Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference, Introduction

So I am back after a little bit of delay. I always intend to write more but life does get in the way, specifically in three ways for me.

First, I started a new part time job doing sports data at a company called SportsDataLLC. Second, I have been doing s decent amount of work on my house including the basement and exterior work. Third, we had a sudden and unexpected death in our family that has hit many of us hard. The man who was basically my stepfather, Bob McCormick, passed away in Scotland while on vacation with my mom and we have been responding to that for a couple of weeks. I may write about his life in the future.

With that said, I wanted to get back into writing and I thought I would talk about an article that I came across. The title of the article is “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012”. As you might expect from the title it digs into many of the topics that I have written about before, but this is a more academic study of phenomenon that is written about in other ways. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-24-423/

And I want to start out by quoting the abstract before digging into the article a little bit more:

Twenty percent of American adults claimed no religious preference in 2012, compared to 7 percent twenty-five years earlier. Previous research identified a political backlash against the religious right and generational change as major factors in explaining the trend. That research found that religious beliefs had not changed, ruling out secularization as a cause. In this paper we employ new data and more powerful analytical tools to: (1) update the time series, (2) present further evidence of correlations between political backlash, generational succession, and religious identification, (3) show how valuing personal autonomy generally and autonomy in the sphere of sex and drugs specifically explain generational differences, and (4) use GSS panel data to show that the causal direction in the rise of the “Nones” likely runs from political identity as a liberal or conservative to religious identity, reversing a long-standing convention in social science research. Our new analysis joins the threads of earlier explanations into a general account of how political conflict over cultural issues spurred an increase in non-affiliation.

The political backlash always struck me as pretty self-evident. When media or other public outlets speak of religious faith they often draw from a very narrow view of what that might mean as far as political views are concerned. This has been exacerbated by identifying a specific political party with being a person of faith.

I personally don’t have a problem with the specific political beliefs people of faith have. That is, there is no set of political beliefs that are required for a person of faith, and someone who follows Christ can certainly come to different conclusions of political issues than I do. While the total volume of Christ’s words that are recorded are not as large as we might think, and he certainly does not speak specifically to many of the political issues we debate today, he is broad and cryptic enough to lead to a variety of political positions, especially depending on what the individual wants to emphasize in their own political life. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that people within the church represent a wide range of political beliefs.

However, this is often lost, as religious belief, at least as it is presented in public forms, is correlated with specific political positions. My position has always been that trying to merge state and church (ie political positions and theological positions) will corrupt both. But will corrupt the church much, much more. And data increasingly shows that this corruption leads to people wanting no part of the church, even if, as the article suggests, religious beliefs have not shifted all that much over time.

So, the article starts out by stating that “Nones,” those expressing no religious preference, have shifted from 1 out of 14 in 1987 to 1 out of 5 in 2012. This has happened in an era when religion is in unprecedented prominence in public discussion, as measured by the amount of times that “God” and “Christ” were mentioned by political leaders as a source of inspiration and rationale for their actions and beliefs.

The study found that 3 percent of the 7 percent increase in the rise of “Nones” between 1987 to 2000 were the result of political backlash, specifically liberals not wanting to be associated with a faith espoused by conservative politicians. Another 3 percent of the 7 percent increase was through generational succession. As older generations were being replaced by younger generations, the attachment to religious institutions was weakening. The last percentage point drop was attributed to the decrease in people being raised in a religious home – which resulted in more people entering adulthood with no religious connection.

So, to summarize, from 1987-2000, there was a 7 percent increase in the amount of people who identified as “Nones”. 3 percent was attributed to political backlash, 3 percent attributed to the turnover of generations and weaker connections to organized religion, and 1 percent attributed to people entering adulthood being raised in families with no religious upbringing.

My personal thought on the second point, as far as generations in concerned, is that this might be explained by more of a cultural shift. That for each successive generation it is becoming more acceptable to identify as a “None” so more people are being honest in their self-assessment. There is not so much a change in religious beliefs but instead a more honest accounting for what those beliefs actually are.

The purpose of this paper that I linked was to update the model that produced the data for 1987-2000. Most interesting to me was the hard look that the researchers did in regards to the “secularization” theory, that the “inexorable march of modernization, reason and science would banish traditional (ie religious) explanations of the material world. People would stop consulting traditional authority for guidance and would lose faith, the churches would empty, and religious identification would die out.” While indeed fewer Americans affiliate with organized religion, the research of this paper shows that secularization is hardly the reason. What we see is political backlash is still significant, but it is the generational churn that is most important.

The key here is to understand the difference between secularization and generational shift. Secularization, as explained in the previous paragraph, is the acceptance of modernization, science and reason as the source of truth and guidance over organized religion. While trust in religion has dropped, it is not being replaced by secular sources, but instead a more Agnostic bent, at least officially.

My working theory, as mentioned above, is that there hasn’t necessarily been a rise in this Agnosticism, but instead it is now more cultural acceptable to acknowledge what is true in regards to individual’s beliefs. What is interesting to me is that there hasn’t necessarily been an increase in secularization, which means that a couple of things. The first is that people are not necessarily being modern explanations for sources of truth and meaning, perhaps one of the reasons there is a natural skepticism towards the State/government or any other Utopian solutions.

The second, and perhaps most important to me personally, is that there are a whole bunch of people, especially in my generation, that are out there searching for a sense of meaning and purpose. People are calling themselves “Nones” or “Agnostics” they are not calling themselves “Atheists”. This is a critical distinction, and something that has been backed up continually in conversations that I have with people of my generation that are not all that interested in the church at the moment.

I still believe that ultimate truth and meaning will be found in Christ. As I have written before, I have certainly searched many other places, and I still do, but nothing compares to Christ. However, I say that with a sense that I certainly understand why people are not so interested in Christ – or at least not interested in the Christ that is being presented to them at the moment.

This post was based off the first part of the article. My next blog post will start to dig deeper into each of the identified causes for why more Americans have no religious preference. Hopefully throughout I will be able to provide some responses and thoughts on how the church can move from here.