My best guess is that more people are simply unaffiliated. Here in Colorado Springs, home of "Focus on the Family", numerous religious "colleges" and where Paula Poundstone did a bit mentioning being taken aback by finding 8 pages of churches in our local Yellow Pages: we are listed as having 66.6% "none" for religious adherents in city-data.com (pic).
On the same site I checked Albuquerque, NM (where I've been thinking of moving next year); 47% Hispanic population but 53% in that same "None" category for religious affiliation. Not to say all Hispanics are Catholic/religious, but from my experience it seems a sizable number of them prefer to "vaya con Dios". Maybe there is a prefer-not-to-answer option for the religious question, maybe people are leaving it blank. In either case it's pretty obvious there aren't as many atheists running around as this type of news would have us believe.

Israel became a nation in May of 1948. The bible says "This generation shall not pass before they see the coming of the lord". The bible also says to test the prophecy of all prophets and when they prophecy something and it does not come to pass...you should ignore them as false prophets. The people who wrote the bible are also the ones controlling the shadow governments so of course many of the prophecies are coming to pass because THEY planned it centuries ago. While the population continues to grow less educated, it would appear they are not buying the BS of decades past. Perhaps there may be hope for humanity??? Everytime I get my hopes up...I think about all our ism's and realize humanity has not really made much progress over the years.

I suspect it’s the blending of religion with politics in the US. And, the internet allows exploration, anonymous exploration..

Honestly, I appreciate the local obituaries ..describing someone drenched in religion finally going away. The new know - and will know more, true progress ~

Well, between all those priests and other religious men who sexually abuse children where can I start.

The more technologically advanced a society is, the fewer people believe in religions?

Not sure about the religious affiliation but as to the "rapidly growing," I would suggest that there is too much consumption of high caloric value food.

I think there is an overall war on a family unit (political and economic reasons)which organized religion promotes. The churches, in majority, are still less inclusive of gender binary folks and homosexuals and it takes discipline and effort to partake which many lack. Although I am very much an atheist, I believe that there is much use for this oldest form of governance to exist to keep some folks morally in line and accountable. Ideally our education system will be reformed to promote critical thinking and the government seizes to be fear-mongoers, but I don't see this trend at the moment so organized religion can serve as somewhat of a moral compass in this chaotic world.

People are not as likely to be joiners as they were years ago. Many find community on the internet. Sad, because human connection, in person, where you live is so important for the good of society.

The net. When I was a boy and the preacher made some claim, looking that up was a chore. A long walk to the library, hope they might have the text where such an idea came from, interlibrary loans and more travel.

Now kids at the age of reason have some question about their religion, they can Google. Then through social media talk in live time with both advocates and detractors of any given ideology.

I think Americans are no longer joining social clubs either and this trend to not attend Church/religous services is an offshoot of people not having social circles and club memberships like they used to....it would be interesting to see how many people who are unaffiliated are non-believers. I bet most of those folks would still say they are spiritual, read the Bible, and believe in God. I think there is a relationship between having higher education and having lower levels of religiosity however....so that must also be part of the phenomenon also.