The Pew Research Center has a new report out, entitled “Religion Among the Millennials: Less Religiously Active Than Older Americans, But Fairly Traditional In Other Ways.”

Short summary: the younger generation of Americans are weaker in their institutional religious affiliations, though the vast majority is still tied to a religion. Where supernatural beliefs are concerned, however, most young Americans remain thorough believers, even when not attached to older institutional forms. There is a slightly increased percentage of outright nonbelievers, and their part of the population is likely to remain stable rather than drifting into churches as they age.

Media spin: “Young Americans less religious than their parents (CNN), or “Study on religion finds young adults less affiliated but not less believing” (LA Times).

My take: secularist arguments that the US is following Europe in the sense of its population becoming less religious are not supported by the Pew report. It may, somehow, be true. (There may be even something buried in the data somewhere; I’m not a social scientist, after all.) Maybe there is something to the somewhat larger nonbelieving population. But the notion that the US is secularizing smacks of wishful thinking.