It May Be Time For An Agnostic Wine

Posted by Tom Wark on Oct 23, 2019

Pew Reseach tells us that the United States is rapidly on its way to becoming a minority Christian country. My question is what does this mean for alcohol consumption and for wine in particular?

First the research. Since 2007 those professing to be Christians here in the United States collapsed from 77% to 65%. This is a fall off of massive proportions. Meanwhile, in the same time period, those who claim no religious affiliation have risen from 17% to 25%. As we can with everything else, Millennials can be blamed. This cohort has fallen out with religion faster than any other.

At this rate, America will be a Christian minority country sometime in the early to mid-2030s.

On its face, this is good for the wine industry since non-religious folks are far more likely to be drinkers than religious people. Though I don’t want to give the impression that those who attach themselves to a religion don’t drink. They do.

We learn from another Pew survey that 51% of those who reported attending church in the past 4 weeks also reported drinking. Meanwhile, 62% of those who report attending church even less or not at all reported drinking alcohol.

But get this…the same survey shows that 65% of those who report no religious affiliation (The “Nones”—ironic?) also report drinking. But it’s the agnostics that really get their drink on. The Pew survey showed that 74% of those who claim to be agnostic also say they drink. The agnostics are also the most likely to binge drink.

On a side note, 23% of evangelical protestants believe drinking is immoral, while less than 1% of self-proclaimed atheists believe it is immoral.

So, it would appear that the ongoing de-Christianing of America is probably good for the American wine industry.

I’m not rooting for a de-Christianing of America, let me make that clear. I’m just saying, maybe some winery somewhere might want to create a brand called, “HeckIDontKnow”