Will anyone be happy with a post-religious America?

A cross.
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Post-religious America is growing up. That's the bottom line of a new survey by Deseret News and Marist Poll. Researchers saw declines in religious practice in most demographic groups, but generational differences were especially stark.

According to the report, Americans "60 or older (43 percent) are more likely than their younger counterparts to attend religious services at least weekly." By contrast, just "21 percent of those 18-29, 25 percent of those 30-44, and 27 percent of those 45-59 attend religious services at least weekly." That likely inflates real numbers, since "desirability bias" encourages respondents to report their aspirations rather than their actual practices.

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Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.