Breanna Costello won't be in church for Easter Sunday services today.

Costello, a 19-year-old student at Black Hills State University, is part of a tectonic shift in the religious terrain of South Dakota that has occurred over her lifetime. Baptized and confirmed in a mainline Christian church, Costello no longer considers herself a Christian. Like one out of every five Americans today, she does not identify with any religion.

The American Religious Identification Survey of 2008, released in March, asked 54,561 people about their religious identity, including questions on belonging, belief and behavior. It shows that South Dakotans, like other Americans, have become less Christian in the past 18 years, since the first survey was done in 1990. The rate of that decline, however, has slowed considerably since 2001, when the second survey was done.

In 1990, 86 percent of Americans called themselves Christian; by 2008, 76 percent did. And in South Dakota, the demographic shift in religious identity has been especially steep: 95 percent of South Dakotans self-identified as Christians in 1990; 78 percent did in 2008.

But the belief that American Christianity is being threatened by the growth of other faiths, such as Islam, is a misperception. Other faiths and religious movements are growing, but in much smaller numbers and at slowing rates. The biggest challenge facing Christianity in the U.S. today may be people like Costello - and the other 34 million-plus Americans who rejected all forms of organized religion in 2008.

"I think there may be a higher power, but I'm not certain what it is," Costello said, describing herself as agnostic for the past two years or so.

"Christianity doesn't fit my ideas at all right now. Maybe there's a religion out there that might someday," she said.

The "none" category of the survey includes atheists and agnostics, as well as people who describe themselves as non-religious, irreligious and anti-religious. It swells to 46 million people by including respondents who either don't know what religion they are or who refused to give one.

In 1990, just 5 percent of South Dakotans fit those two categories; by 2008, it had more than tripled to 17 percent.

Nationally, "nones" doubled as a percentage of the American population - growing from 10 percent in 1990 to 20 percent in 2008. The rate of that growth slowed significantly, however, after 2001, when it stood a 19.5 percent nationwide.

That "no religion" segment of the population is who Mike Brazeal, John Collins and others associated with Greg Laurie's Black Hills Harvest '09 will target when the Christian evangelist brings his crusade to Rapid City May 15-17.

"That's a great audience for us to attract, as many of them have been turned off by church and have formed an opinion of Christianity that isn't always accurate," Brazeal, director of the Rapid City crusade, said.

Collins, executive director of Harvest Ministries, is concerned but not surprised by the 2008 survey.

"I think the Christian church in general, at least from a denominational standpoint, has been shrinking for quite some time," he said. "I don't know that the church always gets its message out about what it is we believe."

Christianity's central message - the Easter story that is celebrated today - too often gets lost in the baggage of social and political issues such as gay marriage and legalized abortion, Collins said. "It's a challenge with unchurched younger people who look at Christians, and their perceptions are that we are, one, anti-homosexual; two, hypocritical; and three, intolerant."

Those are important issues to many Christians, he said, but they sometimes get in the way of presenting the more important message. "It's our hope to rise above these other issues that cloud the real issue, which is: Is there hope? What happens after we die? The big matters of life and death. That's the message of Easter, that we not only have a savior who went to the cross for us, but that he's alive today," Collins said.

The crusade will target people with "honest questions about life, death, faith and God. If we've done our job well, people will come who are skeptical, the ones who have questions about the big life and death matters," he said.

The Rev. Mark Fuhr of Countryside Community Church in Spearfish isn't alarmed by the survey's results and says any predictions of doom and gloom for American Christianity are overblown. Fuhr believes Americans are simply more honest about where they're at with religion in 2008 than they were 20 years ago, because it is more socially acceptable to be so. Because of that, the ARIS survey probably reflects more of a switch in social mindset than a significant change in the religiosity of Americans, he said.

"A lot of people 20 years ago claimed to be Christian who, in reality, probably hadn't darkened the door of a church in years," he said. "I think people are willing to be much more honest about where they're at now. That's a good thing, because then they can be more honest about their search for the truth."

Fuhr is correct that more Americans are willing to go against the tide of an otherwise religious society. The number of American atheists and agnostics is small as a proportion of total population - less than 2 percent - but is has grown from 1 million in 1990 to 2 million in 2001 to 3.6 million in 2008. The historic reluctance of Americans to self-identify as atheist or agnostic has diminished, and researchers said there was survey evidence to suggest, based on questions about specific beliefs about God, that levels of underreporting in American agnosticism is significant.

Still, Fuhr isn't worried about the future of U.S. Christianity, based on what he sees at his growing Spearfish church. Countryside has enjoyed fantastic growth since its founding, recently doubling its average Sunday attendance from 600 people, when it moved into its new church two years ago, to more than 1,200 every Sunday now.

"In reality, the actual number of people who are in a growing, vital relationship with Christ is probably growing, if anything," he said.

Collins, 55, reads the new survey results as part of a pattern that has repeated itself throughout human history.

"Every generation expresses its faith differently," he said. He grew up Lutheran, with a traditional liturgy and organ music, but found a different "sub-culture" of Christianity that worked better for him.

"They were speaking my language at the time. I felt a need to express my faith differently than my parents had - even though there was nothing wrong with theirs," he said.

Today, his adult children are worshiping in churches that express Christianity "a little differently than mine does. A lot of it's generational."

Despite Fuhr's optimism about Christianity's growth, Costello's rejection of the Catholic faith of her childhood, as well as all Christian doctrine in general, is one of the most important trends in American religion, researchers said.

But the political science and art history major from Pierre doesn't feel any pressure to conform to a largely Christian society, even though she has numerous committed Christians as friends, and her family will be attending Easter services today without her.

"They don't agree with it, but they know they can't control it," she said.

Contact Mary Garrigan at 394-8424 or mary.garrigan@rapidcityjournal.com