Recent polling suggests that the decline in religious affiliation in the US has stagnated. Will that trend reverse in the coming years? Resolves based on:
Poll: Gallup--What is your religious preference — are you Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, another religion or no religion? (see https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx)
Criteria: If the average Christian affiliation from 2026 through 2031, rounded to the nearest whole number, is larger than the average Christian affiliation from 2021 through 2025, then the market resolves YES. Otherwise, it resolves NO. The average from 2021 - 2025 is 66%.
Christian affiliation: The sum of the Protestant, Christian (nonspecific), and Catholic categories.
-All Nicene Christian groups, those that hold to the Nicene creed, are included, so if Gallup adds another category in the future (e.g., Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, etc.), they will be counted. Non-Nicene groups, like Mormons, are not counted.
Resolution occurs after the final polling data (from 2030) is published by Gallup. Resolves N/A if the poll is discontinued or at least one year is skipped.
1,000This isn't specifically over the next 5 years, but this lecture by Eric Kaufmann is worth listening to. He predicts that religious fundamentalists will demographically dominate the future due to their high fertility rates.
@AdamSpence didn’t watch the video, but I disagree with the premise. Christian fertility rates are higher but not high enough to make a big dent in demographics like it is with Orthodox Jews in Israel.
Mainstream Christians do not tend to isolate from society like the Amish or Ultra-Orthodox Jews do, and as a result even those who grow up with religious parents get absorbed into the secular fold at pretty high rates.
The Christian fertility hypothesis also seems to straightforwardly fail in countries like Sweden where only 15% claim to believe in Jesus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_Sweden Just by observing countries that have started the secularism process ahead of us, it’s clear that the process ends in the death of religion. The hypothesized fertility u-shape has never happened before in the context of Christianity.