USA , the world’s second-largest number of religiously **unaffiliated** people (after China)

[Joe Knapp]

The United States, as of 2020, is the country with the world’s second-largest number of religiously unaffiliated people (after China), surpassing Japan.

The U.S. had roughly 101 million religious “nones” in 2020 (up 97% from a decade earlier), while Japan had 73 million (up 8%). However, the unaffiliated category continues to account for a much larger share of the total population in Japan – 57% of all Japanese are religiously unaffiliated – than in the U.S., where 30% identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”

In both 2010 and 2020, China had more religiously unaffiliated people than any other country. China’s 1.3 billion unaffiliated people made up 90% of its total population in 2020.⁶

Most countries still have Christian majorities

Due to disaffiliation from Christianity, there now are fewer Christian-majority countries and more countries with a religiously unaffiliated majority than there were in 2010.

As of 2020, Christians were a majority in 120 countries and territories, down from 124 a decade earlier. Christians dropped below 50% of the population in the United Kingdom (49%), Australia (47%), France (46%) and Uruguay (44%). In each of these places, religiously unaffiliated people now account for 40% or more of the population, and smaller religious groups such as Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or adherents of other religions (combined) account for 11% or less.

Over the same period, religiously unaffiliated people became a majority in the Netherlands (54%), Uruguay (52%) and New Zealand (51%), raising the number of places with an unaffiliated majority from seven to 10. (These countries joined China, North Korea, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Macao and Japan, which already had religiously unaffiliated majorities in 2010.)

There was no change in the number of places in which the majority of the population are Muslim (53), Buddhist (7), Jewish (1) or followers of other religions (1).⁷

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys, including census data releases that were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The study is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which seeks to understand global religious change and its impact on societies.