Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 25, 2024 / 17:55 pm (CNA).
Religiously unaffiliated people, often referred to as “nones,” now make up the largest religious category in the U.S., according to a new report by the Pew Research Center.
Pew’s new report, released Jan. 24, shows that nones now account for 28% of the total U.S. population, outstripping the next largest group, Catholics, who make up 20%.
The recent data is consistent with a long-term trend of Americans rejecting religious affiliation in growing numbers, with the percentage nearly doubling from 16% in 2007.
The rise of the nones has resulted in not only lessened religious participation but also a decrease in civic engagement with nones being less likely to vote, do volunteer work, or have strong friend groups or community, according to Pew.
What is a ‘none’?
Although nones do not ascribe to a particular church or religious group and are much less likely to attend church services, not all are atheists. Only 17% of nones identify as atheist, while 20% describe themselves as agnostic. The majority of nones, 63%, simply identify themselves as “nothing in particular.”
Most nones, 69%, do still believe in God, though only 13% of them believe in God as described in the Bible. Additionally, 49% of nones say they are spiritual or that spirituality is very important to them.
On average, nones are younger than religious people with 69% being under the age of 50 versus only 45% of religiously affiliated people being under 50.
While atheists and agnostics tend to have attained higher levels of education than religious people, persons in the “nothing in particular” category tend to have less education, with 27% having graduated college compared with 34% of religiously-affiliated people having completed college.
Most nones, 67%, cite disbelief and skepticism as their reason for not ascribing to a religion, according to Pew.
Just over half, 55%, say they are not religious because they don’t like religious organizations or have had bad experiences with religious people, while 44% say they don’t need religion or don’t have time for it.
What do they believe?
Nearly half of nones, 43%, believe that organized religion does more harm than good while over half, 56%, believe that science does more good than harm.
Even still, nones still show a great openness toward belief in the spiritual realm. Fifty-six percent of nones believe that there are limits to science and that there are some things science cannot explain. That is coupled with the fact that half of them say spirituality is very important to them and that many believe that animals and parts of nature, such as mountains and trees, have “spirits or spiritual energies.”
Most nones, 83%, say that the “desire to avoid hurting people” guides their morality, while 82% say that logic and reason also guide their moral compass.
Despite this, nones are significantly less likely to do volunteer work, with 17% saying they volunteered in the last year versus 27% of religious people saying they recently volunteered.
Nones are also significantly less likely to vote, with 39% of nones saying they participated in the 2022 election versus 51% of religious Americans.
Pew also says the nones are typically “less satisfied with their local communities and less satisfied with their social lives.”
What does this mean for the country and the Church?
Michael Pakaluk, a social research and business professor at the Catholic University of America, told CNA that Pew’s report “just touched the surface” on the impact the nones’ rise will have on society and that it “will not be good.”
He pointed to the fact that nones are “less engaged in their communities and in the project of appropriating civilization and passing it on” as especially worrisome.
“The popes have taught throughout the last century, ‘when we lose sight of the Creator we lose sight of the creature as well,’” he said.
Pakaluk said he believes the steady rise of people being religiously unaffiliated is a “direct consequence” of two things: “secularized education (including weak religious education at most religiously affiliated colleges and universities); and the trauma and poor example of divorce.”
Despite the dangers, Pakaluk said that this is a great time for evangelization.
“The fields are there and are ripe for the harvest,” he asserted. “People recognize that atheism is its own form of religion. It’s harsh and unattractive. Agnosticism was never widespread and has always been limited mainly to educated classes. If someone says, ‘nothing in particular,’ then in my view they are right back where the Church started, among pagan nations, and that is great for us, for evangelization.”
“We must pray fervently, on a daily basis, with an apostolic yearning to reach souls,” he went on. “Why? Because we want to share the joy that comes of knowing Christ, and we recognize that all of us need grace to live well.”
Religious education vital
Most nones in the U.S. were raised Christian yet now feel disconnected from religious institutions, according to Pew. In light of this, Pakaluk said that solid religious education is vital to reversing the trend.
“We need to be prudent about religious education, which must be simple, straightforward, and concrete,” he said.
Offering some practical tips for parents educating their children in the Catholic faith, Pakaluk said that “memorization is very important: sacraments, commandments, doctrines, Bible verses.”
“All effective catechisms have had a simple Q&A form, for recitation and memorization,” he said, adding that “the lives of saints and the drama of the history of the Church should have a central place.”
Scripture, too, Pakaluk said, must play a central role in Catholics educating their children.
“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” he said. “Catholics must know the Bible as well as the most devoted fundamentalist Protestants have known the Bible.”
When it comes to higher education, Pakaluk said that “Catholic parents should think twice, or three times, before they send their children to any colleges except faithful, vibrant, Catholic colleges.”
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It feels great to be ahead of the curve. All aboard the sane train! “Invisible but wants to be your buddy” is an axiomatic non-scenario, and even a 12 year-old can see this. You can keep telling yourselves this stuff is real, because you want it to be, because it makes you feel good, and because you’ve been telling yourselves it’s real for the past 2 thousand years, but it ain’t real. Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow, not in 10,000 years.
The crucifixion was an excellent example of “feel good.”
Some day, if you ever acquire a shred of wisdom, you will discover what an excellent proof for the existence of God exists in your need to be revolted by the idea.
Grow up. Why do you even post on this site? Are you a paid troll?
You can’t see air. It doesnt make it any less real. If I leave the room you are in and you can’t see me, I am as such “invisible”, but I am real nonetheless.
I would suggest that asking people to behave in a moral manner to avoid hurting others, or forbidding just taking what we want irrespective of consequence, is guaranteed not to feel good at times. It doesnt make it less right. In general, encouraging people to be mindful of others feelings, wants and needs, within moral reason, can only improve society. What we have seen the last few years of people engaging in riot, mob theft, and outright hate and bigotry, are SECULAR values. The value of “me first”. Ask yourself if society is now better off for those “values” having overwhelmed society?? My vote is no. I’ll stick with the invisible God and His rules for living, thanks.
You can keep telling yourself that this stuff isn’t real, because you don’t want it to be, because it makes you feel good, and because you’ve been telling yourself it isn’t real for the past 2000 years, but it is real, yesterday, today, tomorrow, and in 10,000 years.
The discontent with which you speak can only be provoked by the successful repression of a conscience unable to overcome a denial of a reality needing sustained weakness as a man to ignore. Patronizing anger is always driven by desperation.
Athanasius:
No, not paid. I have an axe to grind with this fraud.
LJ:
Incorrect, you CAN see air. You can see it blowing the branches of a tree. You can see it filling a balloon. You can weigh it. You can measure it. You can detect it. Can you MEASURE or DETECT God? No, hence the reason your analogy is nonsensical, but I guess you could blame your confusion on me for using the word “invisible” instead of “undetectable”, since there is a crisp distinction there.
Edward J Baker:
“Some day, if you ever acquire a shred of wisdom, you will discover what an excellent proof for the existence of God exists in your need to be revolted by the idea.”
So in other words, God is self-proving because of YOUR perception that I am revolted by the idea of God? I truly believe you are capable of a slightly more logical thought process than that. Let’s just help you out by pointing out the very first problem with this “proof”: you would first and foremost be subjected to all of its variations. For example, we could say that your disbelief (or revulsion) of the idea of Allah/Islam PROVES that it’s true. See? That’s stupid. Next, I’ll mention that you are misunderstanding what the ACTUAL revulsion is about… my revulsion is against “trust me bro” or “my truth” or “8000 mutually-exclusive religions backed only by – trust me bro”. That is what’s revolting, not God, because we haven’t even gotten far enough to be able to consider God as a remotely coherent concept in the first place. But anyway, I appreciate you sharing your fringe, minority viewpoint. It’s certainly fascinating.
Your attempts to refute a premise you cannot grasp are devoid of any sense of logic. You repeatedly commit here and in your history of comments, especially when you comment on scientific matters, the fallacy of the undistributed middle, which boils down to a failure to make rational distinctions. Nowhere in my comment was it implicit that contempt for any idea implies its necessary existence. Just one specific idea in particular. Is this too much to comprehend? By the way, as a real scientist, your past comments on science are simply off the wall false.
Somewhat encouraging to read that “nones still show a great openness toward belief in the spiritual realm.”
Usually as in, I’m “spiritual,” but not religious….Yours truly has proposed that the new post-Christian religion, then, is the new trinity of Evolutionism, Technocracy and, in place of the Logos, the logic of a digital and ultimately Random Universe. (See book interview for “A GENERATION ABANDONED at https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/29/a-generation-abandoned-why-whatever-is-not-enough/
THIS from the book:
“In a Seattle museum one display is the front-page from when the State of Washington in 1970 approved abortion by popular vote (the first time ever). Next to it is a second display. This one reports that in 1994 a Seattle firm became the manufacturer of ultrasound. The text reports that this University of Washington invention has ‘saved countless lives.’ Shown is an ultrasound image (sonogram) of a real child in the womb, but our value-neutral junior-high-school students breeze past the second display without perceiving any contradiction [!!!] at all. Only this: ‘that’s cool, really neat’.”
AND, about the nones’ admitted limits of science, how about unquestioned predispositions (!), first, in the pre-scientific Galileo Incident where a view of the outer universe through the telescope was declined—and today, where the facts of unborn inner universes visible from ultrasound and fiber optics (science!) are withheld from mothers? About (Pakaluk’s) worthy call to restore education, what first might be needed is cult “deprogramming”…
AND, beyond the national picture and the none’s rejection of organized religion in favor of blending nature and spirituality, there’s now the global and even existential problem:
“Islam [too!] has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending [!] of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism, war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate. In more general terms, Islam proposed a blending [!] of the spiritual and the temporal worlds […]” (lay theologian Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965).
This isn’t necessarily bad news. It means that perhaps we can have a reset and reach out to people who aren’t laden down with “Church baggage”. I help with RCIA at my parish and the adults there are blessedly ignorant of the pre/post Vatican 2 battles, liturgy wars or anything like that. They are mostly blank slates who are truly open to the Gospel. It’s actually refreshing. Let’s not mess this opportunity up.
He notes that divorce culture is part of the problem, but does not suggest (or at least the article does not mention it) that parents figure out a way to make their marriages work. Most unfortunate.
“Nones” who have any familiarity at all with traditional Church teaching on human sexuality and with the Catholic commitment to remaining loyal to the teaching that the Holy Spirit has preserved in the Church for twenty centuries — loyal regardless of popular, worldly thinking of the times ++ are not being drawn to Catholicism by Bergoglio’s Vatican.
And so things will continue to go so long as the religion stays stuck in its modern rut of only an ethnic/cultural/ritual club unable anymore to teach people how to positively concretely experience God so that they can KNOW God and KNOW God is real. When the people inside the Church are no different than those outside, why should anyone wish to be inside? The institutional Church has given up on and forgotten those deepest yearnings of the human heart, to be one with God.
Today it’s 99 of the sheep who are lost and the shepherd spends all his time with the one in the church. Perhaps we should go out and rescue a few of the 99.
So true
I grew up with the Baltimore Catechism. We learned something – lots of things –
sacraments, the commandments, the church, the works of mercy, etc. One question I well remember was”Why did God make me?” At the age of 8, we were already being told the purpose of our lives. We would not be 40 years old someday wondering “what’s it all about? Why am I here?”
When I see the religious education materials my grandchildren get, I am appalled.
Mush, as if the children are to delicate to learn simple straight facts. Since Vatican II it seems that the church in this country has been on a dumbing down mission.
I try to educate my grandchildren on these questions. And I give them a copy of The
New Saint Joseph Catechism, an updated and illustrated version of the original.
Many of the questions are the same. I also talk to them about the Scriptures, the saints, the rosary. And I give them appropriate books. Along with the usual Christmas gifts, a religious item is also always included.
Evangelization must start early – and giving up is out of the question!
The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, from the Catholic Book Publishing Corp.
Can anyone name for me one distinctly concrete improvement that has resulted from any one of the plethora of surveys that we’ve been subjected to in the past 50 years? Just name one.
Yes, the urgency of your commentary and other faithful Catholics understanding the dire state of the Church.
Edward, I can only speak for myself. To realize the morass of the Church I do not need a survey. I simply open my metaphorical eyes.
Deacon…here is at least one positive change/initiative that came from a poll…there are many more.
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/us-bishops-overwhelmingly-endorse-eucharistic-statement-and-revival-campaign
“Even still, nones still show a great openness toward belief in the spiritual realm”. Most have as their moral guide, Avoid doing evil towards others. A golden rule, for the None who has jettisoned faith in Christ, most often diluted into rationalization in condoning evil.
Added challenge is as Harry says, that the current pontificate diminishes moral judgment in favor of unprincipled acceptance as in AL, FS. Yes. As CNA’s Peter Pinedo alludes there’s a rich harvest out there. The enormous challenge is penetrating minds sedated by drugs and years of critical thinking theory. Theory based on false premises regarding conscience and the apprehension of truth. A deeply spiritual, unmitigated presentation of faith in the bloodied God man on the cross might touch a nerve.
Religion is faith in “Revelation”. Philosophy is the result of human reflections. No matter how great, philosophy is not religion. Religion includes acceptance of “Mysteries”, beyond our human rational mind.
Michel, agreed with your understanding of religion and mystery, faith in revelation. Although there is in faith an apprehension insofar as the will is drawn by what it apprehends in Christ, who reveals God in a manner accessible to us. Philosophy is, in its finest etymological description, love of wisdom. A reasoned pursuit for truth. God, our conclusion that God exists is acquired by reason. Whereas the mystery of Christ is realized by faith, faith as the Apostle says is evidence of what we hope for. What is it then that draws us to Christ and renders faith in that which we hope for? If not a gift, the knowledge of an incomprehensible exquisite love.
Father Peter Morello, thank you for your post and please allow me to clarify my “understanding” of faith and evidence with an analogy. I live in Canada and have never been to Australia. I do believe that Australia exists, I have faith in Australia’s existence. And if I was to go to Australia, I would then have evidence of Australia’s existence. (As the Lord said to Thomas “You believe because you can see me. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” John 20:29 ). My faith is a gift from God, a gift I received freely and I have to freely share. No philosophical argument could shake my faith. It is a “nano-mystery”. In reading the Bible, I see the struggle of the prophet Jeremiah asking God “Why me, why me?”and I feel justified asking God, the same question, without however, ever setting a timeline for the answer
‘Nones’ now largest religious category in U.S.”
I can’t imagine why?
The eradication, essentially, of religious life, the Catholic school system and accurate catechesis was deliberate and in the service of an atheistic enterprise. By far those in the Church who enthusiastically followed the current of the mid-century council did not understand what was happening. Although they had doubts they did not articulate them with any fervor.
Anyone who did not live in the pre-conciliar Church cannot grasp what has been lost, but we do live with the consequences from the existential angst of our youth to the faithless, unbalanced cognitive engagement with reality in the Vatican.
Were revisions in ecclesial life required at that time? Yes, but the project was commandeered by the nefarious, and even wise and holy men and women with the very best of intentions were blindsided.
We have a lot of work ahead of us. It begins by being well informed of the mysteries of the faith, and a willingness to render the adult “no” when one perceives themself as being manipulated by nefarious characters in a collar.
Just because some people have described ‘nones’ as spiritual and religious, does not make it so. In fact, no religion has ‘spiritual’ content. Emotion based assertions that some ‘spiritual’ feeling or force is in play are never found in religions works. The content of religions are respected stories known for their insight into aspects of human life in creation. These stories provide non-emotional and non-spiritual understandings, alone.
Not surprised by the increase of % of “Nones”. We are encouraged, through advertisement to spend more, We are encouraged at work to focus on productivity. Religion, not being mentioned, is no longer a priority and soon if not already part of our culture. Have we selected to serve $ as we can’t serve two masters?
For me, spirituality is a feeling that the material world can’t fulfill all our human needs and aspirations and therefore spirituality, by definition, is neither scientific nor rational, but holistically emotional.It complement our consciousness with some form of meditation (Active, developing)and contemplation, (Passive, absorbing what meditation has developed)It acknowledge that we do not have all the answers to the questions we ask ourselves. It is a faith in an optimistic look at life. It is not a philosophy, yet it impacts life and behaviour.
I suggest you visit http://www.mysticprayer.blogspot.com in order to inform yourself better as to what authentic orthodox spiritualism consists, and it is NOT emotionalism. This is a non-commercial blog with zero profit motive or anything to sell.
Thank you, I will
We are all nones for periods of times as we walk the faith journey
I did. Very interesting. I am always hungry for other expressions of thought. Incidentally, a “holistically emotional” experience has nothing to do with “emotionalism”. It depicts a state of open and sincere mind,ready to engage in meditation with my slow and limited intellect. Then will come the contemplation of the subject of my meditation. There is a very rich tradition of spirituality in Christianity. Origen, a doctor of the Church involved spirituality, meditation and contemplation in his reading of the Bible.