re: For first time, “no religion” is more common than catholic or evangelical.

Categories should be:

Bible based Christianity
SJW based pseudo Christianity
Agnostics
Atheists
Jews
Muslims
Mormons

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No, they molest wallets and the Constitution

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I’m sure you have a link showing this statistic and even if you do please tell me you don’t consider these the same injustices.

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People are finally realizing that they do not need a church to have a relationship with a higher power I think the poll is faulty. Religion is good, imo. Churches are bad.

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The "it's just me and Jesus" religion.

The unfortunate and probably unavoidable consequences of the Protestant Reformation. Throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. The Church was knocked from its fundamental biblical, theological and liturgical moorings and instead of purging itself of corrupt practices, created an environment which allowed anyone and any group with a gripe to interpret Scripture themselves and take their Bibles and start a new denomination or sect which now number in the tens of thousands.

So now, why wouldn't a person feel free to abandon the Church (I don't mean exclusively the Roman denomination), her traditions, her teachings, and corporate worship and run free to believe whatever they want to believe whether or not it has any semblance to Christianity?

Does this make sense, even in a secular context?

You physicians and attorneys out there achieved undergraduate degrees to gain entrance to medical school and law school. None of knew how to be what you've now become. You were taught, trained, rigorously, by qualified teachers who had successfully trod the paths you were on and who passed you on to other teachers, practitioners, and mentors who continued to edify and assist you to a respected and mature place within your respective professional communities.

How many recruits go to San Diego or Parris Island "knowing" how to be basically trained Marines? If they think they know, or think it's just me and whatever I imagine the Marine Corps to be, there are Drill Instructors to correct that misperception and instruct the recruit in its history, tradition, mission as well as the in basic skills necessary for the recruit to earn his emblem and graduate.

Why does anyone think that be a Christian is so much different than these examples? No one knows basic theology and core doctrines or why we worship on Sunday and what form in general that worship should follow. The Church has teachers, leaders, trainers, mentors and mature members in local fellowships (or communities, or churches) to do for Christians what other organizations do for their members. This is one reason why faithfully attending your Church is crucial and why its enemies have so effectively divided the Church into quarreling and quarrelsome denominations and why the "just me and Jesus" lie has become so effective.

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If the Church is not Making Disciples, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.
-C. S. Lewis

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One of our great allies at present is the Church itself.

Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy.

But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate.

When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.

Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew....

-Screwtape

from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters

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It coincides well with our steady downward moral plunge and our fascination with all things trans or gay.

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I blame the internet

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The trend picked up in the mid 90s when “no religion” was south of 10%. It has been at the expense mostly of mainline Protestantism.

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Removing God from schools will help lead to "no-religion".
Communists do not believe a God exists, and communist countries are a horrible place to live.
We are on the path to communism. You go to work, and your money goes to the gov't. The gov't will tell you how much you can have.
The demonic-rat party wants to turn the US into a communist country. Their goal is to take your money and spend it that way they want.

I also think Christianity, at least in the west, has gotten soft. It was said that the blood of martyrs nourished the church. There are no martyrs now. Christianity is a relaxing Sunday morning outing. Not that I want anyone to be martyred, but maybe it’s the nature of things. If something is received without effort then it will be lost without effort.

I honestly believe that the number of actual believers is the same that it always has been, if not more. But, for the first time, it’s no longer seen as a necessity in society to be religious. The millions of people that said they had a belief in something just because they felt it was required no longer have to fake it. Therefore, the “number” of Christians has declined.

In other news...laziness is at an all time high. Trust me, Id know.

I find the figure misleading. Many people take that as equal number of atheist/agnostic as their are Christian/muslim/buddhist.

Should separate atheist/agnostic from people who are non-denominational.

I very much consider myself a Christian but would answer "no religion" on the survey. I go to a non-denominational church. I don't particularly care for organized religion.