If that happens, it means that a trend that started more than 20 years ago will have continued.
Something happened in the 1990s to push millions of people away from their religious roots. And then the push got a lot weaker. Why did the number of people who say they have no particular religion boom in the 1990s, with the growth slowing dramatically with the start of the new millennium?
What happened?
That may be the biggest mystery raised by the latest report from the American Religious Identification Survey. ARIS is among the very best of the polls about faith in America because the survey size is unusually large and because many of the questions have been repeated in 1990, 2001, and 2008.
The researchers, primarily Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College, have spent years analyzing data. Their latest analysis is of the Nones that includes both non-beleivers and the non-affiliated, indicates they do not belong to any particular religion.
And what the ARIS data says is that the percentage of Nones leaped from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 14.1 percent in 2001 to 15 percent in 2008. Looking at the raw numbers, about 1.3 million adults moved from some religion to None each year during the 1990s. Since 2001, the annual shift has dropped off to about 660,000.
Before digging into the mystery, let's explore some of the implications of that 15 percent. Who are these folks? What do they look like? How do they vote? Much of this report tracks what other recent surveys of the Nones have found.
ARIS says that the Nones are getting more and more like everybody else. By race, education, income and marital status, Nones look pretty much like the general population. The younger you are, however, the more likely you are to be a None.
As with other surveys, ARIS says that most Nones aren't atheists or even agnostics. Most are deists or profess other hard-to-pigeonhole forms of faith.
Not surprisingly, most Nones are former Catholics. More surprisingly, people of Irish, British and Italian descent are disproportionately None. For the Irish and Italians, that may be cross linked to being Catholic at one time.
Here's one political bit of data. The party affiliation of Nones is substantially different from the general population.
For the U.S. as a whole in 2008, the ARIS report has it 34 percent Democrat, 24 percent Republican, and 31 percent independent (with 11 percent not answering). For Nones, ARIS says it's 34 percent Democrat, 13 percent GOP, and 42 percent independent (with the same 11 percent not answering). This is not surprising for most Republicans find refuge inside the Christian box. Apparently many independents are out of the Christian box.
If trends continue, then the GOP is in big trouble.Many people left the Catholic church because of the homosexual scandals. The Catholic church also took a big right turn with the election of the last two Popes. In addition, George W. Bush mixed church and state during his administration. This continued to alienate educated and younger Americans.
According to a Gallup study, 65 per cent of the nones that include athiests and agnostics are Obama's biggest supporters followed by 64 per cent of Jewish Americans. More than half of Catholics approve of the president.
It is clear that there are significant religious differences between the political parties. What is surprising is that 42 per cent of the Nones are independents who have no religious affiliation.
source: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/10/02/america-the-secular-not-so-fast/
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