marriage | 73% | Pew |
| Americans who’d be less likely to vote for atheist candidate | 53% | Pew 2014 |
| Civic engagement — atheists/agnostics | Equals or exceeds religiously affiliated Americans | Pew 2024 |
| Civic engagement — “nothing in particular” Nones | Lower — less likely to vote, volunteer, follow public affairs | Pew 2024 |
| Atheists voting for Obama (Pew exit poll) | 70% of religiously unaffiliated voted for Obama | Pew exit poll |
| First openly atheist in Congress | Pete Stark — California — January 2007 | Wikipedia |
| First openly non-theist Congresswoman | Kyrsten Sinema — Arizona — January 2013 | Wikipedia |
| Nones’ satisfaction with community/social life | Less satisfied than religiously affiliated people | Pew 2024 |
| Nones: moral guidance source | Logic and reason — and desire to avoid hurting others | Pew 2024 |
Source: Pew Research Center — Atheism in the United States (Wikipedia); Pew Research Center — Religious Nones in America (January 2024); Wikipedia — Irreligion in the United States; CBS News (January 2024); NPR (January 2024)
The political profile of American atheists is among the most lopsided of any demographic group in the country. The 69% Democrat or lean-Democrat figure and the 56% who self-describe as liberal make atheists and agnostics one of the most reliably left-leaning constituencies in the US electorate. That political alignment has deepened over time as religious identity has become more intertwined with conservative politics and as the Democratic Party’s cultural profile has moved in a direction that is more comfortable with nonreligion. The growth of Nones from 17% to 24% of the Democratic electorate is a structural shift that increasingly shapes that party’s platform positions, particularly on issues like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights where Nones hold especially progressive views. The civic engagement finding is often overlooked but important for understanding the real-world political impact of different types of nonbelief: self-identified atheists and agnostics actually participate in democracy at rates matching or exceeding the religiously affiliated, while the much larger “nothing in particular” subgroup participates at noticeably lower rates. This means that the political influence of explicit atheism is disproportionately large relative to its raw population share, because those who claim the label are also the most likely to actually vote and volunteer.
US Atheism in Regional & Global Context 2026
US Atheism in Global Context — Key Comparisons (2024–2026)
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Global "convinced atheists" by region (Gallup International 2024):
Northeast Asia: 35% (highest globally)
Western Europe: ~14%
Global average: 10%
United States: ~4–7% (self-identified; below global avg)
Global religiously unaffiliated (2020, Pew):
Total: 1.9 billion people (24% of world population)
Growth 2010–2020: +17% (+300 million people)
Net gain: Largest of any major religious "group"
US comparison to Western Europe:
US "Nones": 28% (2024)
France: ~40%+ nonreligious
UK: ~37% nonreligious
Sweden: 60%+ nonreligious
Germany: ~35%+ nonreligious
US Gallup "No religion" trend:
1948: 2% → 2023: 22% (Gallup)
Pew: 2007: 16% → 2024: 28%
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By US region (general trend):
Most secular: Pacific Northwest, New England, Mountain West
Least secular: Deep South ("Bible Belt"), rural Midwest
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| Regional / Global Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Global “convinced atheists” (2024) | 10% — up from 6% in 2005 | Gallup International 2024 via Dallas Express (November 2025) |
| Northeast Asia convinced atheists | 35% — highest globally | Gallup International 2024 |
| Western Europe convinced atheists | ~14% | Gallup International 2024 |
| US self-identified atheists | 4–7% — below global average of 10% | Pew; PRRI (2023) |
| Global “not religious” (2024) | 28% — up from 21% in 2005 | Gallup International 2024 |
| Global “religious” (2024) | 56% — down from 68% in 2005 | Gallup International |
| Global religiously unaffiliated total (2020) | 1.9 billion (24% of world) | Pew Global Study, June 2025 |
| Global unaffiliated growth 2010–2020 | +17% (from 1.6B to 1.9B) | Pew Global Study, June 2025 |
| Growth rate vs Islam (2010–2020) | Unaffiliated had largest net gain of any group; outpaced in net terms | Pew June 2025 |
| US “None” growth trend vs Europe | US still significantly more religious than most Western European nations | Multiple sources |
| Most secular US states (general) | Pacific Northwest, New England, Mountain West | Pew / Gallup regional data |
| Least secular US states (general) | Deep South (Bible Belt), rural Midwest, rural South | Pew / PRRI regional data |
| Rise in atheism: higher-income nations trend | Especially pronounced in wealthy nations | Gallup International 2024 |
Source: Dallas Express citing Gallup International 2024 (November 23, 2025); Pew Research Center global religious change study (June 2025); Pew Research Center 2023–24 RLS; Gallup 2023 US data; Wikipedia — Irreligion in the United States
The global context puts the American atheism numbers in revealing perspective. The US self-identified atheist rate of 4–7% sits well below the global average of 10% convinced atheists recorded by Gallup International in 2024 — and dramatically below the levels seen in Northeast Asia (35%) or Western Europe (roughly 14%). This makes the United States an outlier among wealthy democracies: by every measure of religiosity, Americans are significantly more religious than their economic peers in Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The growth in global nonreligion — from 1.6 billion to 1.9 billion unaffiliated people between 2010 and 2020, representing the largest net gain of any group including Islam — establishes that the US trend is part of a broader global secular shift, not a uniquely American phenomenon. The higher-income nations trend identified by Gallup International is particularly instructive: secularisation appears to advance alongside economic development, education, and institutional security, suggesting that the United States’ comparatively high religiosity may be partly connected to its levels of economic inequality and insecurity relative to other wealthy nations — a theory advanced by numerous sociologists of religion, including the cross-national research of Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart.
The “Nones” Breakdown & Atheism’s Internal Diversity 2026
The Three Subgroups of US "Nones" — Pew 2024 Data
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Within the 28% of US adults who are "Nones":
"Nothing in particular": 63% of Nones (~17.6% of US adults)
Agnostics: 20% of Nones (~5.6% of US adults)
Atheists: 17% of Nones (~4.8% of US adults)
Beliefs within "Nones":
Believe in God or higher power: MORE THAN HALF (50%+)
Pray daily: 21% of unaffiliated
Attend services regularly: Very few
Describe as "spiritual but not religious": 37%
Neither spiritual nor religious: 42%
Describe as "religious": 18%
Civic engagement:
Atheists/agnostics: High — matches/exceeds religiously affiliated
"Nothing in particular": Low — less voting, volunteering, civic participation
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Why they left religion (Pew 2024):
Question religious teachings / don't believe in God: 67%
Dislike religious organisations: 47%
Bad experiences with religious people: 30%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━| “Nones” Internal Profile Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| “Nothing in particular” — share of Nones | 63% | Pew 2023 |
| Agnostics — share of Nones | 20% | Pew 2023 |
| Atheists — share of Nones | 17% | Pew 2023 |
| “Nothing in particular” as % of all US adults | ~17–18% | Pew 2023–24 RLS |
| Nones who believe in God or higher power | More than 50% | Pew 2024 |
| Nones who pray daily | 21% | Pew (2012 survey cited in Wikipedia) |
| Nones who are “spiritual but not religious” | 37% | Pew |
| Nones who are “neither spiritual nor religious” | 42% | Pew |
| Nones who describe themselves as “religious” | 18% | Pew |
| Reason for leaving: question teachings / don’t believe | 67% (two-thirds of Nones) | Pew 2024 — Religious Nones in America |
| Reason for leaving: dislike religious organisations | 47% | Pew 2024 |
| Reason for leaving: bad experiences with religious people | 30% | Pew 2024 |
| Nones raised in a formal religion | 71% — majority were raised religious | American Survey Center |
| Nones who were raised Christian specifically | Majority — “raised in Christian households” | CBS News (January 2024) |
| Nones: less satisfied with community + social life | True — lower satisfaction than religiously affiliated | Pew 2024 |
| Nones: guided by logic/reason for moral decisions | Majority | Pew 2024 |
| Nones: desire to avoid hurting others as moral guide | “Huge numbers” — Pew’s Greg Smith | NPR (January 2024) |
| Nones: positive view of science | More positive than religiously affiliated | Pew 2024 |
| Nones: science can explain everything | Majority reject this — nuanced view of science | Pew 2024 |
| Nones: view religion’s declining influence as bad | Surveys consistently show many Americans agree | Pew 2024 |
Source: Pew Research Center — Religious Nones in America (January 24, 2024); Pew Research Center — 2023–24 RLS (February 2025); NPR (January 24, 2024); CBS News (January 25, 2024); American Survey Center (2025); Wikipedia — Irreligion in the United States
The internal complexity of the “Nones” is the most important analytical caveat in all of American religion research, and the data above illustrates precisely why treating the category as monolithic leads to misunderstanding. The 63% of Nones who are “nothing in particular” — representing about 17–18% of all US adults — are not the secular humanists or principled materialists that the word “atheism” typically conjures. The Pew data shows that more than half of all Nones believe in God or a higher power, 21% pray daily, and 37% describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. These are not atheists by any meaningful definition — they are people who have disconnected from institutional religion without necessarily disconnecting from spiritual belief. The 67% who say they left religion because they question religious teachings or don’t believe in God is the subgroup whose departure is most directly relevant to tracking genuine atheism growth — and it represents only two-thirds of even the Nones category. The three reasons for leaving — intellectual doubt (67%), institutional distrust (47%), and bad personal experiences (30%) — also reveal that secularisation is driven by a mix of cognitive and emotional factors, not purely by philosophical reasoning. 30% left because of bad experiences with religious people — a finding that suggests institutions’ own conduct is as powerful a factor in driving disaffiliation as any argument for or against the existence of God.
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