It Turns Out Millennials Are The Least Religious Generation In The US

A new poll from Pew Research Center suggests Americans, particularly Millennials, are becoming less religious.

Pew surveyed 35,000 adults and found Americans are praying and attending religious services or churches less frequently, and fewer Americans say they believe in God.

With that said, there wasn't a massive drop in terms of the overall percentage of Americans who identify as religious compared with recent years.

The percentage of Americans who say they are "absolutely certain" God exists dropped from 71 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2014. Concurrently, the percentage of adults who say they are religiously affiliated only dropped from 83 percent in 2007 to 77 percent in 2014.

But the findings are still significant, especially from a generational standpoint.

For example, Pew found only around a quarter of Millennials attend churches or religious services on a weekly basis compared to 51 percent of the Silent Generation (born 1928-1945).

And only around half of all Millennials say they believe in God with "absolute certainty," compared to 71 percent of the Silent Generation.

Indeed, Millennials are far less religious than their elders. Moreover, Pew found the oldest Millennials are generally less religious than they were several years ago.

All of this suggests Millennials are not only currently less religious than older generations but will become increasingly less religious in the years to come.

This could have a drastic impact on the political and social makeup of the United States.

Pew found, for example, among Democrats, the percentage of those without any religious affiliation (28 percent) is much larger than the percentage of any specific religious group (the next largest group is Catholics at 21 percent). Comparatively, Evangelical Christians are the largest religious group among Republicans.

This comes as no surprise when one takes a look at the respective stances of each party on controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Additionally, this helps explain why most (but not all) Millennials tend to identify as Democrats more so than any other generation.

Millennials are the largest and most diverse generation in US history and will have a huge impact on the direction of this nation in the coming years.

We can't predict the future, but if these trends continue it seems we'll see the US evolve into a country increasingly Democratic and less religious overall.

Citations: US Public Becoming Less Religious (Pew Research Center), A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation (Pew Research Center)