Tobin Grant's Math Doesn't Add Up

A recent Religion News Service (RNS) analysis piece by Tobin Grant claims “7.5 million Americans lost their religion since 2012.” He bases his analysis off the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS) done by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago; the survey is funded by the National Science Foundation. He further elaborates that “When asked their religious preference, nearly 1 in 4 Americans now says ‘none.’” An examination of the numbers, however, brings both these claims into question. The GSS survey provides no raw population numbers, only the percentages of the religiously unaffiliated or “nones.” According to the survey, in 2014 that number stood at 21% of the population -much closer to one in five Americans than to “nearly 1 in 4 Americans.”