Nones (religion)

Nones do not subscribe to an organized religion such as Christianity or Judaism.

Although some American atheists like to claim the unaffiliated (unaffiliated with organized religion), "nones" or "no religion" on religious surveys as one of their own, according to Pew Research in 2017, 72% of the "Nones" believe in God, a higher power, or spiritual force.

In 2022, Pew Research reported:

“

Looking at the experience of 80 countries, we find that the share of people who were raised as Christians and switch away from Christianity has not risen much above 50% anywhere, even in highly secular Western European countries. For American Christians concerned about these trends, that could be the demographic good news of the day. If there truly is a floor under Christian retention rates, the net movement from the ranks of Christian to the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated eventually may stop.

”

In 2021, the Christian Post declared:

“

A new survey reveals that the share of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated has declined slightly. However, more Americans still describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated than affiliate with any particular religious tradition. The Washington, D.C.-based Public Religion Research Institute released its first-ever Census of American Religion Thursday, which provided detailed information about the religious demographics of the United States. The survey was part of PRRI’s 2020 American Values Atlas, based on phone interviews with 50,334 Americans throughout 2020. A statement from the research firm alleges that the Census of American Religion “provides the most detailed estimates of American religious affiliation since the U.S. Census Bureau last collected religious data in 1957.” Data was compiled based on more than 400,000 responses to PRRI’s American Values Atlas dating back to 2013. One of the biggest takeaways from the survey is that “the Rise of the ‘Nones’” has slowed.

”

According to The Guardian: "The great majority of the present-day Nones are found in east Asia, and especially China, where Christianity and traditional religion are both experiencing phenomenal growth. Meanwhile, demographic growth among Christians and Muslims in the global south suggest that Nones in the world will decline from 16% to 13%." (see: Growth of Christianity in China and East Asia and global desecularization).

The atheist Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau declared concerning American atheists attempting to falsely inflate their numbers:

“

American atheist movements, though fancying themselves a lion, are more like the gimpy little zebra crossing the river full of crocs. In terms of both political gains and popular appeal, nonbelievers in the United States have little to show. They are encircled by cunning, swarming [religious] Revivalist adversaries who know how to play the atheist card. The gimpy zebra remark was a little goofing on this over-the-top chest-thumping that emerges from Movement Atheists. They wildly overestimate their numbers. They tend to overestimate the efficacy of their activism. They underestimate how disciplined and organized their adversaries in the religious right are, too. They fail to recognize that mocking religious people in public is entirely inimical to the goals they wish to achieve."

”

Likely large overreporting of nones in the United States

See also: Likely large overreporting of "nones" in the United States

Storefront churches often provide assistance to local residents.

The U.S. Religious Census, organized by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, tracks the number of congregations and congregants at the county level. But recent research in three U.S. counties confirms that it has missed between 26% and 40% of their congregations.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported in their article Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It: Many of the ‘Nones’ aren’t secular; they belong to minority faiths. The problem is how to count them:

“

Reports of religion’s decline in America have been exaggerated. You’ve heard the story: Churchgoers are dwindling in number while “Nones”—those who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation—are multiplying as people abandon their faith and join the ranks of atheists and agnostics. Headlines declare that the U.S. is secularizing along the lines of Europe. From Britain’s Daily Mail in 2013: “Religion could disappear by 2041 because people will have replaced God with possessions, claims leading psychologist.” These conclusions are based on analyses that are so flawed as to be close to worthless. In a new study with our colleagues Matt Bradshaw and Rodney Stark, we seek to set the record straight. Data from five recent U.S. population surveys point to the vibrancy, ubiquity and growth of religion in the U.S. Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving. Consistent with some previous studies but contrary to widely held assumptions, many people who report no religious affiliation—and even many self-identified atheists and agnostics—exhibit substantial levels of religious practice and belief. (Our sources are the University of Chicago’s 2018 General Social Survey, Baylor’s 2017 Values and Beliefs of the American Public Survey, the Association of Religious Data Archives’ 2012 Portrait of American Life Study, the 2017-2020 World Values Survey and the 2018 Chapman University Survey of American Fears.)... But large databases on American religion often lump Others in with the Nones. Respondents who don’t see their faith or denomination listed check off the only remaining option, “none of the above.” The error extends to the counting of religious institutions. The U.S. Religious Census, organized by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, tracks the number of congregations and congregants at the county level. But recent research in three U.S. counties confirms that it has missed between 26% and 40% of their congregations. Many are evangelical and Pentecostal churches, especially Latino and African-American congregations, as well as nondenominational churches and megachurches, many with multiple campuses. This means that instead of 344,894 congregations (based on the most recent U.S. Religious Census data), there may be as many as 500,000 houses of worship in the U.S. Omitted are not only thousands of small congregations but huge ones such as Lakewood Church in Houston (with weekly attendance of 45,000), Gateway Church in the Dallas area (100,000), North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Ga. (40,000), Life Church in Edmund, Okla. (30,000), and Christ’s Church of the Valley in Phoenix (32,000). All of this helps explain why the proportion of Nones has increased sharply—from 15% in 2007 to 30% in 2021—even though the proportion of atheists in the U.S. has held steady at 3% to 4% for more than 80 years. And there are reasons to question the assumption that even truly unaffiliated Nones aren’t religious. Our study looked closely at their actual practices and beliefs.

”

For further study, please read: Are Religious “Nones” Really Not Religious?:Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later by Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H.*, Matt Bradshaw, Ph.D., Byron R. Johnson, Ph.D., Rodney Stark, Ph.D., Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, Volume 18, 2022, Article 7, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Nones: Beliefs, on religious belonging and behavior

A 2021 Christianity Today article entitled Most ‘Nones’ Still Keep the Faith indicates:

“

A majority of Americans across faiths (60%) can’t be classified as a none by any measure—belonging, behavior, or belief. But among 40 percent who have disaffiliated in at least one of the three, few can be categorized as nones across the board. The Venn diagram illustrates how the remaining 40 percent of the population is situated around these three dimensions of religion. Note that behavior—not attending church—is the most common reason why someone would fall into the notes. Forty percent of the nones overall don’t attend church but still identify with a religious affiliation and believe in God at some level. Another quarter of the nones neither go to church nor indicate an affiliation with any religious group (the intersection of the green and yellow circles), but still have a belief in God. Those two groups represent two-thirds of the nones. No wonder research has shown that the unaffiliated in America are just as likely to return to church and reclaim a Christian identity as they are to become self-identified atheists and agnostics. In my book I write that nearly 20 percent of people who identified as “nothing in particular” had changed their affiliation to Christian just four years later. And this “nothing in particular” category represents nearly 1 in 5 Americans. The harvest is plentiful! For the remaining two factors, it’s clear that belonging is the next to fall by the wayside, followed by religious belief. Only a quarter of all nones indicate an atheist or agnostic view of God (all those represented by the red circle). The center of the Venn diagram indicates that just 15.3 percent of the population that are nones on one dimension are nones on all dimensions. That amounts to just about 6 percent of the general public who don’t belong to a religious tradition and don’t attend church and hold to an atheist or agnostic worldview.

”

Global decline of nones in the 21st Century

See also: Growth of Christianity in China and East Asia and global desecularization

"I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious."- Eric Kaufmann

According to the Pew Research Forum:

“

These projections, which take into account demographic factors such as fertility, age composition and life expectancy, forecast that people with no religion will make up about 13% of the world’s population in 2050, down from roughly 16% as of 2010. This is largely attributable to the fact that religious “nones” are, on average, older and have fewer children than people who are affiliated with a religion... China, with its large population and lack of reliable data on religious switching, is something of a wild card when it comes to the future of world religion. This is especially true for the religiously unaffiliated population; more than half of the world’s people who do not identify with any religion live in China (roughly 700 million). Some experts believe the Christian population in China is rising while the religiously unaffiliated population is falling. If this is true – and the trend continues – religious “nones” could decline as a share of the world’s population even more than the Pew Research Center study projects.

”

Eric Kaufmann told a secular audience in Australia: "The trends that are happening worldwide inevitably in an age of globalization are going to affect us." Furthermore, Kaufmann also argues that secularization may reverse itself significantly earlier than 2050 in the West due to religious immigration and a religious population which is increasingly resistant to secularization in Europe.

Percentage of nones expected to stabilize in the United States

Eric Kaufmann wrote:

“

The same is true in the United States. “Nones” may be the third-largest religious group in the United States, and ex-Catholics the fourth-largest, but the switching story needs a demographic context. If America remained 70 percent white, the population would reach European levels of secularization in two generations and Catholics would rapidly lose market share to Protestants. Instead, swift Hispanic and Asian population growth is projected to stabilize the share of nonreligious Americans at roughly today’s levels.

”

Growth of the "nones"/unaffiliated in the West and its effect on Western politics and the political power of atheists

See: Growth of the "nones"/unaffiliated in the West and its effect on Western politics and the political power of atheists

Spiritual but not religious, mental disorders and suicides

According to the British Journal of Psychiatry: “People who have a spiritual understanding of life in the absence of a religious framework are vulnerable to mental disorder.”

Elizabeht Drescher declared in the article Mew Research Links Spiritual but not religious to mental disorder:

“

In the British study, SBNRs were found to be significantly more likely to be drug-dependent (77%) and to suffer from phobias (72%) or anxiety (50%). No wonder they’re significantly more likely (40%) than the religious to be being treated with psychotropic drugs.

”

Religiously unaffiliated and suicide

See also: Atheism and suicide

In 2004, the American Journal of Psychiatry reported:

“

Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members. Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. No differences in the level of subjective and objective depression, hopelessness, or stressful life events were found.

”

Decline of Asian atheism

See also: Asian atheism

According to the global news website Quartz:

“

Atheists, agnostics, and other religious non-affiliates are a dying breed in Asia. According to a Pew Research Center study released last week, Asia’s shrinking pool of men and women who don’t identify with any religion are driving a drop in the proportion of “religious nones” in the world. The percentage of the unaffiliated in Asia Pacific—home to about 76% of the world’s unaffiliated—will fall to 17% in 2050 from 21%, Pew estimates. ...this drop in Asia and the growth of religious communities elsewhere will mean the unaffiliated will make up only 13% of the world’s population in 2050, down from 16% in 2010.

”

Nones and the moniker of spiritual, but not religious

Nones often declare that they are spiritual, but not religious. Social science data indicates that that the spiritual but not religious are more vulnerable to mental disorders.

Research also shows that atheists are more prone to depression/suicide and are also more prone to having lower social skills (see: Atheism and depression and Atheism and suicide and Atheism and social/interpersonal intelligence).

Past long term increase in those who have no religious identity

Over the longer term there has been a substantial and relatively steady increase in the number of Americans having no religious identity. Gallup has been specifically tracking this trend since 1948. At that point a mere 2% of Americans volunteered "no religion". In the intervening years, however, the numbers have steadily grown so that in 2008 the figure had reached some 16% of the population.

Nones (no religious affilation), atheism, agnosticism and Latin Americans

See also: Atheism and Latino Americans

According to the 2019 edition of the Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions:

“

The irreligious population are slowly, but steadily, increasing in size in Latin America. While in every country they constitute a minority, in some countries, they have gained considerable weight. This has occurred both in countries with higher levels of socioeconomic development – such as Chile (15.8%) and Uruguay (37.1%) – as well as in less developed ones such as El Salvador (12.1%) and Honduras (10.5%). The far majority of irreligious Latin American are religious “nones” who declare believing in a supreme entity but do not belong to religious groups. Atheism and agnosticism, instead, are a rare phenomenon, mostly restricted to elite segments.

”

Nones and poor survey design

Research shows that a significant amount of American nondenominational church members are checking "unaffiliated" or "no religion" on surveys.

Pat Neff Hall at Baylor University.

Based on research done by Baylor University, a February 2011 article entitled Good News about Evangelicalism declares:

“

Nondenominational churches, almost exclusively evangelical, now represent the second-largest group of Protestant churches in America, and the fastest growing section of the American religious market... This trend has affected popular statistics and has also served to exaggerate the loss of religious faith and evangelical influence in America. Most previous research missed a new phenomenon: that members of nondenominational churches often identify themselves on surveys as unaffiliated or even as having “no religion.” Because traditional surveys do not provide categories that adequately describe those who attend nondenominational congregations, their members often check “unaffiliated” in typical surveys and questionnaires... Similarly, claims that Americans, including evangelicals, are falling away from the faith contradict seven decades of survey research confirming that only 4 percent of Americans are atheists... ...We found no statistically significant difference between younger and older evangelicals on other moral and political issues, however. Younger evangelicals were, in fact, sometimes more conservative than their elders. ...The number of evangelicals remains high, and their percentage among practicing Christians in America is, if anything, rising.

”

For more information, please see: Baylor University researchers on American Christianity

American 1990s secularism

See also: Decline of American 1990s secularism

In 2008, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reported:

“

The 1990s was the decade when the “secular boom” occurred – each year 1.3 million more adult Americans joined the ranks of the Nones. Since 2001 the annual increase has halved to 660,000 a year... Regarding belief in the divine, most Nones are neither atheists nor theists but rather agnostics and deists (59%) and perhaps best described as skeptics.

”

Americans with "no religion" and American patriotism

See also: Sociology of "atheism is un-American" view

Irving Berlin's song God Bless America is a popular American patriotic song written by Berlin in 1918.

CNN reported:

“

Christianity Today crunched data from a Pew Research Center poll that asked more than 1,500 Americans for their views of the United States. “Nearly all Americans think they live in the best country on Earth. While a majority of Americans believe there are other countries just as great, nine in 10 say no nation is better. Within this high view of America, there are differences between different religious groups,” the magazine noted. To this end, Christianity Today suggested the existence of a “patriotism God-gap in America.” Among those surveyed, evangelicals were the most likely to think the United States is No. 1. “Other Christian traditions were less enthusiastic about America's position in the world, but they still saw the U.S. as one of the best on the planet. About 40% of other Christians said the U.S. stands alone as the greatest country; around 55% said it and some other countries were equally great. As with evangelicals, only a few said there were greater countries in the world.” “Those with no religion, however,” hold a much less favorable view, according to the magazine. "Only one in five of those without religious beliefs said the U.S. is the best country in the world, an equal percentage agreeing that 'there are other countries that are better than the U.S.' ”

”

Atheists attempting to falsely inflate their numbers via the "nones"/"no religion" on survey data

See also: Atheists attempting to falsely inflate the number of atheists via the "nones"/"No religion" on survey data and "No religion" responses on the New Zealand census data survey and poor survey design

The atheist Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau likens the strength of the American atheist movement to a "gimpy little zebra".

Although some American atheists like to claim the "nones" or "no religion" on religious surveys as one of their own, fewer than 15% of the "nones" consider themselves atheists.

The atheist Georgetown University professor Jacques Berlinerblau declared concerning American atheists attempting to falsely inflate their numbers:

“

American atheist movements, though fancying themselves a lion, are more like the gimpy little zebra crossing the river full of crocs. In terms of both political gains and popular appeal, nonbelievers in the United States have little to show. They are encircled by cunning, swarming [religious] Revivalist adversaries who know how to play the atheist card. The gimpy zebra remark was a little goofing on this over-the-top chest-thumping that emerges from Movement Atheists. They wildly overestimate their numbers. They tend to overestimate the efficacy of their activism. They underestimate how disciplined and organized their adversaries in the religious right are, too. They fail to recognize that mocking religious people in public is entirely inimical to the goals they wish to achieve."

”

See also:

• David Silverman intentionally exaggerating the number of atheists in the USA

• Americans have a low opinion of atheists

See also

• Atheist population

• Atheism statistics

• Global atheism

• Secular Europe

External links

• The “Nones” and the “Buts” by Peter L. Berger, The American Interests, May 6, 2015
• Nondenominational/evangelical Christians are checking "None" or "No religion" on surveys by Byron Johnson, First Things, February 2011
• Commentators say Pew survey overestimates decline
• Pew: Religious "Nones" Tend to Be Undereducated, Poor, White Males