Nones, or “none of the above” people who don’t affiliate with any religions, have taken center stage in America’s religious landscape. Recently, Pew Research announced a staggering new find: Out of every religious group in America, Nones outnumber them all. Of particular note, at 28% of American adults, Nones now outnumber Catholics (23%) and evangelicals (24%).
Let’s trace the rise of the Nones, see where America’s religious marketplace might be heading soon, and check out how right-wing Christian dysfunctional authoritarians are coping with this news.
Defining Nones
When a survey lists a number of religions and asks people which one they consider their own, those that respond “none of the above” qualify as Nones. Nones can be atheists, agnostics, spiritual-but-not-religious types, or anything else. All that they need to be Nones is a lack of affiliation with any specific religious ideology or group.
I first began seeing the term in the early 2010s from religious researchers, particularly Pew Research Group. In a 2012 report about Nones, Pew Research discussed the sharp rise in their numbers over just five years, from 15% of American adults in 2007 to 20% in 2012.
But the general sentiment has been in use since at least 2004, when AltaMira Press published Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone. The book’s creators call that part of America “The None Zone” because more people there answered “none” when asked about their religious affiliation than in any other part of the country.
For the most part, the number of Nones has risen dramatically while Christianity declines. It’s not an exact correlation, of course. Nones don’t rise in number in exact lockstep with the decline of Christian groups. Still, it’s a breathtaking change.
In 2015, Pew Research released more data about Nones as part of their massive 2014 Religious Landscape Study. By then, they barely had to remind people what “Nones” were.
In 2018, Pew Research released more information about why Nones didn’t affiliate with any religions, breaking answers down by atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular.”
Then, in 2022, Pew ran tests to see how Christianity’s numbers might change in 50 years. Thanks to those tests, Pew expected Nones to rise to about 34%-52% of the population—and Christians to decline to 35%-54%.
The latest news about Nones
On January 24th, Pew Research released a huge new study about Nones: Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe. Here are its main takeaways:
- About 28% of adults in America are Nones now. Of that 28%, about 17% are atheists, 20% agnostic, and 63% “nothing in particular.”
- Only 3% of Nones attend religious services at least once a month, while 90% say they seldom/never do. That said, many Nones believe in some kind of god or “higher power.” Some even say they believe in the god described in the Bible. Only about 30% of Nones reject all god-beliefs.
- Overall, they’re not anti-Christian. They just think religion can be harmful at times.
- Unfortunately, Nones don’t vote as often as religious Americans. They’re also less engaged with their local political and civic scenes.
- Nones tend to follow a moral code based on not hurting others (83%).
It’s an interesting study, for sure!
We’ll get to the percentage of Nones in just a moment.
Spiritual, religious, or both, or neither?
To go along with that study, Pew published a survey last week about adults in America becoming more “spiritual” and less “religious.” Notably, Pew did not define either term, though elsewhere they did ask their respondents to define “spirituality” in their own words. About 40% of respondents they’ve grown more “spiritual” over their lifetimes. Meanwhile, only 24% of respondents said the same about religion, and 33% said they became less religious.
Atheists were least likely to say they’d become more spiritual, with only 9% replying that way. They were the most likely, by contrast and by far at 49%, to say they’d grown less spiritual. Interestingly, evangelical Christians were the most likely, at 55%, to say they’d become more spiritual, and among the least likely, at 5%, to say they’d grown less spiritual.
Given how Christians have learned to badmouth the idea of “religion” as ickie, stultifying, pre-canned and warmed-over sludge, none of those results surprise me in the least. That said, evangelicals were also by far the most likely to say they’d grown more religious over their lives (47%), and almost the least likely to say they’d grown less so (16%). They might have been a little turned around by the lack of definitions in the survey.
(Related: Yes, it’s a religion; A hardline evangelical’s viral spoken-word poem attacking “religion.”)
Also unsurprisingly, the vast majority of atheists (74%) and agnostics (71%) said they’d grown less religious over their lives. They, at least, seemed very clear on the term. Meanwhile, 49% of atheists and 29% of agnostics said they’d grown less spiritual.
Whoa whoa whoa, was that a drop in the percentage of Nones?
Also on January 24th, Pew Research released another article about a very small decline in the percentage of Nones. See, in 2022, Pew found 31% of adults in America saying they were Nones. This year, they report 28%. Sure, Pew hasn’t recorded anything below 28% in five years, but what’s with that little dip?
Because evangelicals noticed it right away.
Though Fox News’ website tried very hard to avoid sounding overly optimistic, that was their headline on January 24 (archive):
Religious ‘nones’ decline for first time since 2016, Pew study finds
Pew Research states it is too early to determine if the data shows a plateau in religious ‘nones’
Weirdly, that was literally the only thing they found noteworthy about Pew’s study. It was the only topic in their article about it. Fox’s writer also had to end in a way that gives their almost-entirely-evangelical readership a (misplaced) sense of optimism:
Many “nones” reported a sense of spirituality or belief in God, but did not believe religious affiliation was necessary, beneficial, or the correct decision for themselves.
Young folks today might just call this assessment “copium.”
Where the Nones are 2024
In reality, that dip probably doesn’t mean much. As the Fox writer notes and as the study describes in detail, Pew’s seen similar minor hiccups of that nature for years. The overall arc is what matters. And it’ll be some years still before we know what that looks like.
The same thing happened to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Their Annual Reports tell a harrowing story of decline.
They’ve been declining for many years—decades, in fact. But for a long time, their downward-trending arc had brief spikes along the way. Between 1971-1975, they reported over 400k baptisms a year. But that number quickly fell back into the 300k range. After many years of 300k baptisms per year, they had a few more years from 1980-1982 and 1997-2000 where baptisms edged up into the 400k range. By 2006, those hiccups had mostly calmed down. After 2011, that arc turned into a freight train going over a cliff with zero deviations. They’re at 180k as of 2022.
The pandemic played merry hell with their baptisms, obviously. In 2020, church leaders baptized only 123k people. Ouch. Baptisms rose to 154k in 2021, then to 180k in 2022. It might have risen a bit more last year, but I don’t expect to see them really recover to their 2019 total of 235k. I’d be really surprised if they ever see 200k ever again.
(Hey, some people know everything there is to know about all the hockey teams in their country. And others maintain spreadsheets of SBC metrics going back to the late 1800s. We all have our hobbies!)
So while I can’t tell you where that 3% of Nones went between 2022 and 2024, I can tell you they are not flocking to SBC churches.
And evangelical leaders are having a tough time maintaining optimism over it all.
The myth of the ‘cultural Christian’
Former SBC President J.D. Greear thinks he knows exactly how to give the troops back their optimism: Insulting those who’ve left the denomination’s increasingly polarized and tribalistic ranks. He told Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN; archive):
Much of that [lack of interest in spirituality], the pastor said, is likely connected to the shrinking acceptance of Christian norms within American culture writ large.
“[A] lot of the decline in those numbers is cultural Christianity,” explained Greear. “But, if you look at the statistics in the amount of what I would consider true disciples, those numbers are actually encouraging.”
Insulting departing members by calling them cultural Christians is an old SBC strategy—it dates back to at least 2012, when another then-SBC leader, Ed Stetzer, began using it to explain away the SBC’s declining membership and baptisms. He went so hard on this talking point that I strongly suspect someone handed it to him with orders to use it everywhere.
In a 2012 column he wrote for Christianity Today, he declared: “Christianity isn’t dying, cultural Christianity is.”
You see, many in the USA who identify as Christian do so only superficially. These “cultural Christians” use the term “Christian” but do not practice the faith. [. . .]
Christian nominalism is nothing new. As soon as any belief system is broadly held in a culture, people are motivated to adopt it, even with a low level of connection. Yet, much of the change in our religious identification is in nominal Christians no longer using the term and, instead, not identifying with any religion.
So cultural Christians aren’t really super-dedicated to Jesus. Not like Ed Stetzer is. Not “true disciples,” like good little Christians should be. No, Christianity is just the culture these fakey-fake fake fakers grew up in and inconceivably consider their own. The moment the religious fat sizzles in the pan, these ickie fake Christians flee for more comfortable surroundings while the real Christians hunker down and Jesus harder.
Evangelicals still use this myth to cope with their decline, too!
He stands before the onrushing fleeing mob, his hands out, shouting “Remain calm! All is well!”
In May 2015, Stetzer repeated these talking points in two separate places: Church Leadership (archive) and USA Today (archive). That year’s very important. It’s the year that Pew Research released their Religious Landscape Study, mentioned above. And it’s the year that evangelicals as a group finally became aware of their decline. They’d been able to ignore the signs for years—and I had the comment-box arguments to prove it. Finally, the Religious Landscape Study tore their veil of willful ignorance away. It forced them to face facts at last.
So that year, the accusation Stetzer insinuated in 2012 became explicit. On May 13, 2015, Stetzer’s post title and subtitle at USA Today said it all:
Survey fail – Christianity isn’t dying: Ed Stetzer
Fakers who don’t go to church are just giving up the pretense.
In his opinion post, he insists that evangelicalism is “growing”:
Evangelicalism is growing
Yes, you read that correctly. Evangelical Christianity is growing in America. From 2007 to 2014 the number of evangelicals in America rose from 59.8 million to 62.2 million, according to Pew.
Weirdly, the SBC’s baptisms fell from 345k to 305k in the same period, their membership fell from 16.3M to about 15.5M, and Sunday School enrollments fell from 7.5M to 3.7M, with several years lacking reported figures entirely in that span. How strange! But Stetzer continued:
This is part of the growing “evangelicalization” of American Christianity in which the church in the U.S. is increasingly taking on the attributes of evangelicalism. According to Pew, half of all Christians self-identify as an evangelical or born again.
Later in his post, Stetzer tells his readers that The Big Problem Here really is that less Jesusy denominations, meaning those ickie, grody mainline and progressive ones, were finally losing all their fakey-fake fakers. That’s all! Nothing to see here! The future was for sure evangelical!
Later that month, Stetzer repeated the same accusations to CNN (archive), which then got put on the Church Leaders wiki site.
Of course, soon enough evangelicals’ decline caught up with the mainline/progressive groups’ decline.
Last year, the SBC reported a membership of 13.2M, with still no end in sight to their decline. They also recorded 101 fewer churches on record, which is a real surprise. That’s the first time I’ve seen that happen in my entire life. Before, even through the worst of their decline they always recorded a net increase of churches in their denomination. But not last year.
Whoops.
Coping and seething on main, since there’s really nothing else they can do about Nones
Though they haven’t had a whole lot of time to respond to the new Pew study about Nones, I’ve seen a few trying to tackle it head-on.
My Christian Daily (archive) summarizes the study, ending with:
For all the hard working, amazing people in ministry, we all know that there are those that have really let down Christianity, giving it a bad name and driving people away from the church.
Yes, that’s obviously exactly why Nones now outnumber both Catholics and evangelicals. Yep. Bad Christians. That is obviously what is fueling the American exodus from religion. That said, it’s weird that even Christians are aware of how easy it is for bad-faith actors to become pastors, then go on to hurt people in their flocks. Strange that they don’t even wonder why Jesus doesn’t do something about it, since it’s causing their decline and all.
(Related: The Ballad of the Bad Christians; The myth of the Bad Christian; An evangelical shows us why it’s so easy to fool a monster.)
Meanwhile, American Family News (archive) interviews someone who puts evangelicals on blast for having “squandered” America’s former “pro-Christian culture.” Interestingly, this person advises evangelicals to push extra-hard on the real-world benefits of joining their churches:
“Cultural vacillations aside, human beings are still human beings, and all human beings desire acceptance, significance, security,” the apologist notes. “These are the three felt needs that are common to all people.”
It’s weird how their interviewee went with real-world benefits and not all that PROOF YES PROOF apologists keep pulling out of their rumps to try to make their claims about Jesus and Heaven/Hell sound better.
Sidebar: Those fake Christians were all well and good while evangelicals’ star rose in America
And, of course, we’ve already seen J.D. Greear’s galaxy-brain take on the report. Over at CBN, he huffed pure copium as he further declared:
“What we’re after here is not demographic increase; what we’re after here are real followers of Jesus,” the pastor told CBN News, noting, “Unfortunately, a lot of [people] are not reached in the church by just doing great music, great guest services, and a relevant sermon.”
My, my. How sour are those grapes, J.D. Greear? They must be very sour indeed. You didn’t want them anyway, right?
Bear in mind that out of all evangelicals, the SBC was the least interested in making sure every one of their recruits was a true-blue, 100% all in, gung-ho “true disciple” or “real follower of Jesus.”
I do not remember ever hearing once about any SBC pastor kicking tithes-paying members out of a single church. Nor do I remember ever hearing about any purity tests administered to the flocks to ensure that only unsullied TRUE CHRISTIAN™ bottoms warmed those hallowed pews and donated money.
Of course, it’s completely impossible to do anything like that. Because there’s nothing objectively true about any Christian claims, the only way any Christian has of evaluating another’s devotion or fervor is by examining outward behaviors, speech, and demeanor. And those are all incredibly easy to fake.
If evangelicals really had that huge a number of fakey-fake fake Christians floating around in their churches, they sure didn’t care at all about addressing that problem until their membership rolls began to shrink. And their method of dealing with it, so far, seems to be just to use it as an excuse for decline.
As a friend of mine puts it, when a Christian group needs to demonstrate their superiority to other groups, suddenly the number of “true disciples” is teeny-tiny. When that group needs to crush the opposition with sheer dominance, it’s EVERYONE GET IN THE POOL RIGHT NOW!
Why evangelicals are taking all this research so poorly
This research about Nones hits evangelicals right in their dysfunctional-authoritarian heart.
(A dysfunctional authoritarian group is one that has lost any hope of fulfilling its own stated goals or even ensuring members’ safety. Such a group has become nothing more than a conduit for power for its bad-faith leaders. It still runs along very authoritarian lines, but those in power ignore whatever rules they please and protect each other from exposure and consequences.)
Dysfunctional-authoritarian Christians are the sorest losers (and winners) on Earth. They hate being on the losing team. They’ve learned to equate growth with victory, and victory with Jesus’ approval of them. If Jesus approves of a church, it grows. If he approves of an aspiring leader, that person’s career thrives.
The opposite is likewise true in this crowd: A church’s decline indicates divine disapproval. A church leader’s failure to gain traction indicates some secret sinfulness hidden away somewhere in that person’s life.
So just imagine how they’re feeling right now with all this nonstop news of decline.
And that’s not going to make potential recruits happy
Further, the kind of people who join dysfunctional-authoritarian Christian groups, which evangelical churches almost always are, fall into two overall camps:
- Authoritarian followers: They want safety, security, comfort, a safety net, a ready-made community, and easy to read social cues. Remember what that one apologist said above? He was describing these people to a tee. They want that stuff so much that they’ll ignore all the danger cues dysfunctional authoritarians give off.
- Authoritarian leaders: They want power of some kind, and evangelical groups invariably offer a much easier path to power than any other kind of authoritarian group can. It doesn’t matter if the leader is a little old lady who wants to climb the social ladder of the Women’s Prayer Group or a young man dreaming of megachurch pastor gigs.
In either case, a group in decline will deter both camps. The authoritarian followers will feel less safe and secure if their leaders are perceived as powerless or lacking in divine approval, while the leaders will not gain access to the kind of power they want to wield.
Since evangelicals have never figured out how to recruit and retain people who have no obligation to be part of their groups, all they can do is try to negate and vilify those who are leaving. In doing so, they’re sending a message to the flocks still warming church pews: If you leave too, this is what we’ll say about you.
Thankfully, they haven’t recaptured enough temporal power to be able to do much more than that. And hopefully, they never will.
44 Comments
smrnda · 01/28/2024 at 6:38 PM
I know Christians probably like to hear that people are getting to be ‘more spiritual’ but they really need to think about what that might mean. Paganism and animism and all of those sorts of things have been growing. Though Christians might dream of recruiting an ‘atheist’ they don’t typically do well with recruiting people from non-Christian religions. At best, they get people to switch flavors of Christianity. Instead, they might have to contend with other religions growing while they shrink. I don’t think they’d really like that in the end.
Chris Peterson · 01/28/2024 at 7:29 PM
My thinking about these surveys: first, there is no real difference between atheists and agnostics. Both are atheists, they simply choose different labels. I’ve never met a self-identified agnostic who wasn’t an atheist. Second, atheists/agnostics and nones are almost certainly undercounted. The stigma of not being Christian will certainly result in some people who aren’t meaningfully Christian labeling themselves as such. Third, the trend analysis fails to consider that social shifts often hit inflection points. A change proceeds steadily for some time, and then toggles to a new state almost overnight. As the stigma goes away and “none” is normal and common, a lot of others may well follow. We’ll see.
And “spiritual”? Well, most people I know consider themselves to be such to some degree, and almost all mean the same thing by it: a sense of connection with nature and the Universe. Which, of course, even has a factual basis! They don’t connect the word with any gods or even anything supernatural.
Carstonio · 01/28/2024 at 7:45 PM
I don’t like labels in general, and I perceive two different groups. The first sees the existence of deities as extremely unlikely, given the lack of evidence, but does not flatly rule out the possibility, and sees religion as a mixture of good and bad. The second states as supposedly irrefutable fact that deities do not exist and is opposed to all religion.
Chris Peterson · 01/28/2024 at 7:51 PM
Most self-identified atheists I know don’t claim that deities don’t exist as a matter of fact. And most I know are not particularly hostile to religion.
ericc · 01/29/2024 at 10:08 AM
The selection of the ‘agnostic’ or ‘atheist’ label is IMO all about social bias in favor of religion.
If I say “my shirt is red”, nobody thinks I am claiming absolute philosophical certainty. Nobody would be so stupid as to think I was saying that.
If I say “the sun will rise tomorrow,” nobody thinks I am claiming absolute philosophical certainty. Again, nobody would be so stupid as to think I was saying that.
But if I say “there is not God,” the vast majority of theists will discount that statement as an unwarranted claim of absolute philosophical certainty. That’s an unconscious bias, in favor of religion. I suspect a lot of self-labeled agnostics just don’t want to deal with that noise. That *social bias* against the label atheism. To have misattribute absolute philosophical certainty to your staments where they would never ever do that to anyone else, for any other statement.
And, I totally understand that (not wanting to deal with the social bias). It doesn’t really bug me. I’m far more concerned about church-state separation and pragmatic voting etc. issues like that, than I am whether the supporter-of-secularism calls themselves agnostic or atheist (or heck even Christian! I’m happy to have secularism be a big tent).
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 10:17 AM
I think it is important to distinguish between the observation “God does not exist”, which is extremely supportable by evidence-based reasoning, and “no deities exist”, which is not.
An atheist does not believe in deities, but an intellectually honest one does not make a factual claim that they do not exist. But an intellectually honest atheist (or even a theist) can argue solidly against the existence of God, as that particular deity has features that contradict observational evidence.
ericc · 01/29/2024 at 12:07 PM
I make the factual claim that no deities exist.
Because again, it is biased to require such a statement to have any stronger support than a claim like “no leprechauns exist”. If you see the ‘no deities’ claim as needing more support – see it as anything more than a regular, normal empirical knowledge claim shorthand for “my provisional conclusion based on the evidence i have at hand and subject to change should new evidence arise…” than that higher requirement is simply a personal bias. There is nothing in the “no dieties” claim itself which implies any stronger knowledge claim than “no leprechauns”.
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 12:14 PM
Then you are intellectually no different than a theist.
We have absolutely no way of knowing whether deities exist or not, and absolutely no evidence that contradicts such existence. A skeptic can only observe that in the absence of evidence or need, there is no reason to believe they exist.
It is an intellectual failure to claim that leprechauns don’t exist, as well.
ericc · 01/30/2024 at 2:28 PM
Are you agnostic about leprechauns? You have no evidence contradicting such. Oh sure, lots of falsified claims, but that’s true of deities too.
In both cases we have no certainty. We only have the evidence at hand. And the evidence at hand better supports ‘no such things’ than ‘such things, just not detected…yet…despite many falsified claims past detections…’
Chris Peterson · 01/30/2024 at 3:10 PM
I’m not “agnostic” about anything. I don’t believe in leprechauns, any more than I believe in deities (although I consider the latter far more plausible).
Belief comes from how we weigh evidence (or should). Not believing does not place me in the position of claiming as a fact that there are no leprechauns, or no gods.
Carstonio · 01/29/2024 at 5:26 PM
”Deities” include various definitions of “God.” It’s not clear how evidence-based reasoning supports a conclusion that “God” does not exist. The most common definitions exclude even the possibility of testable evidence for the being’s existence, and the definitions are so broad as to be compatible with all possible observations. While it’s common for atheists to argue that the existence of suffering contradicts the idea of a benevolent supreme being, not all definitions of “God” include omnibenevolence or other omni traits. The issue is not that evidence shows no “God” or any other deities, but that evidence is lacking for any of the beings.
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 6:11 PM
I consider suffering to be evidence of an ethical god, assuming any god at all.
I interpret “God” (without further qualification) to mean the Yahweh god. Its attributes as described by scripture violate observations of how the Universe works, and many of the things it is claimed to have done objectively did not happen. So there is rational reason to reject its existence.
Carstonio · 01/29/2024 at 8:10 PM
It’s not an unconscious bias in favor of religion, it’s that deities like “God” are defined to exclude any way to know if they exist. No one has any basis for being certain about anything where deities are concerned, even less than absolutely certain. Any such certainty is driven by assumptions. Plenty of theists do make claims of philosophical certainty, often but not always absolute ones, and any atheist who makes an opposite claim of general or absolute certainly is committing the same intellectual offense.
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 8:49 PM
God was not deliberately designed or defined. God developed organically over thousands of years, and was not in the least opaque to its followers. It is only in the last few centuries that science eliminated the need for a god, and modern reasoning demonstrated the serious problems with God. But not with gods in general.
Many atheists do make false statements of fact. Only some are skeptics and critical thinkers.
ericc · 01/30/2024 at 2:35 PM
Exactly. The notion of God evolved, sometimes in response to negative results of tests that believers thought would support them. Faith healing. Statistical impact of prayer. Weighing the soul. Cameras allowing for miracles to be analyzed much more than eyewitnesses could do.
So NOW God might be untestable by definition, but only because the definition has changed to ‘untestable’ in response to negative tests.
For deities in general we can’t say they are all tautologically untestable in this way. But we can say all tests so far have failed to indicate any such beings. And thus the best tentative, provisional, empirical conclusion from the evidence is that they don’t exist. Not agnosticism. That’s like being agnostic about nessie or fairies or water nymphs. They’re in the same boat with gods (in the past, some of them *were* gods) – not all tests that could be run have been run, and thus a negative conclusion has the problem of induction. Nevertheless, the best inductive conclusion at this time remains “no such entities.”
Chris Peterson · 01/30/2024 at 3:13 PM
I have no reason to favor a natural creation of the Universe over a designed one. We have no explanation for creation, and no evidence supporting a mechanism. I don’t consider “natural” to be a better explanation than “created”.
Carstonio · 01/30/2024 at 10:33 PM
I wasn’t saying that deity definitions were deliberately created, but instead that the common definitions of “God” are untestable. The untestability also applies to the claimed causes of claimed miracles. And while many other deities are defined as having more limited power, there’s still the issue of not being able to perceive them. Sure, stories about many deities show humans seeing and hearing the beings. But that’s the real problem – the religions that tell the stories expect everyone to take their word for it, hand-waving the inability of the stories’ audiences to perceive the beings for themselves.
Chris Peterson · 01/31/2024 at 12:45 AM
Testability is a new concept. Throughout most of our existence, deities have been observed and perceived.
Carstonio · 01/31/2024 at 10:54 AM
Are you claiming that the beings actually existed? Or that people thought they were perceiving and observing deities, but were instead observing natural events that may or may not have had explanations?
Chris Peterson · 01/31/2024 at 11:00 AM
Basically the latter. The way people defined and evaluated evidence make it unambiguously clear to them that the supernatural was all around. They did not find their gods opaque or hidden.
BensNewLogIn · 01/28/2024 at 10:30 PM
I absolutely agree with your last paragraph, and I think it captures what’s going on exactly. Spiritual but not religious also captures something of it, at least for me.
I think there is a small difference between atheists and agnostics, and maybe it doesn’t matter. An atheist doesn’t know and doesn’t care. An agnostic doesn’t know and actually does care.
as I have described myself, I am an it-doesn’t-matterist. Some people called that an apatheist. To me they are not quite the same thing. For myself, it simply doesn’t matter what I believe about any God or gods. Whatever the reality might be concerning God or gods, my beliefs about it, lacking any actual evidence, simply don’t matter in the slightest. And I really don’t care if there’s a God, because it’s completely irrelevant to my life. The only thing I would say that I ‘know” is that I don’t believe in any eternity of hell or heaven, let alone that there is a son of God who determines where I get to go. But then, I also know that it doesn’t really matter what’s true.
for people, what matters is what’s entertaining.
Carstonio · 01/29/2024 at 7:02 AM
In principle, it does matter whether claims of purported fact are true or false, since reality doesn’t care what anyone believes or doesn’t believe. Suppose someone like an evangelical insists that a tree that fell on a neighbor’s house was the work of a deity. It would be intellectually irresponsible of the neighbor to flatly deem the claim impossible, or to simply wave it away with some version of “I don’t like it therefore I don’t believe it.” In practice, the neighbor could point to the lack of evidence for the evangelical’s claim as a reason not to take the claim seriously.
Astrin Ymris · 01/31/2024 at 10:39 PM
My totally unscientific theory is that people who call themselves “agnostics” are at some level hoping to find a God they can believe in. Those who call themselves “atheists” would accept compelling evidence of a God’s existence, but they don’t expect to encounter it, and are okay with that. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that’s important to those who identify as agnostics.
Gwen the Devout, patron saint of atheism · 02/02/2024 at 10:09 AM
I agree; “agnostic” seems to be basically a euphemism, which people employ to avoid the stronger stigma associated with atheism. This stigma is still a thing, unfortunately, although it has decreased a lot just over the course of my life. I kind of think that calling yourself agnostic is a cop-out, though I also understand the pressure a lot of people (especially youth) experience to appear “open-minded” about people’s magical beliefs. I think we should consider that this is not the happy fun kind of “openmindedness,” but rather is analogous to an open wound, letting in whatever infectious agents happen to be in the area.
So lumping together atheists and agnostics* is probably fine, but I wish these survey types would not lump us in with all the various wackos particular religion. Not only does it prevent us from getting decent statistics from a variety of sources on trends involving actual nonbelief, it also helps maintain the stigma that atheism is evil and must not be mentioned, or at best that the nonreligious are a tiny minority and therefore are irrelevant.
Chris Peterson · 02/02/2024 at 10:20 AM
While I’d like to see surveys better designed to tease out what people actually believe, the value of what we have here is really little more than identifying who doesn’t call themselves Christian. I really don’t care about anything else, because Christianity is the only religious belief system in the U.S. that causes major, widespread damage. We get rid of Christianity, a lot of our problems start going away. Doesn’t matter what other religious beliefs people might hold.
Carstonio · 01/28/2024 at 7:50 PM
As usual, evangelical leaders blame the decline on the selfishness or immorality of ex-members, or on individual churches being insufficiently strict. Instead of blaming, you know, an authoritarian theology that is essentially straight white male supremacy.
jfnavin · 02/06/2024 at 3:07 AM
The number of “Christians” in China has now reached 9% of their total population or about 150,000,000 peope or roughly half of the U.S. population.
Still, it means little to nothing. It isn’t the number or percentage of people claiming to be Christian that’s importan to God. He wants us, you and me, everything we are. He wants to commune with us like man did once upon a time. He created us to enjoy us, to walk and talk with us, to be best friends. He hurts when that doesn’t happen. Jesus called him Papa.
Zaqqum · 01/28/2024 at 9:14 PM
In Ed Stetzer’s defense (excuse me while I get a shower after typing that…okay, I’m back!), the growth in evangelical identiy amid SBC decline would probably be due to the rise of the nodenominational church. This is the only group within Christianity that has shown consistent growth over the last decade or so*. Many of these churches are former SBC congregations, or still-current ones hiding their identity (as did one such church up the road from where I used to live several years ago). Can’t imagine why they’d do that…
Nondenoms are the perfect solution to the authoritarian tendencies built within Christianity since the days of the apostles. Each congregation acts as the personal fiefdom of its lead pastor, there’s no responsibility to any denominational authority, no need to hold to creeds except as window dressing, and no need to stick to whatever might have been picked up in seminary, if anything. For followers, they get all of the affirmations and validations the apologist above gave, plus coffee shops, self-help TEDoid talks and a rock band too! That is, if you define rock as soothing repetitious pablum, which I don’t. But the trappings of the secular world are all there in the nondenom church, with Jesus frosting to give it that savior-y taste. And the authoritarian follower gets to feel like being that follower is what the cool kids are doing these days.
Not that the nondenom movement, fractious and personality-cult driven as it is, will help evangelicalism in the long run. It may even, through sheep-stealing and Trumpy limelight-hogging, exacerbate evangelical decline eventually. One can hope!
*There has also been some growth over this time period by Pentecostal groups, including the Assemblies of God denomination. But this seems to have plateaued since the pandemic, while the nondenoms kept growing.
Astrin Ymris · 01/31/2024 at 10:48 PM
It seems to me that nondenominational churches are usually very socially conservative in practice, but they don’t really want to advertise that fact to potential new members. I don’t doubt for a second that they’re very authoritarian; there seems to be a strong correlation between the two.
Zaqqum · 01/31/2024 at 11:46 PM
Nondenom churches really brought into the whole “church growth movement” thing, which was successful enough to ̶m̶e̶t̶a̶s̶t̶a̶s̶i̶z̶e̶ grow quite a few megachurches and still works today. These churches used a “seeker sensitive” model to get the butts in the pews with familiar and popular things (rock bands, coffee shops, ect), along with the help of marketing surveys showing what people wanted from a church–the hope was that once the people would show up, a number of them could be convinced to stick and stay, and then it would be time to unveil the right-wing nuttery, oops, I mean the gospel, and hit ’em up with that.
The model has worked very well over time but I wonder if at some point most prospects will be mined out and the church growth movement will fizzle. Maybe that’s happening now, as the survey shows.
ericc · 01/29/2024 at 9:58 AM
𝐼𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑖𝑝 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ. 𝐴𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑥 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙, 𝑃𝑒𝑤’𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑟 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑟 ℎ𝑖𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑝𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑟𝑐 𝑖𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑡’𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑘𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒.
I expect it to go to 30-35% in the next ten to thirty years, but not higher. That’s the ‘none’ size of the current US 35-to-65 age group, and adults don’t really change their minds on big things all that much.
I think it’s doubtful we’ll get to Europe’s level of disbelief/disinterest…unless the Dems win loads of elections and do things like 1st payer healthcare and free preschool. Because IMO our religiosity is higher in part because churches provide a *practical* social value to many poor and minority USAians, and they won’t abandon that unless there is some alternate (i.e. state or federal) support system.
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 10:10 AM
I wouldn’t be surprised to see it jump from 30% to 50% or higher over less than 10 years… in about 10 years. I think that 50% of the country are already nones effectively. So it’s more about labeling than any change of belief.
San_Ban · 01/29/2024 at 6:23 PM
Non-theistic nones shouldn’t be congratulating ourselves nor celebrating the rise of Nones too soon. Who would you rather have as neighbours, colleagues, service providers, pols, voters — People who are nominally Christian/Muslim, etc but who act rationally and for the good, or wooists acting on their own brand of conspiracy theories or dismissal of science? A Baptist who vaccinates their kids or someone who trusts crystals or smoke to ward off disease?
Chris Peterson · 01/29/2024 at 8:46 PM
I don’t think that’s a very good argument. It’s not about individual cases, but about demographics. A lot more toxicity in our society is the product of religion (mainly Christianity) than it is those believing in some woo.
jfnavin · 01/29/2024 at 10:17 PM
“The Center estimates that in 2020, about 64% of Americans, including children, were Christian.” The Pew Center
But, folks, that isn’t accurate either. “Christian”? That is ridiculous. There are a handful of Christ’s disciples in America. (There were none once they murdered Him, except Mary M. his mom, John and perhaps a few others.) What few seem to appreciate is that people can identify or call themselves anything they want. Most people who would say they are christians or evangelicals or catholics, do not live for him. They do not pray to him, worship him, love him or seek him. Many of them follow guidelines in order to belong to a group. Christ Himself said most people would not really surrender and follow him. We would not obey him, or put him Him first in all we say and do. That’s how we would be able to distinguish real believers from others who play at some religious activity.
Gwen the Devout, patron saint of atheism · 02/02/2024 at 10:17 AM
So who exactly are these very few True Christians (TM) who you claim exist in America? (Let me guess: they all follow the same particular interpretation you do?) And how, exactly, do you go about determining which of the hundreds of Christianities out there is the REAL one?
Omnicrom · 02/14/2024 at 12:53 AM
And crickets.
OldManShadow · 01/31/2024 at 11:49 AM
They are bleeding members because they don’t have anything good or worthwhile to offer. All they offer is a culture that is centered in hierarchies long outdated and a denial of human rights and freedom.
They think that a good and perfect god would require ideological conformity instead of kindness.
They think that a good and perfect god would be exclusionary based on where you were born and into which religion you’re born.
They think they are righteous, but they are not.
They think their views of the Bible are correct when history and science show they are not. They ignore the cultural groundings of the Bible and the people it came from and the intent towards the people it was written to.
Proclaiming themselves to be wise, they have become fools.
They cannot even recognize a hideous antichrist in an ill-fitting suit and a bad spray tan. That’s how fucked up their moral compass is.
Gwen the Devout, patron saint of atheism · 02/02/2024 at 9:41 AM
I think his creepy colouring was actually the result of ill-advised experimentation with tanning booths in the ’80s.
khanhhho · 02/01/2024 at 7:47 PM
God, ehr, excuse me, His representatives need money, lots of it, to do His bidding and get rich in the process (on a side note, His bidding is always secondary). Cultural Christian or other, the mullah is good all the same.
jfnavin · 02/14/2024 at 1:29 AM
Not true.
DingoJack · 02/01/2024 at 9:05 PM
I wonder about the numbers of Quakers. Quakers are organized in way not really suitable for authoritarians. So, their growth/ decline would be interesting, compared to the much more authoritarian groups, such as the SBC.
Gwen the Devout, patron saint of atheism · 02/02/2024 at 10:31 AM
Like all Protestant denominations (which it is, having first popped up among dissenters in the C of E in the 17th century), Quakerism has declined a lot due to schism, with new variants popping up that are more or less Bible-fixated (i.e., fundie), in contrast to traditional Quakerism’s focus on the “inner light” in each human. Liberal Quakerism has survived, but its followers today are not very numerous. It has had an ongoing larger influence on society, notably through its founding of schools (mostly in the Northeast) which have a good reputation and are popular among liberal parents.
jfnavin · 02/06/2024 at 3:14 AM
“Since evangelicals have never figured out how to recruit and retain people who have no obligation to be part of their groups, all they can do is try to negate and vilify those who are leaving.”
God doesn’t. He waits and longs for his children to return and decides to throw a huge party when he sees one of them approaching from a great distance.