Ryan Burge

But as times have changed and the nuns have continued to rise, it used to be you didn't want to say you were an atheist.

There was a lot of stigma against it.

God didn't like it, too, right?

People were nervous.

And America didn't like it.

You know, because think about in the 50s and 60s, 70s, we had the Cold War.

We were fighting against communism, which was atheistic.

Right.

So there was sort of a stigma that we could not get over.

And now over the last 30 years, that stigma went away.

And more and more people, I think, were actually being honest when they took.

surveys and saying they were non-religious.

But once you scoop off all that loose topsoil, those marginally attached people, you get closer and closer to bedrock.

And I think what we've realized is there's a core of religiosity in America.

I mean, I just don't see a future in America where the share of Americans who are non-religious rises above 50 percent.

I mean, there's just nothing in the data that says that.

When if you would ask me, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, I would have said numbers keep going up and that's not happening now.

So we think about religion with three components, behavior, belief, and belonging.

So behavior is like we taught church attendance.

That's actually following the fastest of all of them.