{"id":7512,"date":"2009-02-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/02\/27\/polls-reveal-the-complexity-of-america-s-changing-religious-landscape\/"},"modified":"2009-02-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T12:00:00","slug":"polls-reveal-the-complexity-of-america-s-changing-religious-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2009\/02\/27\/polls-reveal-the-complexity-of-america-s-changing-religious-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Polls Reveal The Complexity of America&#8217;s Changing Religious Landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/1690\/Religion.aspx\">www.gallup.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">KAUAI, HAWAII, USA, February 28, 2009: Heaven, angels, a malignant devil and even hell? Yes. God? Not so sure. A series of polls available at Gallup&#8217;s website (link above) reveals aspects of America&#8217;s complex spirituality. In the last 17 years, the number of people who say that religion is a &#8220;very important&#8221; part of their lives remained stable (56 to 58%), but how Americans translate that into personal beliefs is changing fast. <\/p>\n<p>Compared to the the mid-1990s, Americans today are more likely to believe in heaven (81%), hell (69%), angels (72%) and the devil (70%), but belief in God has declined &#8212; or at least when called by the name &#8220;God.&#8221; In 1999, 86% believed in God, 5% did not and 8% declared belief in a &#8220;universal spirit.&#8221; In May 2008, belief in God had dropped eight points to 78%, while those who believed in a universal spirit almost doubled and counted 15% of the population, or 45 million Americans. The number of nonbelievers remained stable.<\/p>\n<p>American faithful also maintained a trend in the decrease in the percentage of Protestants and Catholics, who lost more than 30 million adherents since 1992. &#8220;Other faiths,&#8221; including Hinduism, and &#8220;no religion&#8221; more than doubled in the same period.   <\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.gallup.com KAUAI, HAWAII, USA, February 28, 2009: Heaven, angels, a malignant devil and even hell? Yes. God? Not so sure.,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}