Four of the Most Dramatic Shifts in American Religion Over the Last 50 Years

Things typically shift slowly in religious demography, but sometimes change comes quickly.

One of the true gifts of being a quantitative social scientist in 2023 is that I get to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before me. A handful of scholars fought hard to get a series of religion questions added to the General Social Survey when it was first fielded in 1972. Then they had to fight to keep those questions on there over the las…