Interesting report. Seems like the jury is still out, though.
(Religion News Service) — For the past 25 years, the number of Americans claiming no religion has steadily ballooned as more and more people quit church, synagogue or mosque and openly acknowledged being a “none.”
The reality is particularly stark when looked at from a generational perspective. If 10% of people from the silent generation (born 1928-1945) consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, a whopping 40% of millennials (born 1981-1996) say they have no religion, according to Pew Research.
But this week, three political scientists who study religion have raised the possibility that the number of nones may be leveling off. Looking at a set of recent surveys, they suggest Generation Z, broadly defined as the 68 million Americans born after 1996, don’t look any less religious than the millennial generation that came before (continues).
A related story:
ReplyDelete"In a shift that stands to impact both religion and politics, survey data suggests that the percentage of Americans who don’t affiliate with any specific religious tradition is now roughly the same as those who identify as evangelical or Catholic.
According to newly released General Social Survey data analyzed by Ryan P. Burge of Eastern Illinois University, Americans claiming "no religion” — sometimes referred to as “nones” because of how they answer the question “what is your religious tradition?” — now represent about 23.1 percent of the population, up from 21.6 percent in 2016. People claiming evangelicalism, by contrast, now represent 22.5 percent of Americans, a slight dip from 23.9 percent in 2016.
That makes the two groups statistically tied with Catholics (23 percent) as the largest religious — or nonreligious — groupings in the country.
“Nones have been on the march for a long time now," Burge said. "It’s been a constant, steady increase for 20 years now. If the trend line kept up, we knew this was going to happen.”
https://religionnews.com/2019/03/21/nones-now-as-big-as-evangelicals-catholics-in-the-us/
Am I the only person who thinks of nuns every time they hear nones? It would be amusing to see a steady incline of women pursuing the habit and cloister.
ReplyDeleteI wonder too how many nones have spiritual leanings but not religious ones. People still practice witchcraft and someone is keeping new age stores in business. I think the younger generations' access to information and higher education have helped to erode religious faith, because there are explanations available that answer hard questions apart from dogma.
I agree, it would be interesting to determine how many "nones" are actually atheists, and how many still hold fast to spirituality in some other form.
DeleteA good question that I came across in looking into Nietzsche is the question of where morals go in society once the god that ruled over them is realized to have never existed?
ReplyDeleteI think morals would stay grounded. The principles of right and wrong are embedded in our society. Though this discovery would cause many people to reevaluate their beliefs, right and wrong would still be known
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