When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check ‘none.’

A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They’re more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%).

…

“We know politically for example,” [Gregory Smith at Pew] says, “that religious Nones are very distinctive. They are among the most strongly and consistently liberal and Democratic constituencies in the United States.”

  • Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.world
    932·
    9 months ago

    Although religious ‘Nones’ doesn’t necessarily mean atheist, anti-theist or agnostic, I’ve got to say, never in my wildest dreams did I think this milestone would be achieved during my lifetime.

    • 1stTime4MeInMCU@mander.xyzEnglish
      241·
      9 months ago

      It’s also only the largest plurality because it’s the default bucket. When you lump religious vs non religious the picture is very different

    • Reptorian@lemmy.zipEnglish
      41·
      9 months ago

      It doesn’t mean theism either. Honestly, religion is more about belief in the supernatural realm. Not necessarily in a creator.

  • Garbanzo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    371·
    9 months ago

    I wonder what the results would be if “Christian, but too embarrassed by those that claim the label to apply it to myself” was an option

    • skydivekingair@lemmy.world
      321·
      9 months ago

      If ‘Christian’ were it’s own label it would nearly double the ‘Nones’. Nones = 28% Protestant = 24% Catholics = 23% Total of the two Christian groups reported = 47% That is just adding the highest reporting sects of Christianity, there’s probably a few % points that could be added in there as well.

      • SailorMoss@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        9 months ago

        To be fair, if we go by the recent comments from the pope. (Which maybe we shouldn’t.) Catholics may have more in common politically with the nones than the evangelicals.

      • LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world
        41·
        9 months ago

        Idk why people who think Jesus died for them can’t just accept each other and just all be Christians. It shouldn’t matter the specifics of your Christianity as long as your core beliefs match the others, ya know?

        I’m also a life-long atheist who attended a bunch of different churches with friends growing up to see what they were like. I don’t understand how someone can believe in a God. What makes even less sense is why people, who believe in the same God with the same kid who sacrificed himself and preached love and all that, hate each other so fuckin much.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
          5·
          9 months ago

          Because the Christians who were reasonable were murdered by the crazies we have today. Quite literally, I’m not joking.

          The Gnostic Christians were killed off by the crazies. All that hereric hunting that happened during the dark ages? Yea… it wasn’t just “witches” and Pagans and satanists or whatnot.

          … Not that many of the sects didn’t believe crazy things; it’s still religion. Though the important thing is many were analyzing the material world a whole lot better than modern Christians born and bathed in capitalism.

          • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
            1·
            9 months ago

            What exactly is reasonable about supernatural beliefs? The reason they disagree is because religious ideas consist of made up nonsense. This naturally leads to fracturing because instead of following observable, repeatable facts to their logical conclusion, religions make up anything they want and then stand by it regardless of what observational evidence tells us. The Hubble space telescope didn’t exactly fail when it smashed into the firmament, you know.

            Anything can be true when all you need to be convinced that it’s true is faith.

            • skydivekingair@lemmy.world
              1·
              9 months ago

              I’m going off memory here but if it’s correct they held a live and let live dogma. No convert or kill mentality, do good above all else etc.

        • Zloubida@lemmy.world
          1·
          9 months ago

          I (mainline Protestant) don’t hate American evangelicals. But I don’t want to be associated with people hating queer people or denying women basic rights like abortion.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
      5·
      9 months ago

      Christians, especially white evangelicals, have managed to intertwine themselves so hard with the Republican Party that it is difficult for many to see the difference between the church and the party.

      Many people give up church because they don’t want to be a part of the Republican Party. Especially young people. If Christians want to see growth in the future, they gotta move away from politics.

      • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
        4·
        9 months ago

        Would help if they could back up their claims with any evidence of anything, too. It’s getting harder and harder to deny the reality that thousands of years have passed without the people who are most incentivized to prove their religious ideals showing any aspect of it to be true. At best, they have a failed apocalyptic preacher with a cult of personality. They look very silly at best when defending their invisible, non-corporeal, fire-breathing dragons to anyone with a basic capacity for observation, and fully destructive when attempting to overthrow democracy with symbols of iron age torture devices strapped to their necks and Christian nationalism flags waving over their heads.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
          31·
          9 months ago

          Well, it’s just faith. And people can have whatever faith they want to. I have no problem with that whatsoever. The problem arises when they attempt to force that faith down people’s throats through politics. That’s when people stop listening and find community and beliefs elsewhere.

          • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
            4·
            9 months ago

            I guess my point is that faith is something you can have in anything. Faith never leads to correctness. Anytime it does, it does so completely by coincidence and has nothing to demonstrate why it’s correct. This is why religion leads people to hold factually incorrect ideas as truth, and why reality is arbitrary and unimportant to people who have been led to think that faith is valuable.

            • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
              11·
              9 months ago

              Sure, people have different ideas about faith and its effectiveness. In theory, it also leads to community and cohesion and a lot of good public service and charity. That’s all good, whereever it comes from. Faith or no faith. Doesn’t matter to me.

              My problem is the attempts at forced faith through politics. And that’s what we’re seeing in the US at the moment. It will never lead to actual faith, it only leads to dismissal and anger.

      • Uranium3006@kbin.social
        2·
        9 months ago

        problem being religion is politics, early states and organized religion were one int he same and only as recently as 500 years ago did that get challenged

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    26·
    9 months ago

    About time they get some service, too. I’ve had it up to here with the theists, especially radical xtian evangelicals, constantly swinging their weight around, saying and doing outrageous things, thinking their little book club should rule over others, and thinking that’s normal.

  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
    191·
    9 months ago

    Trouble is, 10,000 Nones who aren’t politically organized have less power than one Church with fifty voters that politicians know they can count on.

    • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      712·
      9 months ago

      They’ll never have anyone to vote for. One party is christofascists, and the other no longer does fair primaries, if they bother with them at all.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
        81·
        9 months ago

        I’ll tell you what. You go out and go to the local Democratic club house with the names of 1,000 dedicated voters and see if you get a reaction.

        • Uranium3006@kbin.social
          3·
          9 months ago

          why bother with the controlled opposition party if you can get that many people together? form a direct action group to improve your local community with that instead

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
      11·
      9 months ago

      There are a few things contributing to this:

      1. The child molesting done by the Catholic church has turned a lot of people away from what used to be one of the biggest churches in the country
      2. The rise of evangelical churches and the hollowing out of mainline Protestant churches. Now if you go to church you either have to be a conservative or you have to risk being ostracized.
      3. It’s clear god has abandoned us.
      • GladiusB@lemmy.world
        6·
        9 months ago

        God has abandoned us? Have you read of any history? Like there were many worse things happening in the 1000-1600s. Like everywhere. But I agree that the first two lead to the decline. I think it has more to do with a lack of proof the more and more we learn. If God does exist in some monitoring sort of way, they choose not to interfere and just observe. That’s a hard sell.

        • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
          3·
          9 months ago

          I mean, some Christian sects teach that we’re here to be tested, right? What kind of good teacher slips you answers during the test?!

          It’s fucking never made sense. At all. Either we’re being tested or we’ve been abandoned, or it’s all just a misconstrued allegory about parenthood and authority and passing down good lessons.

          My money’s on the last. The overtly religious are all morons.

        • Reptorian@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Maybe, god works in mysterious ways?

          There’s also definition issue of god (I’m ignostic/igtheist), but honestly, I’d argue god is useless in any form.

  • PeepinGoodArgs@reddthat.comEnglish
    6·
    9 months ago

    Great. Now, my younger atheist self can see that it’s not only religious that leads to unnecessary suffering at the population scale. The economics of profit maximization can do it, too. No god required.

  • Lakes@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 months ago

    Does anyone else say “myself” when asked on a form or in person what they believe in?

  • ctkatz@lemmy.ml
    5·
    9 months ago

    I’ve got to believe that a huge reason for that these days is because of how the republican party has deliberately and openly declared themselves the party of jesus and then go do the most inhumane and cruel things to other people. how preachers are openly declaring democrats ungodly and satanic from the pulpit.

  • alucard@sopuli.xyz
    3·
    9 months ago

    I saw nones and thought that was a new religion I was OOTL on. It makes sense that agnostics would see a boost eventually. I wonder - why now?

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      The belief in xtianity has been going down by over a percentage point per year, year after year for a long time now.

      • Welt@lazysoci.al
        3·
        9 months ago

        Islam’s on the up-and-up globally though. India’s becoming very Hindu-nationalist too. There’s always a hidden enemy lurking somewhere.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    3·
    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated – a group comprised of atheists, agnostic and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – is now the largest cohort in the U.S.

    Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew’s new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically.

    Gregory Smith at Pew was the lead researcher on the study, titled “Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe.”

    “And huge numbers say the desire to avoid hurting other people factors prominently in how they think about right and wrong,” says Smith.

    People of faith also say they use logic and the avoidance of harm to make decisions, but those factors are in concert with religious tradition and scripture.

    But digging deeper into the data shows that men are significantly more likely to say they’re atheist or agnostic whereas women are more likely to describe their religion as ‘nothing in particular.’

    The original article contains 690 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!