Religion in decline: More Harvard freshmen now identify as atheist or agnostic than Catholic or Protestant

Religion in decline: More Harvard freshmen now identify as atheist or agnostic than Catholic or Protestant

An annual survey of Harvard University’s incoming freshman class revealed in September that more students identified as atheist or agnostic than as Roman Catholic or Protestant, suggesting millennials are turning away from traditional American faiths in a country that has long had a Christian majority.

Harvard’s poll of beliefs and lifestyles of the class of 2019 found that 21 percent of incoming freshman said they identified as agnostic and 16.6 percent identified as atheist. Meanwhile, 17.1 percent identified as Catholic and 17 percent as Protestant. In other words, 38 percent of the incoming freshman class said they were agnostic or atheist, while 34 percent said they were Catholic or Protestant.

Some 12 percent of the class said they identified as “other,” including 10.1 percent Jewish, 3 percent Hindu, 2.5 percent Muslim and 0.4 percent Mormon, according to the poll results which were recently published in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper