Between one-third and one-half of all “nones” are atheist or agnostic in orientation, and about a quarter believe in a “higher power,” while only about 20 percent believe in a “personal God.” So the rise of irreligion also means a simultaneous rise of atheism and agnosticism as well, something the Harris Poll has been documenting in recent years. Indeed, somewhere between 9 percent and 21 percent of Americans are now atheist or agnostic—the highest rates of nonbelief ever seen in U.S. history.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans currently claim not to practice any religion, with 22 percent specifically stating that that religion is “not a factor” in their lives.
Rates of secularity are markedly stronger among younger Americans: 32 percent of Americans under age thirty are religiously unaffiliated. This is a significant change from a few decades ago. In the 1980s there were twice as many evangelical Americans in their twenties than there were “nones,” but today we find just the opposite: twenty-something “nones” now outnumber twenty-something evangelicals by a ratio of two to one.
The vast majority of nonreligious Americans are content with their current identity; among those men and women today who now claim “none” as their religion, nearly 90 percent say they have no interest in looking for a religion that might be right for them.
Sally: Religious, Secular, or Neither?
While the numbers, percentages, and statistics above certainly indicate a significant growth of secularity in many parts of the world, as well as here in America, they don’t properly illustrate, accurately designate, or successfully capture the undeniably pervasive reality that is Sally.
Sally LaConte is in her mid-forties. She enjoys ceramics, jewelry making, and Chowhound.com. Sally is from Ohio. Her husband, Dale, is an unapologetic atheist; he doesn’t believe in God, he has no interest in religion, and he is annoyed every time their son’s Little League baseball game begins with a group prayer. Sally is certainly secular, but at the same time, she’s definitely not an atheist—not like her husband, anyway. That is, while she doesn’t identify with a religion per se, she’s also not completely this-worldly in her outlook.
Sally was raised Catholic, but she rejected that tradition long ago, and she and her husband have raised their kids without any religious involvement whatsoever. Her kids are “nothings,” as Sally likes to offhandedly joke. It is a joke, I sense, that evokes both pride and shame. On the one hand, Sally is proud that her kids are not shackled by beliefs she finds problematic. She is also proud that they haven’t had a label of some religion or denomination foisted upon them; they are just themselves, their own individuals. But there is also a hint of worry or self-doubt in Sally’s laugh as she describes her kids as “nothings.” Similar to Jill, whom we met in the introduction, Sally worries that maybe she is being negligent as a parent by not raising them within an established religious tradition, like so many of the other kids in the neighborhood.
In responding to this worry, I said to Sally, “Why not just say that they are ‘secular humanists’?” Her reply: “Then I’d have to explain to people what the heck that even is. I’m not even so sure myself.” Fair enough.
Although Sally is nonreligious and doesn’t raise her kids with religion, her secularity is not absolute. It is not clear-cut. For in her heart of hearts, Sally does believe. In God? Well, that depends on what you mean by “God.” The term itself is not without its difficulties for her. She definitely does not believe in the God of Catholicism. Rather, she will say that she believes in something. What she associates with this something are concepts like love, hope, infinity, transcendence. And although religion is not at all a part of her daily life, she does have a small stash of assorted angels that she adores, which she displays with pride as part of her household decorations every Christmas. The point here is that Sally is like millions of Americans: not religious, but not totally secular either.
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CLEARLY, NOT EVERYONE fits into a perfect little box labeled “atheist” or “Christian” or “secular” or “religious.” Such categories are seldom, if ever, airtight. More often than not, they blend and bleed into one another. It is messy. Most religious people are secular in certain respects, and most secular people are religious in certain respects. Many scholars recognize this complexity, and they have concocted a plethora of terms to try to capture the messiness.
For example, sociologist David Voas speaks of “fuzzy fidelists”—people who are not adherents of a given religious tradition and yet do maintain a variety of supernatural beliefs. These might be people who eschew the Christianity of their parents but believe in ghosts or reincarnation. They might be people who were raised secular, and still consider themselves secular, and yet believe in karma as an actual spiritual, cosmic reality pervading the universe. In other words, they aren’t religious in any traditional sense, and yet they also aren’t absolute rationalist, empiricist, skeptical atheists either. And Robert Putnam talks about “liminals”—people who are “betwixt and between” a religious and secular identity, standing halfway in and halfway out of a given religious/irreligious identity. They occupy that “gray” space, not feeling religious or self-identifying as a believer, and yet simultaneously not feeling wholly secular or identifying as a bona fide agnostic or convinced atheist.
To add yet another type into the mix, Grace Davie has recognized the existence of people whom we could classify as “believing without belonging”—that is, folks who maintain personal religious beliefs but eschew religious involvement. These are men and women who, if asked in a survey, “Are you religious?” will most likely say, “No.” And if asked, “What is your religion?” they’ll probably say, “None.” And yet if asked, “Do you believe in God?” they will say, “Yes.” There are quite a lot of just such believers who don’t belong to any church, synagogue, or mosque. And yet, conversely, there are just as many people out there, and maybe even more, who actually “belong without believing”; that is, folks who are active in religious congregational life, identify with a given religious tradition, and yet don’t actually believe in God—or anything supernatural—at all. As my father likes to joke, “Shlomo goes to synagogue to talk to God. I go to synagogue to talk to Shlomo.” I even personally know some actual pastors of religious congregations who, when pushed during a private conversation over a beer, will admit that they don’t actually believe in God, or Jesus, or heaven, or hell. Yet they preach these things to their flocks nonetheless. So what are we to make of such belongers who don’t believe? Are they religious or secular? Hard to say.
And closely related to this last type of people who belong but do not believe are the many men and women out there who could accurately be described as “culturally religious”—people who readily identify as being “Lutheran” or “Catholic” or “Muslim” in a sort of ethnic or heritage sense, but don’t actually believe in any of the supernatural tenets or articles of faith of their religious tradition. They don’t belong to a religious congregation, they don’t believe in (or even necessarily know) the specific tenets, creeds, or dogmas of their religion, and yet if asked, “What are you?” will still identify as “Episcopalian” or “Christian” or “Sunni.”
And then there are also those whom the philosopher John Shook has characterized as “apatheists”—people who, when it comes to the God question, just don’t really care. They are usually apathetic, indifferent. Got other things on their mind.
And finally, there are various types of apostates—people who were once religious but are no longer, having rejected the religion they once adhered to.
Thus the simple binary of religious/secular won’t do—at least not in the real world. So one useful way to conceive of the complexity of actual lived religiosity and secularity—and this schema has been developed by anthropologist Frank Pasquale—is to consider religiosity and secularity as existing on an imagined continuum, such as a ten-point scale. At one end of the spectrum (at number 1), are people who are totally, thoroughly, and completely religious
in all aspects we might think of—from belief to behavior to self-identification. Think of a Buddhist monk who meditates eighteen hours a day in seclusion. Or a deeply pious nun who does little else other than pray, fast, study the Bible, and tend to the tasks of the cloister. They might be a 1. At the other end of the spectrum (at number 10), are people who are totally, thoroughly, and completely secular in all conceivable aspects. It is harder to come up with an obvious, readily familiar example of a completely secular existence. But perhaps you can think of a kindergarten teacher who loves dogs, collects old records, and has never felt a religious impulse or experienced a religious ritual or pondered a religious thought in his lifetime. He might be a 10. But the key thing to remember is that precious few people are complete 1s or 10s. Most are somewhere in between, perhaps leaning more toward one end of the spectrum than the other, and even veering in different directions at different times throughout the course of their lives.
And yet what is apparent today, and what largely underlies the very writing of this book, is that—as the statistics presented earlier reveal—more and more people are now veering more closely toward the secular end of the continuum than ever before. As social psychologists Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer have succinctly put it, “The ‘unreligious’ are swelling in number faster than any religious group.”
Sally is actually a perfect illustration of this recent societal process of secularization. Sally’s great-grandparents, immigrants from Italy, were utterly devout in all respects, with nary a secular bone in their bodies. Her grandparents were also religious, but much less so; less church-attending, less sin-confessing, less Mary-loving. Her parents were even less religious than they were. And now we get to Sally, who is no longer Catholic, never attends church, didn’t baptize her babies, and doesn’t even believe in the concept of “sin.” Although definitely not an atheist, she is still far less religiously involved and much less faithful than either her grandparents or parents were. In terms of her overall worldview, she has more in common with her nonbelieving husband than her local priest. And we can only surmise how Sally’s kids will turn out—her “nothings,” who have been raised with virtually no religion at all, save for their mom’s angel collection that decorates the house at Christmastime.
Causes
What is going on? How do we explain this recent wave of secularization that is washing over not only Sally LaConte’s family but so much of America as well?
The answer to these questions is actually much less theological or philosophical than one might think. It is simply not the case that in recent years tens of millions of Americans have suddenly started doubting the cosmological or ontological arguments for the existence of God, or that hundreds of thousands of other Americans have miraculously embraced the atheistic naturalism of Denis Diderot. Sure, this may be happening here and there, in this or that dorm room or on this or that Tumblr page. The best-sellers written by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris—as well as the irreverent impiety and flagrant mockery of religion by the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, House, South Park, and Family Guy—have had some impact on American culture. As we have seen, a steady, incremental uptick of philosophical atheism and agnosticism is discernible in America in recent years. But the larger reality is that for the many millions of Americans who have joined the ranks of the nonreligious, the causes are most likely to be political and sociological in nature.
For starters, we can begin with the presence of the religious right, and the backlash it has engendered. Beginning in the 1980s, with the rise of such groups as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the closeness of conservative Republicanism with evangelical Christianity has been increasingly tight and publicly overt. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, more and more politicians on the right embraced the conservative Christian agenda, and more and more outspoken conservative Christians allied themselves with the Republican Party. Examples abound, from Michele Bachmann to Ann Coulter, from Mike Huckabee to Pat Robertson, and from Rick Santorum to James Dobson. With an emphasis on seeking to make abortion illegal, fighting against gay rights (particularly gay marriage), supporting prayer in schools, advocating “abstinence only” sex education, opposing stem cell research, curtailing welfare spending, supporting Israel, opposing gun control, and celebrating the war on terrorism, conservative Christians have found a warm welcome within the Republican Party, which has been clear about its openness to the conservative Christian agenda. This was most pronounced during the eight years that George W. Bush was in the White House.
What all of this this has done is alienate a lot of left-leaning or politically moderate Americans from Christianity. Sociologists Michael Hout and Claude Fischer have published compelling research indicating that much of the growth of “nones” in America is largely attributable to a reaction against this increased, overt mixing of Christianity and conservative politics. The rise of irreligion has been partially related to the fact that lots of people who had weak or limited attachments to religion and were either moderate or liberal politically found themselves at odds with the conservative political agenda of the Christian right and thus reacted by severing their already somewhat weak attachment to religion. Or as sociologist Mark Chaves puts it, “After 1990 more people thought that saying you were religious was tantamount to saying you were a conservative Republican. So people who are not Republicans now are more likely to say that they have no religion.”
A second factor that helps account for the recent rise of secularity in America is the devastation of, and reaction against, the Catholic Church’s pedophile priest scandal. For decades the higher-ups in the Catholic Church were reassigning known sexual predators to remote parishes rather than having them arrested and prosecuted. Those men in authority thus engaged in willful cover-ups, brash lawbreaking, and the aggressive slandering of accusers—and all with utter impunity. The extent of this criminality is hard to exaggerate: over six thousand priests have now been credibly implicated in some form of sex abuse, five hundred have been jailed, and more victims have been made known than one can imagine. After the extent of the crimes—the rapes and molestations as well as the cover-ups—became widely publicized, many Americans, and many Catholics specifically, were disgusted. Not only were the actual sexual crimes themselves morally abhorrent, but the degree to which those in positions of power sought to cover up these crimes and allow them to continue was truly shocking. The result has been clear: a lot of Catholics have become ex-Catholics. For example, consider the situation in New England. Between 2000 and 2010, the Catholic Church lost 28 percent of its members in New Hampshire and 33 percent of its members in Maine, and closed nearly seventy parishes—a quarter of the total number—throughout the Boston area. In 1990, 54 percent of Massachusetts residents identified as Catholic, but it was down to 39 percent in 2008. And according to an “American Values” survey from 2012, although nearly one-third of Americans report being raised Catholic, only 22 percent currently identify as such—a precipitous nationwide decline indeed.
Of course, the negative reaction against the religious right and the Catholic pedophile scandal both have to do explicitly with religion. But a very important third possible factor that may also account for the recent rise of secularity has nothing to do with religion. It is something utterly sociological: the dramatic increase of women in the paid labor force. British historian Callum Brown was the first to recognize this interesting correlation: when more and more women work outside the home, their religious involvement—as well as that of their families—tends to diminish. Brown rightly argues that it has been women who have historically kept their children and husbands interested and involved in religion. Then, starting in the 1960s, when more and more British women starting earning an income through work outside the home, their interest in—or time and energy for—religious involvement waned. And as women grew less religious, their husbands and children followed suit. We’ve seen a similar pattern in many other European nations, especial
ly in Scandinavia: Denmark and Sweden have the lowest levels of church attendance in the world, and simultaneously, Danish and Swedish women have among the highest rates of outside-the-home employment of any women in the world. And the data shows a similar trajectory here in America. Back in the 1960s, only 11 percent of American households relied on a mother as their biggest or sole source of income. Today, more than 40 percent of American families are in such a situation. Thus it may very well be that as a significantly higher percentage of American moms earn a living in the paid labor force, their enthusiasm for and engagement with religion is being sapped, and that’s playing a role in the broader secularization of our country.
Additional Factors
In addition to the above factors—the reaction against the overt mingling of religion and conservative/right-wing politics, the reaction against the Catholic priest pedophile scandal, and the increase of women in the paid labor force—I would add two more possibilities concerning what might also be at least partial contributors to the recent rise of irreligion in America: the greater acceptance of homosexuality in American culture and the ubiquity of the Internet.
Since the days of Stonewall and Harvey Milk, more and more Americans have come to accept homosexuality as a normal, legitimate form of love and pairing. For many, acceptance of homosexuals simply boils down to a matter of fairness, civil rights, and equality before the law. The overall stigmatization of homosexuality has weakened significantly in recent decades. We see that those Americans who continue to malign homosexuality as sinful or immoral, and who continue to fight against gay rights, do so exclusively from a religious vantage point. And it is turning some people off religion. In my previous book, Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion, which was based on in-depth interviews with Americans who were once religious but are no longer, I found that many of those who have walked away from their religion in recent years have done so as a direct consequence of and reaction against their respective religious tradition’s continued condemnation and stigmatization of gays and lesbians. The fact that Americans today between the ages of eighteen and thirty are the generation most accepting of homosexuality in the nation’s history, and are simultaneously those least interested in being religious—and the fact that the states that have legalized gay marriage tend to be among the most secular—might be coincidental, but I highly doubt it.
Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions Page 7