Many intellectuals insist that a worldwide triumph of secularization is inevitable, and they applaud whatever is interpreted as a sign of religious decline. Religious believers, meanwhile, lament these same signs. The crucial point is that both sides accept the premise that the world is becoming more secular.

Well, they are both wrong.

The world is not merely as religious as it used to be. In important ways, it is much more intensely religious than ever before. Around the globe, four out of every five people claim to belong to an organized faith, and many of the rest say they attend worship services. In Latin America, Pentecostal Protestant churches have converted tens of millions, and Catholics are going to Mass in unprecedented numbers. There are more churchgoing Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else on earth, and China may soon become home of the most Christians. Meanwhile, Islam enjoys far higher levels of member commitment than it has for many centuries, and the same is true for Hinduism.

Despite all this, the media regularly report new “proofs” of the rapid decline of religion in America and abroad. In May, the Pew Research Center released its latest Religious Landscape Survey. Pew’s director of religion, Alan Cooperman, summed it up by saying, “The country is becoming less religious as a whole, and it’s happening across the board.” Pew followed up with another survey in November, trumpeting its findings with the headline “U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious.”

But, despite these confident proclamations about the decline of religion, Pew’s findings were certainly misleading and probably wrong, for reasons you’ll soon see. The decline of religion elsewhere is merely wishful thinking and entirely at odds with reliable data.

Read the article “3 Myths About “Irreligious” America, Busted” on intercollegiatereview.com.