It's Wednesday, May the 22nd, 2024. Welcome to the Daily Article podcast. I'm Chris Elkins of the Denison

Forum, narrating today's article written by Dr. Ryan Denison.

The rise of the nuns, that's N-O-N-E-S, in the religious demographics of our society has been among the most troubling

trends for many Christians across recent decades. The group is typically comprised of those

who do not claim membership in any religious tradition, though there is variation at

times as to whether atheists and agnostics are considered part of the nuns or their own categories.

However, the latest data points to an interesting and encouraging trend.

When the General Society survey first began to follow nuns back in 1972,

they comprised roughly 5% of the total population.

The nuns stayed in the 5 to 6% range until 1991,

when they began a rather precipitous and steady rise that reached the high of 30% by 2013 and 35% by 2019.

However, the nuns haven't really grown in the last five years, ranging between 34 and 36%

of the total population. And what's perhaps most encouraging, their numbers have actually started to

fall among the younger generations. Similar findings have also been reported in both the

Cooperative Election Study and in Pew's latest research.

As Ryan Burge, who has studied and written about the nuns for many years, concludes,

the rise of the nuns may be largely over now. At least it won't be increasing in the same way that it did in the prior 30 years, in quotes.

That's good news.

Yet, he goes on to note the most pertinent question is, why?

One of the dangers with placing too much emphasis on trends is the temptation to think that they'll continue unabated into the future.

That danger has led to quite a bit of the hand-wringing in Christian circles as report after

report detailed the rise of the nuns across the last 30 years. And that's understandable. After all,

...