It looks like the U.S. is running along a similar trend to the U.K. (and I'd guess many other countries, but I'm from the U.K.). Church attendance falls, follo

It looks like the U.S. is running along a similar trend to the U.K. (and I'd guess many other countries, but I'm from the U.K.). Church attendance falls, followed by membership, followed by people considering themselves "religious". One of the tricky things in the UK over the last 3 censuses has been accurately capturing this, so that government funding and policy can be best targeted. People think "I celebrate Christmas so I'm a Christian", while never attending church, not identifying with any particular type of Christianity, not being able to talk about the content of the Bible even in a very general sense, and only generally thinking that there's probably some sort of god or something, and hopefully an afterlife. This was so ingrained that the British Humanist Association (I believe humanism in the US is very different, here it's a secular belief system) had a big campaign during the previous census (2011) titled "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so!". Despite not going to church or really taking part in any organised religion, people really don't want to be non-religious. I think we could better recognise this sort of generic "spiritualism".