A heavily-weathered Lutheran church in the American Midwest (Getty Images)
Welcome to The Topline, a weekly roundup of the big numbers driving the Minnesota news cycle, as well as the smaller ones that you might have missed. This week: the changing religious landscape in Minnesota; state ranks low on education recovery; public funding of private schools; and a drop in new Black med school enrollment.
Minnesota’s religious landscape
Last week the Pew Research Center released the third iteration of their Religious Landscape Study, which has tracked changes in American religious beliefs and practices since the mid-2000s.
The big-picture trends include a decline in people identifying as Christians, along with a sharp increase in those who don’t belong to any religion at all. In 2007, for instance, 83% of Minnesota adults identified as some type of Christian, while just 13% were religiously unaffiliated. In 2024, by contrast, 63% of Minnesota adults said they were Christian, while 29% now belong to no church at all.
Among Minnesota Christians, declines have mostly been concentrated among mainline Protestant denominations and Catholics. The share of Minnesotans identifying as Methodist has fallen by more than half, from 5% to 2%. Lutherans, who once made up 21% of the population, now account for 16%. The Catholic share has fallen from 28% to 18%.
The share of evangelical, or born-again Christians has held steady over the years, at around 20% of the population.
The rise of atheists, by contrast, perfectly mirrors the decline of Methodists: 2% were atheist in 2007, and 5% identify as such today. Agnostics, who made up just 1% of the population in 2007, now account for 9% of all adults. An additional 15% say they’re simply “nothing in particular.”
Another notable trend is the increase in the Muslim population, who went from 1% of adults in 2007 to 3% in 2024.
Changes in Minnesotans’ religious practices reflect those denominational shifts. More than half of Minnesotans prayed at least daily in 2007, but just one-third do so now. About one-fifth of Minnesotans now attend religious services at least once a week, compared to nearly 40% in 2007 (although Pew cautions that comparison is somewhat fraught due to changes in survey methodology).
Some of the population’s social and political views have changed as well. Today nearly 70% of Minnesotans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 49% in 2007. Similar shifts are apparent in favorable views toward homosexuality and gay marriage.
Minnesotans are also now considerably more likely than they were in 2014 to say that immigrants change society for the better. And compared to the rest of the country, Minnesotans stand out for their support of environmental regulation: 71% say stricter environmental laws are worth the cost, compared to 60% nationwide.
Minnesota ranks in the bottom tier of states on education recovery since the pandemic
A joint Harvard/Stanford project to measure K-12 learning loss since the pandemic finds that Minnesota ranks 45th among the states on students’ recovery of math proficiency, and 34th on reading.
Today’s Minnesota students are about three-quarters of a grade level below their 2019 math ability, and are half a grade level below their pre-pandemic reading proficiency.
The report notes that a sharp increase in chronic absenteeism is one factor in Minnesota’s ongoing educational struggles. A relatively low level of federal pandemic relief spending in the state may also be contributing to the problem.
The study also provides breakdowns of student achievement and recovery at the district level.
Minnesota private schools receive $109 million in public aid
For decades, Minnesota taxpayers have subsidized the state’s private schools, including religious schools, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year. The funds pay for services like transportation, nursing, counseling and school supplies.
But that all may be coming to an end, as MinnPost reports: Gov. Tim Walz’s proposed budget zeroes out $109 million in state aid to private schools, and private school advocates are not happy about it.
Minnesota has more than 400 private schools enrolling more than 70,000 students. Those private school students are, on average, considerably more likely to be white than their public school counterparts, and are much more likely to be from high-income families.
Fewer Black students are enrolling in Minnesota medical schools
The share of Black students newly enrolled in Minnesota’s medical schools fell 3 percentage points between 2023 and 2024, Axios recently reported.
Last year just 7.8% of first-year med students in Minnesota were Black, down from 10.9% the year prior. While a 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action policies likely played a role in the drop, the decline is steeper than what med school officials had anticipated.
The Trump administration’s recent crackdowns on diversity, equity and inclusion policies may depress Black enrollment even further.