From the Pew Forum’s report “‘Nones’ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation” (PDF), released this morning:
In the last five years alone, the [religiously] unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)….
However… many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say the often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious (37%) and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.
With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.
No comment for now, except to say that God is at work regardless, and this is another good reminder to pray for our neighbors.
October 9th, 2012 | 5:12 pm | #1
“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding.”
— Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April 1823, Adams-Jefferson Letters, Lestor J. Cappon, ed., II, 594
October 10th, 2012 | 12:04 pm | #2
People don’t get steamed up about insisting that Minerva did or did not spring from Jove. So Jefferson still has to wait.
October 10th, 2012 | 3:53 pm | #3
Causality here is important. I think, to abridge a quote from Brennan Manning, that a lot of the cause of people moving away from the faith is the Church itself. In a survey recently done of Americans ages 18-25, one of the biggest blanket statements people used to describe Christianity was “anti-gay.” I think that speaks volumes to how mixed up priorities of the church have turned people away from is a philosophically rich and loving community.
October 10th, 2012 | 7:21 pm | #4
“Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.”
That may be be prevailing opinion; however, anyone has but to attend daily Mass for a couple of weeks to discover none of that is true.
October 11th, 2012 | 2:32 am | #5
Correlations: rise of ignorance concerning Christianity; fall of literacy; fall of analytical/critical thinking.
October 11th, 2012 | 1:25 pm | #6
Gary,
“…fall of literacy; fall of analytical/critical thinking.”
Where’s the warrant/evidence for this? I don’t understand the logic here.
October 12th, 2012 | 2:27 pm | #7
I can imagine that there is a lose-lose situation. Suppose Christians retreated from politics and from espousing rules of living and focused on “love.” A generation later a Pew Forum report would show that
“People are turned off by Christianity because it seems to be only concerned with getting to Heaven and not having a political voice.
People also are frustrated with Christians lacking directions because they lack directives. People want to know how to worship God and what to believe.”
Remember John the Baptist being a puritan and Jesus being a drunk?
The challenge for Christians is not being relevant, but rather in being faithful.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact