Who are the Nones?
Why am I writing this article? I have discussed this topic before briefly on this blog. Several months ago, I made a blog post about the general religious beliefs of young Americans. However, a personal friend at my university (TCU) reminded me about this topic.
My friend told me that the amount of religiously unaffiliated students at my university is nearly 40%. I was flabbergasted by that information. Mind you, I attend a private Christian university in Texas. My school is far from a religiously conservative institution, but I still thought that the student body was a little more religious than your typical public university. That assumption appears incorrect.
In this post, I intend to take a deeper dive into the fastest growing religious category in America—the “Nones”. The “Nones” are a shorthand phrase for the “Religiously unaffiliated”.
The term “Nones” stems from social surveys (i.e. Pew Research Center or Gallup). This kind of survey typically asks respondents about their religious identification. One of the answers is the “None” option. If you don’t associate with any religious tradition, then that’s the response you would go with on the survey.
Well, who are the Nones? The three main groups of “Nones” are Atheists, Agnostics, and Nothing-in-Particulars. Surprisingly, Atheists and Agnostics only make about a third of this category. The amorphous Nothing-in-Particular group makes up nearly 2/3s of the “Nones” category.
For context, atheists generally believe that no divine being/God exists. Agnostics don’t know if a God exists or are undecided about the topic. In contrast, most Nothing-In-Particulars would claim that religion doesn’t have a significant role in their lives.
Now that we’ve talked about who the “Nones” are, we’ll now move to some recent trends with the “Nones” category.
The Growth of the “Nones” Among Younger Americans
The data is fairly clear about this fact: Younger Americans are much more likely to idenftiy as a “None” than older generations.
In fact, roughly a third of Millennials and Gen Z-rs are “Nones”! That percentage is significantly higher than average for the US population. “Nones” make up about 20-25% of the US population. Moreover, you can see from this Gallup graph that younger Americans are much more likely to be religious unaffiliated than older Americans.
The Nones have become a signficant potion of American society. According to the Pew Research Center, the “Nones” (a.k.a. religious unaffiliated) made up about 6% of the American populace in the early 1970s. That percentage has quadrupled in the last 50 years.
What’s concerning about this trend is that it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The “Nones” skyrocketed as a group in the just a few decades. According to the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, the amount of “Nones” in American colleges tripled between 1986 and 2016. In just thirty years, this group grew from 10% to 31% of college freshman! Talk about rapid growth.
Practically speaking, the amount of college students identifying as “Nones” has tripled between when I started college (i.e. 2018) and when my parents started college (i.e. the late 1980s). This profound change is just one of the many ways that colleges have transformed in the last thirty years.
The reality of the situation is that the “Nones” are here to stay—for now at least. We can’t change the rapid deterioration in American religiosity that has already occurred.
Nevertheless, American Christians need not despair. Revivals in religiosity/American Christianity have occurred before in American history—just look at the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings. Things can change for the better. It’s just going to be more of an uphill battle for us Christians in modern America. I say that because the surrounding culture is becoming more hostile to orthodox Christian beliefs and practices compared to the mid-1700s and early 1800s (i.e. the times of the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings respectively).
To wrap up this post, we’ll ponder how the “Nones” category affects and relates to American Christianity.
The Impact on Christian ministry?
American Christianity is declining at a swift rate–whether that is Church attendance levels or religious identification among Americans. With this situation, Christian Churches cannot depend on appealing to the broader America culture.
For starters, American Christians can no longer assume that their fellow Americans know anything about Jesus Christ.
In prior times, American culture possessed a general Cultural Protestant bent to it. Even if you didn’t go to Church, most Americans had at least heard of Jesus or knew something about the Bible. Unfortunately, that circumstance no longer applies. A significant amount of millennials and Gen-Zers are growing up without any prior background or knowledge of Christianity.
Soon enough, Churches will find that “seeker-sensitive” practices that may have attracted Cultural Christians in previous generations will no longer work. In fact, it’s getting to the point that the broader American society sees orthodox Christianity in a negative light. In my opinion, American Christians need to prepare themselves that we’re living in a “Post-Christian” society–a term that Lutheran author Dr. Gene Edward Veith coined in his most recent book.
Living in a Post-Christian society is not necessarily a negative situation. It’s just different. Many of the Baby Boomer and Gen-X Generations remember when American society viewed Christianity in a positive light. So, I understand why they may feel dismayed that their children and grandchildren’s generations have seemingly abandoned Christianity.
Fortunately, I have started to take a more positive approach to this situation. In some ways, I believe that American Christianity is going to look more like the Early Church during the Roman Empire (albeit to a lesser extreme–we probably won’t be getting crucified anytime soon God-willing). Just as the Early Church, we–devout American Christians–have the opportunity to boldly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to a hostile culture.
The “Nones” need a Savior and a Redeemer as much as you and I do. They need Jesus Christ. At the end of the day, it is my prayer that the “Nones” in my generation will confess that Jesus Christ is LORD. May God’s will be done!