Understanding the Nones: Those Who Say They Have No Religious Affiliation
Fellows engage in discussion during the session
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The single fastest-growing religious group is made up of those who do not belong to, or do not identify with, any established religion. These so-called “nones” still cultivate spiritual lives and believe a certain level of spirituality is consequential to public life, even though they do not go to any specific church, temple or mosque.
Patricia O’Connell Killen, a professor of American religious history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., and Mark Shibley, an associate professor of sociology at Southern Oregon University, presented three hypotheses to explain this trend:
- Secularization, or the progressive loss of belief;
- Demographic shifts away from religious tradition; and
- Political reasons, such as liberals leaving the church in response to the Christian Right ascendance.
The percentage of those who said they had no religious preference doubled in the 1990s, from 7 to 14%. Only a small number of “nones” can be classified as atheist or agnostic, however. While “nones” are on the rise, no corresponding drop has occurred in the percentage of the population that believes in God or an afterlife. In fact, people continue to cultivate their spiritual lives, regardless of their distaste for organized religion.
Killen and Shibley also noted that fewer people in the west, particularly the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington and Alaska), identify or belong to a traditional religious institution. One-quarter of all Americans identify but don’t affiliate with a religious tradition and more than one-third of all Northwestern residents are in this “gap group” of nonparticipation.
Killen and Shibley theorized that the reasons there are more “nones” in the west are that most people who aren’t participating in religious institutions never did before anyway; waves of immigrants and boom-and-bust economic fortunes are shaping religion stories; no dominant religious reference group is conventionally understood; and, the Northwest contains many idiosyncratic backwater or bellwether regions. Moreover, a deep-seated American tradition dating back to the settlers holds that those who move west do so to break with their former selves and reinvent their lives.
Killen and Shibley pointed to what they tem as a “new spirituality”: apocalyptic, antigovernment millennialism (i.e. “survivalists") and nature religion ("New Age"). These key alternatives to formal religious affiliation include concepts and devices like metaphysics, paganism, channeling and spirituality literature.
Killen and Shibley questioned to what extent nature religion is becoming institutionalized. The increasingly official character of nature religion indicates that this religion with folk origins has the potential to influence public debate over natural resource management, if it engenders enough grassroots support.
When (or if) the “nones” participate in politics, they tend to for liberal candidates and issues, according to Killen and Shibley. The secular left is much smaller and less organized than the Christian Right. Secular but spiritual people tend toward a dualistic and millennial worldview and have organizational structures that are networked and more provisional.
“Nones” who express their moral and spiritual convictions in public life can help shape policy. They influence areas other than the environment, such as hunger-relief efforts and gay marriage. Food banks and a movement to come up with an equitable way to distribute food in the Third World are growing in the Northwest, while Oregon politicians are drafting a gay marriage ballot initiative.
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