Pew study on the "religiously unaffiliated"

[LA Ute]

Dan Gilgoff, the religion writer for U.S. News, had written that Americans with "no religious tradition" is the fastest-growing faith demographic. It's a very interesting piece.

Now he's followed up with a piece about a new Pew survey:

It turns out that the explosion in the number of Americans who identify with no religious tradition doesn't mean there's been an explosion in faithlessness.

In fact, a new Pew survey finds that most Americans who were raised in religiously unaffiliated homes now belong to one religious tradition or another. And only a distinct minority of those who've left organized religion say that modern science has disproved religion, as many atheists believe.

While the religiously unaffiliated are the fastest growing segment of the American faith landscape, they also have pretty low retention rates.

The Pew survey is fascinating to those who (like me) like to sift polling data. Gilgoff goes on:

But all that may be misleading. . . . [T]he Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life challenges the conventional portrait of America's unchurched as a burgeoning society of proud secularists, atheists, and agnostics. Yes, the religiously unaffiliated are the fastest-growing religious group, the survey reports, accounting for nearly 1 in 6 Americans. But it turns out that the unaffiliated are much less antagonistic toward religion than previously thought. . . .

"There's this naive secularization theory that says when somebody becomes unaffiliated, they stay there because they've become adults and found that religion is silly," says Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion professor who analyzed the Pew survey. "But it turns out that you call them back the next year and they've joined a Lutheran church. They were just looking for the right fit."

I'm not sure how many conclusions we can draw from this survey (I am sure Seattle will step forward and make some anti-religion pronouncements about that), but it does seem that there is not much of a trend among Americans, as a general matter, toward giving up on religion.

[I.J. Reilly]

From what I've sifted through of this stuff it seems that the irreligious only seem to be more honest and open about it. Those that never went to church continue not to go to church and those that go to church seem to continue. While the irreligious numbers have gone up the church attendance numbers haven't really shifted at all in 20 years. It's more acceptable now to claim no religion at all but that doesn't necessarily mean that there are less people out there who lack faith in God.

[SeattleUte]

Dan Gilgoff, the religion writer for U.S. News, had written that Americans with "no religious tradition" is the fastest-growing faith demographic. It's a very interesting piece.

Now he's followed up with a piece about a new Pew survey:

It turns out that the explosion in the number of Americans who identify with no religious tradition doesn't mean there's been an explosion in faithlessness.

In fact, a new Pew survey finds that most Americans who were raised in religiously unaffiliated homes now belong to one religious tradition or another. And only a distinct minority of those who've left organized religion say that modern science has disproved religion, as many atheists believe.

While the religiously unaffiliated are the fastest growing segment of the American faith landscape, they also have pretty low retention rates.

The Pew survey is fascinating to those who (like me) like to sift polling data. Gilgoff goes on:

But all that may be misleading. . . . [T]he Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life challenges the conventional portrait of America's unchurched as a burgeoning society of proud secularists, atheists, and agnostics. Yes, the religiously unaffiliated are the fastest-growing religious group, the survey reports, accounting for nearly 1 in 6 Americans. But it turns out that the unaffiliated are much less antagonistic toward religion than previously thought. . . .

"There's this naive secularization theory that says when somebody becomes unaffiliated, they stay there because they've become adults and found that religion is silly," says Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion professor who analyzed the Pew survey. "But it turns out that you call them back the next year and they've joined a Lutheran church. They were just looking for the right fit."

I'm not sure how many conclusions we can draw from this survey (I am sure Seattle will step forward and make some anti-religion pronouncements about that), but it does seem that there is not much of a trend among Americans, as a general matter, toward giving up on religion.

I'm sure the respondents have a looser definition of "religion" than you have. Also, "atheist" is about the most misunderstood word in our language. Finderson has only clouded the issue with his posts here.

[LA Ute]

I'm sure the respondents have a looser definition of "religion" than you have. Also, "atheist" is about the most misunderstood word in our language. Finderson has only clouded the issue with his posts here.

Well, that's one way to analyze a poll-- make up assumptions about how the respondents saw the questions. Where's the intellectualy rigorous SU we all know?

[RobinFinderson]

I'm sure the respondents have a looser definition of "religion" than you have. Also, "atheist" is about the most misunderstood word in our language. Finderson has only clouded the issue with his posts here.

An atheist is simply someone who does not believe in the existence of god(s). What is cloudy about that?

[RobinFinderson]

Ultimately what is going on: The United States is not in the same thrall of religion in which it used to be. There is a strong shift in the country over what religion is. People are abandoning the literal belief that religion is the gateway to our salvation, and instead they are viewing religion as culture and community. We've seen this here on CUF where we have good active members of the LDS faith who don't care if the Book of Mormon is fictional. This widespread shift in our collective view of religion has created space for a new breed of proselytizing atheists. It isn't the appeal of atheism which is driving this. Atheism has simply become a socially acceptable choice in the new religious paradigm. But whether we are talking about rank and file Mormons (not Sunstone types) who don't care about the historicity of the BOM, or the expanding popularity of atheism, these are both fruits of the same cultural current. America no longer expects religion to explain reality.

[LA Ute]

Ultimately what is going on: The United States is not in the same thrall of religion in which it used to be. There is a strong shift in the country over what religion is. People are abandoning the literal belief that religion is the gateway to our salvation, and instead they are viewing religion as culture and community. We've seen this here on CUF where we have good active members of the LDS faith who don't care if the Book of Mormon is fictional. This widespread shift in our collective view of religion has created space for a new breed of proselytizing atheists. It isn't the appeal of atheism which is driving this. Atheism has simply become a socially acceptable choice in the new religious paradigm. But whether we are talking about rank and file Mormons (not Sunstone types) who don't care about the historicity of the BOM, or the expanding popularity of atheism, these are both fruits of the same cultural current. America no longer expects religion to explain reality.

That's all great theory, but there's no evidence in that Pew poll to support what you are saying. Or am I just missing it?

[All-American]

Ultimately what is going on: The United States is not in the same thrall of religion in which it used to be. There is a strong shift in the country over what religion is. People are abandoning the literal belief that religion is the gateway to our salvation, and instead they are viewing religion as culture and community. We've seen this here on CUF where we have good active members of the LDS faith who don't care if the Book of Mormon is fictional. This widespread shift in our collective view of religion has created space for a new breed of proselytizing atheists. It isn't the appeal of atheism which is driving this. Atheism has simply become a socially acceptable choice in the new religious paradigm. But whether we are talking about rank and file Mormons (not Sunstone types) who don't care about the historicity of the BOM, or the expanding popularity of atheism, these are both fruits of the same cultural current. America no longer expects religion to explain reality.

I think you're just clouding the issue.

[RobinFinderson]

That's all great theory, but there's no evidence in that Pew poll to support what you are saying. Or am I just missing it?

The poll is skirting around the issue. I'm just cutting to the chase. You're welcome.

[LA Ute]

The poll is skirting around the issue. I'm just cutting to the chase. You're welcome.

What?? I saw nothing in that poll about chasing skirts. . . .

More cloudng of the issue . . . . Come on, SU, tell us what this is all about.

[SeattleUte]

An atheist is simply someone who does not believe in the existence of god(s). What is cloudy about that?

Technically you are correct as far as that statement goes. Atheism really doesn't entail belief of any kind. It's absense of belief. I see it as a way to define yourself more than anything else. I'm as atheist as anyone, but I don't choose to call myself that (partly but not wholly because it would upset my wife).

A hundred years ago I certainly would have been called an atheist because unbelief in the historicity of the Bible including the miracles qualified you to be called that in popular usage. As I noted, "atheist" and "religious" don't mean the same thing they used to and therein appears to lie the fatal flaw in the poll. Conclusory semantics. I could call myself religious as easily as I could call myself an atheist in answering that poll. It might just depend on what side of the bed I woke up on that day. And LAUTe thinks I'm a clost hedgehog! I am certainly not indecisive about my "beliefs," or absense thereof, I assure you.

If you read the popular atheists' recent publications all they are really doing is making arrguments that have been around for thousands of years against the Judeo-Christian type of God. They define their unbelief in terms of the God that they grew up with. That is the straw man they attack.

If you press a self-proclaimed atheist who is reflective you find out that atheists and agnostics and materialists are the same thing. Richard Dawkins does not pretend to know what happened before the Big Bang. "Atheists" are simply rigorous empiricists who choose not to "believe" what cannot be preceived with the senses or cannot be discerned through some combination of sensual experience and reason, and who choose to define themselves as atheists.

[SeattleUte]

Ultimately what is going on: The United States is not in the same thrall of religion in which it used to be. There is a strong shift in the country over what religion is. People are abandoning the literal belief that religion is the gateway to our salvation, and instead they are viewing religion as culture and community. We've seen this here on CUF where we have good active members of the LDS faith who don't care if the Book of Mormon is fictional. This widespread shift in our collective view of religion has created space for a new breed of proselytizing atheists. It isn't the appeal of atheism which is driving this. Atheism has simply become a socially acceptable choice in the new religious paradigm. But whether we are talking about rank and file Mormons (not Sunstone types) who don't care about the historicity of the BOM, or the expanding popularity of atheism, these are both fruits of the same cultural current. America no longer expects religion to explain reality.

I agree with this completely. We are saying much the same thing though I did not read this post until after I'd written mine. Bottom line is that things have changed because though people 100 years ago might have answered the poll much the same as today, they would in their minds be defining "religious" and "atheist" radically different from how most people do today.