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Muslims Expected to Surpass Jews as Second-Largest U.S. Religious Group

Muslim Prayer

What the Pew Research Center doesn’t tell us is that non-White Muslims, with their far higher birth and fertility rates, will overtake not only Jews but Whites as well — even if all immigration was halted tomorrow.

TWO TRENDS THAT are already well underway — the decline of Christians and the growth of religiously unaffiliated people as a share of the U.S. population — are expected to continue in the decades ahead, according to the Pew Research Center’s projections of major religious groups around the world. (ILLUSTRATION: Muslims praying at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, India)

But, if current demographic trends hold, there also will be other significant changes in the U.S. religious landscape: Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion in the country and, by 2050, Muslims are projected to be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.

Due in part to their continued migration into the country, Muslims are forecast to make up 2.1% of the U.S. population in 2050, up from 0.9% in 2010. Two other major factors are driving Muslim growth: They currently have the highest fertility rate and the youngest median age of any major religious group in the U.S.

Pew GraphPeople who identify their religion as Jewish in surveys are projected to decline from an estimated 1.8% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 1.4% in 2050. The median age of U.S. Jews as of 2010 (41) was 17 years older than the median age for Muslims (24), while Jews, on average, have 1.9 children per woman compared with 2.8 for U.S. Muslims.

A 2013 Pew Research survey found that more than one-in-five U.S. Jewish adults (22%) say they are atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, but still consider themselves Jewish. For the purposes of the projections, these “cultural” or “ethnic” Jews are categorized as unaffiliated and not included in the Jewish population. If the projected Jewish numbers were expanded to include cultural or ethnic Jews, it is possible that the Jews (more broadly defined) might still outnumber Muslims in 2050.

In any case, Muslims are not the only American religious minority that is growing. Hindus, who make up another relatively young group that continues to be boosted by migration, are projected to double as a share of the U.S. population, from 0.6% in 2010 to 1.2% in 2050. Similar factors account for the modest expected rise in the share of Buddhists (from 1.2% to 1.4%).

Two other relatively small groups also are expected to grow. Members of “other religions” (a category for all those not categorized elsewhere in the projections, including Sikhs, Wiccans and Unitarian Universalists) are projected to increase from 0.6% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 1.5% in 2050, while adherents of folk religions are forecast to increase from 0.2% to 0.5%. Religious switching into these categories, observed in recent surveys, accounts for some of the increases.

Altogether, minority religious groups — that is, everyone other than Christians and the unaffiliated — are expected to grow from roughly 5% of Americans in 2010 to about 8% in 2050.

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Source: Pew Research Center

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fd
fd
22 April, 2015 9:24 pm

Beware of another Big Lie. The standard 6 million Jews who allegedly live in this country is more like 15 TO 25 million. I’d say closer 25 million Jews living in the country.

The South fought against all this forced amalgamation in the 1960s while the rest of the country slept. I told you so…

Michael R
Michael R
22 April, 2015 10:30 pm

25 million? What? I thought there’s only 14-15 million in the world?

fd
fd
23 April, 2015 1:22 pm

Harvard Encyclopedia

1977. 5.8 million Jews in America.

The Jews would have us believe that 38 years later, the Jew population has increased by only 200 thousand. The Harvard book also states that by 1977 about 300 thousand Jews left Israel and came to America. The only thing coming out of Israel is misery.

Nom De Guerre
Nom De Guerre
18 January, 2023 6:50 pm

For decades now, there has been a decline in church attendance. More Whites than before have no religious affiliation. This is good news for recruiting, because one of the biggest obstacles to that is many White people’s devotion to Christianity.
As an atheist myself, it was easy for me to agree with not only the N.A. views but also those of Cosmotheism. I was very receptive to what it stands for, and I imagine that those who claim they’re “not religious “ would be as well.