Special Interest Glance
Not quite 50 percent of Americans say they have no doubt about the existence of God, according to the 2022 survey, released Wednesday by NORC, the University of Chicago research organization. As recently as 2008, the share of sure-believers topped 60 percent.
Thirty-four percent of Americans never go to church, NORC found, the highest figure recorded in five decades of surveys.
Another new report, from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), said that 27 percent of Americans claimed no religion in 2022, up from 19 percent in 2012 and 16 percent in 2006.
The PRRI report tracks a historic decline in the nation’s Christian population, especially among white people. The share of Americans who identify as white evangelical Protestants has dwindled from 23 percent to 14 percent since 2006. The share of mainline white Protestants has fallen from 18 percent to 14 percent. White Catholics have declined from 16 percent of the population to 13 percent.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Friday announced she replaced her director of early childhood education over the use of a teacher training book, written by a nationally recognized education group, that the Republican governor denounced as teaching "woke concepts" because of language about inclusion and structural racism.
Joan Fleischman has always had people flying in from across the world to her private abortion practice in Manhattan. In the two decades her clinic has been open, she has seen clients from places such as Ireland, the Bahamas and Mexico, who couldn’t get abortions in their home countries. In the past year, that has changed. Since the US federal right to abortion was overturned in June last year, she is now more likely to see patients flying in from her own country.
