Religion Continues to Decline in America

Pew Research has released its latest survey of religion in America, and it comes as no surprise that organized religion continues to shrink. Here’s the decline in a nutshell:

There’s something worth noting here: although the number of “religiously unaffiliated” has increased from 16 percent to 26 percent over the past decade, the number identifying as atheist has barely budged, increasing only two percentage points. What this says is that although a quarter of the population is nonreligious, very few of them are aggressive about it. Those of us willing to flatly own up to being atheists make up a tiny, tiny minority.

In other words, feel free to mock religion with your flying spaghetti monster stuff, but don’t act all surprised when most Americans take offense and feel reluctant to vote for your candidates. You know what you’re doing.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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