{"id":950,"date":"2012-10-09T13:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T19:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=950"},"modified":"2012-10-09T13:50:24","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T19:50:24","slug":"what-religion-are-you-the-growing-none-category","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2012\/10\/what-religion-are-you-the-growing-none-category.html","title":{"rendered":"What Religion are You? The Growing “none” Category"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Slate had an interesting article up today, One-Fifth of Americans Now Religiously Unaffiliated<\/a>. \u00a0The data It is based on Pew Research data:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026tracking the so-called religious \u201cnones,\u201d a group that\u2019s increased by 5 percentage points in the past five years\u2014and roughly 10 points in the past two decades\u2014to 19.6 percent of all Americans, or about 46 million people. Indicating that the increase owes something to generational shifts in the general population, the number of younger \u201cnones\u201d is even bigger: A third (32 percent) of American adults under 30 are now unaffiliated.\u00a0Pew breaks down the category into three sub-groups: atheist, agnostic or \u201cnothing in particular.\u201d Atheists and agnostics make up about 6 percent of the total population, or about 13 million people. The rest aren\u2019t exactly non-believers, however, with two-thirds of the entire \u201cunaffiliated\u201d category expressing some sort of belief in God. Overall, 42 percent of the group described themselves as neither religious nor spiritual, with the rest, a slight majority, identifying themselves in one of those two categories.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s where things get interesting: The religiously unaffiliated now make up the plurality religion of Democratic-leaning voters at 24 percent. For comparison, Black Protestants and White mainline Protestants comprise 16 and 14 percent of that voting group, respectively. That heavy Democratic support, however, seems to be limited: While the unaffiliated have a strong liberal stance on social issues (nearly three-quarters think abortion and same-sex marriage should be legal), the group\u2019s preferences on government size and role actually largely mirror the breakdown of the general population: 50 percent of the unaffiliated would prefer a smaller government, compared to 52 percent of the general population.\u00a0This kind of makes sense, given that the group expressed strong support for the role of religious institutions in fighting poverty and building community (77 percent and 78 percent), but were considerably less keen on the role of religion in \u201cdefending morality\u201d than the general American public (52 percent vs. 76 percent). The latter role, of course, is more readily associated with the conservative Religious Right attitude towards religion\u2019s role in American governance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slate had an interesting article up today, One-Fifth of Americans Now Religiously Unaffiliated. \u00a0The data It is based on Pew Research data: \u201c\u2026tracking the so-called religious \u201cnones,\u201d a group that\u2019s increased by 5 percentage points in the past five years\u2014and roughly 10 points in the past two decades\u2014to 19.6 percent of all Americans, or about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106,105],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-religious-voters","tag-slate"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Religion are You? The Growing "none" Category<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Slate had an interesting article up today, One-Fifth of Americans Now Religiously Unaffiliated. \u00a0The data It is based on Pew Research data: "...tracking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2012\/10\/what-religion-are-you-the-growing-none-category.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Religion are You? 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