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Not All ‘Nones’ Are Non-Believers
This is about religious Nones.
It’s not a typo, so no, I don’t actually mean Nun, but rather people who identify as “None”, and yet at the same time are also religious.
“The Nones” are people who say they have no religious affiliation. When asked about their beliefs by pollsters, the answer they give is “None” or “Nothing in particular”. So what does this actually tell us?
Understanding who the nones are is becoming increasingly important because this is no longer a small demographic. Via Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey this is now about 29% of the US population. To put that another way, using a rough US headcount of adults, that’s 71.7 million adults; that makes them the fastest growing and one of the largest “religious” categories in the nation.
When a group reaches nearly one-third of the adult population, its influence inevitably extends into voting patterns, cultural norms, workplace expectations, education policy, and public debate.
Understanding who they are helps to answer why this group is rapidly rising and also what the actual impact might be.
