Americans with little or no ties to organized religion are significantly more likely to be male, single, and liberal. But within this broad portrait researchers are discovering a more nuanced diversity that provides a clearer picture of the nation’s “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation on surveys. Maybe it is even time to stop calling them nones.
Lifting up the virtue of humility may seem anachronistic in an age that extols self-adulation. But for Tomas Halik, a Czech priest and philosopher who won the 2014 Templeton Prize, the willingness of religious and secular individuals to engage in dialogue and learn from one another is essential to a civil society. “We must learn to share public space,” Halik declares.
What motivates religious individuals to volunteer at a community food bank, or to care for the sick or to build houses and schools for neighbors in their community and across the world? The answer is complex, with personal faith, worship attendance and social networks all playing a role, according to new research.
Don’t cry for the Catholic Church in Argentina or anywhere else in Latin America. A church in Latin America that was in danger of becoming a stale religious monopoly – witness the malaise throughout much of Western Europe – is reasserting itself in what is a vibrant religious landscape from Mexico to Brazil, according to some researchers.
The growing number of Americans reporting no religious affiliation are at the center of a debate over whether the United States is inevitably moving toward becoming a more secular nation or is experiencing shifts in the religious marketplace but stability in basic beliefs and behaviors. There are no easy answers. A growing body of evidence reveals a complex portrait of Americans who do not identify with a particular religious group. Many “nones,” some scholars say, find themselves “betwixt and between the religious and the secular, but they are not necessarily on the path to being one or the other.”
Date-setting for the end of the world has never worked out too well for biblical prophets. Some social scientists, however, say increasingly sophisticated demographic tools can provide vauable insight into the future of religion. Under one scenario for the U.S., Hispanic Catholics and non-Christian religions will be big winners, while predominantly white religious groups will lag behind. Other researchers, however, are skeptical of such attempts to predict the future.
The more competition, the better for American religion. Major immigration from Asia, the growth into the thousands of religious movements within and outside the church and an active and influential secular community have not stopped the growth of the nation’s largest faith — Christianity. Instead, the expanding religion marketplace is proving to be a win-win situation for all faiths, according to J. Gordon Melton, founding director of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif.
One of the goods emerging from the debate over health care in the United States is all the healthy information emerging amid the often polarizing political rhetoric.Research on religion and well-being can play a key role in the conversation on public and private health issues. Some new research sheds light on mortality rates and religion, where religious consumers turn to in moments of crisis and the growing number of Americans unaffiliated with religion who say they want their funeral to be a secular affair.
These are heady days for secularists. Increases in the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation along with the success of books promoting a militant anti-religious agenda such as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” give some hope of a secular great awakening. But getting rid of religion will not be as easy as it seems. It has been tried before.
