The Secret of the Nones

Religious Nones have grown rapidly in the U.S. Recently that growth leveled off – surprisingly. Therein may lie the secret as to what produced the Nones in the first place.

I once worked with a guy who was as far from faith as can be imagined in the U.S. – and he still had a religious connection. His parents, once Unitarian Universalists, had left that faith for nothing in particular. I called him the son of a lapsed Unitarian. He didn’t see himself as an atheist or even an agnostic. He just didn’t think about religion at all. It was nowhere in his worldview.

He is a None.

According to Pew Research, Nones together with atheists and agnostics comprise the largest U.S. religious cohort at about 36% of adults. Fifty years ago, that cohort stood at 5%.

Nones, self-identified, are a diverse lot. Some believe in God or a higher power; others don’t. Some are anti-religious; others, as with my friend, are indifferent. Often Nones are people who’ve dropped out of organized religion, no longer engaged or even actively thinking, though they may still hold to some religious beliefs.

And then there is the next generation. When one generation disengages from religion, the next generation becomes even more detached – like my friend whose parents had nothing meaningfully religious to pass down to him. Following generations are far less likely to exceed the religious awareness of parents unless they have some encounter or crisis that piques their interest, taps into some primordial hunger, or somehow dislodges their indifference.

In the past, having kids often brought parents back to church. That might still happen, but it seems far less likely these days, especially with all the nonreligious attractions society has to offer – think sports.

However we define them, Nones have been a growing part of our population for a long time with some serious escalation in the past 15-20 years. It is as if some layer of religiosity in the U.S. has flaked off. “Avalanche” may be a better description, for the change has been dramatic. From 14% in 2007 to 24% today (21% to 36% if you add atheists and agnostics). That is a lot of flaking.

This trend is not due to recent events like COVID. Rather, it is a long-term shift going back generations. The COVID lockdowns have been blamed for what many of the religious faithful see as a falling away. However, COVID may have been just a convenient release for people who had mentally exited a long time ago.

All this guesswork on my part was confirmed recently by Ryan Burge, associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. Burge has written much on this religious falling away. I’ve gotten to know of his work through his Substack, “Graphs About Religion.” He is a research treasure trove.

In a May 20 post, Burge demonstrated how the Nones have actually leveled off over the past four years. Meaning COVID, surprisingly, did not increase the number of people claiming to be Nones. All that “falling away” had happened in the years prior.

But, you say, what about the significant drop-off in church attendance these past four years? It may have been Nones finally quitting attending church, the marginals giving way. Regardless, the growth in Nones has – at least temporarily – leveled off.

Burge notes that the Nones are still rising among the older generation, which traditionally is more religious. In contrast are Gen Z-ers, where the Nones actually decreased from 48% in 2022 to 42% in 2023. Meaning they’ve gotten more religious. It could be some kind of data bloop, but Burge doesn’t think so.

So why this sudden leveling off? This is where it gets exciting for me, perverse as that may sound. I’ve long been saying that what we have been seeing in our nation over my lifetime is the disappearance of the middle – people who claimed religion, but hadn’t really bought in.

As a kid growing up, I lived in a religious town. Businesses closed on Sundays – and even half day on Wednesdays to allow for midweek evening service attendance. But the number of people in church in a given week was a fraction of the town’s population. Membership rolls included loads of people who stayed connected for the church’s social credits only. It was important for civic and business leaders to claim church affiliation. And lots of people who weren’t attendees or members still called themselves Christians. They were Americans, after all.

When I moved to Portland, Oregon, from China where we had been living for more than a decade, I was struck by how religious the city is. You read that right. Compared with China, religious influence is everywhere, even in supposedly God-forsaken PDX. Portland Christians who moan about facing persecution have no idea. The out-there Christians may not be invited to hang out at the clubs after work, but they aren’t usually losing their jobs if they come out of the closet with their faith.

At the other end of the scale was my experience living in our nation’s Bible Belt – I’ve had stints in Texas and Missouri, especially back in the 70s and 80s. There everyone was a Christian, even the ones that had no connection with church at all. “I’m not Communist, for Christ’s sake!” one woman told me.

Three diverse demographics:

1. In China, you aren’t public about your faith unless you are ready to live an extremely disadvantaged life.
2. In Texas, you are a Christian by birthright.
3. Portland is somewhere in the middle – no advantage to claiming faith, no disadvantage either, other than a bit of social discomfort.

Portland was once a religious city – emptied church buildings, if salvageable, now serve as bars and restaurants. The falling away may have started earlier, but the national data shows the rest of the country following Portland’s lead.

Steeplejack Brewing Company, Portland, Oregon

The culprit in this falling away is that faith not fully absorbed becomes a liability. In a relay race, the key moment is when the baton is handed off. Baton-passing, when it comes to faith in families, starts before the kids come, before marriage even.

I remember a family from my childhood. The patriarch and matriarch were faithful in the truest sense of that word – they were full of faith. As was perhaps the next generation, though maybe less passionate? But after that there came a falling away, gradually over time, piece by flaky piece. Some stalwarts can still be found in the 5^th generation, from what I hear. But the trend has been downhill, gradually yet clearly presenting.

I met one of those 5^th gen descendants not long ago. He spoke positively of the church of his great-great-grandparents and of their role in it. But he really had no clue. He was a None, a clueless None at that. He has nothing to pass on of his family’s faith heritage to his own children.

As to this recent leveling off in Nones growth, Burge explains that in the past couple of decades a lot of marginally religious people switched to “no religion.” Eventually, that meant there were not many marginally attached folks remaining. “All you had left were … very committed religious people who likely won’t become nones for any reason. The loose top soil has been scooped off and hauled away, leaving nothing but hard bedrock underneath.”

What I call flake or avalanche, he calls scooped-off topsoil. Either way it has been lost.

Permit me to share some final observations:

1. So-called liberals did not cause this falling away.

The bogeymen of Communism or flaming liberals lurking outside the church doors or in schools is just that – fictitious monsters. Sure, there are preachy atheists, but they are more like moss. Moss does not kill grass as much as it takes over where the grass has already died.

2. The absence of mandated prayer and Bible reading in schools did not cause this falling away.

My last class where the teacher read from the Bible each morning was first grade. Miss Weikhart, a white-haired saintly woman in her final years of teaching, read Psalm 100 to us every day. My second grade is about when structured prayer and Bible reading were taken out of the hands of teachers. I did have subsequent teachers who could easily have read passages of a Bible that was ever so familiar to them. But there were plenty of others for whom reading the Bible would have had adverse affect. What use is a snarky reader whose very life contradicts what he is reading?

The falling away started long before, when religion became socially advantageous without being spiritually meaningful. When everyone is a Christian, even the scoundrels, what gets passed on to the next generation is that “Christian” means cultural affinity devoid of spiritual content – at best.

3. Transference is the key to holding the remaining ground.

Remember my point about baton passing? You cannot pass on something you don’t have a firm grasp on yourself. Burge uses a topsoil analogy. In your garden, topsoil is a very good thing. But as Burge uses the term, it’s a negative, that which is not bedrock. In matters of faith, bedrock is the good thing. It is what gives you a firm foundation. Like generational wealth, generational faith is something you can pass on to your children and something they in turn can build on and continue to pass on.

I am amazed when I encounter children or young people who grew up in church and, while they may still be attending, have little grasp of basic Bible stories and truths, let alone deeper teachings. That’s the marginal topsoil blowing away, exposing a bedrock, which may also be eroding. Families and churches can do much to stop the erosion of bedrock faith in our society. But they have to act.

4. The Nones provide a great opportunity for the gospel.

At my former church, I met in prayer early on Tuesday mornings with the pastoral leadership. In one of those prayer meetings, my pastor noted that he was finding Gen Z-ers more open and less antagonistic to discussions about faith than previous generations. He was observing what Burge has documented.

I’ve lived in Taiwan, where the people are very steeped in their religious traditions, and in Mainland China, where Communism voided the people’s faith. The Mainlanders have been much more open to Christianity over the past generation, the void having created an openness to faith in general.

In the case of second-generation Nones, they are not moving away from faith like their parents did. There may be exceptions, but we may find many are more open – hungry even – to conversations about faith.

This is not the first time religion has hit low ebb in our society. It’s happened before. Awakenings and other movements in times of hunger keep bringing faith back. 

5. Doubt is the first step toward the Cross

I’ve written on this subject before and will return to it again. What brings a person to faith is when something triggers them to start thinking outside of their box. They have a worldview, likely not even fully articulated, but they have one.

Something comes up that doesn’t quite fit within that worldview and it gives them pause. Do they discard this new bit of information? Maybe they hang on to it just long enough that it creates a crack in their worldview, and they start questioning other parts of their worldview as well.

Those cracks come from doubt which comes from questions fueled by curiosity. Even Christian youth need to learn how to be open, curious, questioning, lest what appears to be bedrock turns out to be flaky topsoil.

We’ll return to this last point on the value of doubt another time. Meanwhile if you have thoughts or questions, disagreements even, about what I’ve written, you are welcome to comment below. Or if you’d prefer to keep your response nonpublic between us, write me here.

To dig into the Pew study or Burge’s analysis, check my resource page for the links.