America in "Second Stage" of Religious Decline

The United States is in the "second stage" of a transition from being religious to secular, a study shows.

This "second stage" refers to when "the importance of religion declines in people's personal lives," according to the paper "The Three Stages of Religious Decline Around the World."

The study was published in the academic journal Nature Communications in August, written by religious sociology professor Jörg Stolz and psychology professor Jean-Philippe Antonietti of the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, sociology professor Nan Dirk de Graaf of the University of Oxford, in England, and the Pew Research Center's demographer Conrad Hackett.