Since the mid-2000s, the fastest-growing religious group in America has been the so-called nones.
The percentage of Americans who claim no religious affiliation nearly doubled from 2007 (16%) to 2022 (31%), becoming a force in American culture and certainly one of the most important segments of the religious landscape, based on Pew Research.
But all things pass. And the skyrocketing growth of the nones could also be fading.
“They are usually not growing as fast as they used to,” said Ryan Burge, associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University and creator of “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.”
Burge, known for his popular graphs depicting religion trends, told Religion News Service in an interview that the expansion of the nones appears to be waning. He pointed to data from Pew, the General Social Survey and the Cooperative Election Study, all of which appear to point out a slowdown in the share of Americans who claim no religion.
Pew’s most up-to-date published data found that 28% of Americans did not discover with a faith in 2023, a slight dip from the previous yr. The CES data, the newest of which was released in May, showed that from 2020 to 2023, the share of nones was relatively stable. In 2020, the CES found that 34% of those surveyed were nones, while in 2021 and 2023, that percentage was 36%. (In 2022, 35% of those surveyed were nones.)
“From a pure statistical standpoint, I do not know if we will say with any certainty whether there is a larger share of nones within the United States today than there was in 2019,” Burge wrote in a recent edition of his Substack newsletter.
Burge compared the expansion of the nones to the expansion curve of popular products equivalent to the Peloton bikes or tech firms like Apple and Google. Those brands grew rapidly at first but couldn’t sustain that rapid growth endlessly.
“They became mature businesses,” said Burge. “That’s what the nones are — they are not going to grow at this unbelievable pace going forward.”
Burge also suspects that almost all of the Americans who were eager or ready to present up on identifying with a faith have already done so. Any future growth, he said, will likely come from generational substitute — as older, more religious Americans die off and younger, less religious Americans take their place.
Greg Smith, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, said it’s too early to inform what exactly is going on with the nones. There have been some signs in recent times that the share of nones is stabilizing, he said, but that could be as a consequence of the conventional fluctuations in survey responses from yr to yr.
In 2022, he said, the share of nones jumped to 31%, then dropped back all the way down to 28%. He added that in 2016, the expansion of the nones appeared to pause after which began to grow again.
“As we checked out the information, the conclusion we have come to, even it’s sort of wishy-washy, is that it’s way too early to inform if the rise of the religious nones has come to an end,” he said.
Conrad Hackett, a senior demographer and associate director of research at Pew, said there are signs that “something interesting” is going on with nones straight away but more data is required.
Hackett said the conditions that fueled the rise of the nones are still in place. Younger Americans are less religious than older Americans, many Americans still switch their religious faith, and being nonreligious has change into “stickier,” said Hackett — in order that people who find themselves born and not using a religious identity usually tend to stay nonreligious. Nonreligious people within the U.S. also are likely to be younger than religious people.
Hackett is the co-author of a 2022 Pew report that projected what religion in American could seem like in the following 50 years. That report checked out the birth and mortality rates in addition to rates of switching religious identities and projected an extended, slow growth within the nones for the foreseeable future. Researchers projected that by 2070, the nones would make up between 41% and 52% of Americans.
Christians, based on Pew’s projections, would make up just below half of Americans, with non-Christian religious people making up about 12% of the population.
Complicating matters is that Pew, like other organizations that survey religion in America, has moved to a probability-based online model for surveys — slightly than mostly phone interviews. The GSS, a well-respected and long-running survey, switched from in-person interviews to a hybrid phone and online model during COVID — making it harder to match its most up-to-date data with past versions.
The CES data has consistently found higher percentages of nones than the GSS and Pew. But Burge said all three sources appear to point out that something has modified with the expansion of the nones.
The slowing growth of the nones doesn’t suggest a non secular revival within the U.S. Instead, Burge said, the U.S. will likely find yourself in the longer term with large numbers of spiritual people and nonreligious people, with neither group having a large majority. That will pose challenges for democracy, he said, which relies on cooperation and compromise — which is difficult when many individuals are feeling unnerved by the changes within the country and where religious and nonreligious people have different ideas on how the country must be run.
And those conflicting ideas result in polarization and at times, hostility. That hostility, if it continues to grow, “will likely be bad for democracy,” said Burge.
“We cannot function in a democracy where you might have two very large groups who hate one another.”
© Religion News Service
