A new Gallup Report shows that the share of Americans who identify as religious “nones,” those unaffiliated with any religion, has stayed about the same for the last six years. The study noted that the number of nones had remained around 20 percent to 21 percent from 2017-2022. Prior to 2017, that number had steadily been increasing from year to year since 2000. In his analysis of the data, Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport noted the difficulty of identifying what exactly being a religious none means, as many who don’t have a specific religious preference still have religious beliefs. He also noted that “Those with no religious identity can still be religious, as measured by their responses to other questions. And those who identify with a religion can be quite irreligious, based on their responses to those same questions.” He also noted that in addition to polling about religious identity, polling about the importance of religion is very telling in the manifestation of religion in the US. That number, which had also been declining, seems to have stabilized.

Newport also noted that the rise of nones appears to have coincided with it being more acceptable to acknowledge no affiliation with religion. “It is more culturally acceptable now to state publicly that one does not have a religious identity than it was decades ago,” he wrote. “The rise of the nones, arguably, measures cultural shifts as well as it does a person’s underlying relationship to religion. An individual may be more willing to tell an interviewer they have no religion than they were several decades ago — because the normative culture has changed, not their internal religion. And the leveling off of the percentage of Americans who are nones suggests that these cultural shifts may have slowed down in recent years…” The complexity of so many variables makes it difficult to know whether or not this means the nones have leveled off or will continue rising. Newport concluded that it seemed the rise of the religious nones was not as inevitable as some pollsters had previously concluded. 

Indeed, the steady increase of religious nones in America has caused a great deal of concern in religious circles. Many articles have been written about the rise of religious nones and the decreasing numbers of self-identified Christians in America, with a recent Pew Research Center scenario projecting that Christians could become a religious minority in America by 2070. With the current plateauing of religious nones, the data and headlines about declining American faith may need a second look. In fact, in 2017, the Pew Research Center predicted that the global number of religious nones would decrease in the coming years.

In considering the variables surrounding what makes a religious none, Subby Szterszky wrote for Focus on the Family that the rise of religious nones is really just a revealing of “cultural” Christianity. “Simply put,” Szterszky writes, “most of the ‘nones’ of today are the cultural Christians of yesterday. They don’t represent a new demographic of non-belief. In times past, they would’ve identified as Christian and attended church because that’s what everyone did, and to do otherwise would’ve been frowned upon. Now that being Christian is no longer assumed or even fashionable in the wider culture, the ‘nones’ are stepping out and being honest about their lack of religious conviction.” Noting the rise of Christianity overseas in places like Africa and the stability of church membership in evangelical and nondenominational churches, Szteszky noted the building of the church is ultimately in God’s hands. “The rise of the ‘nones’ from the ashes of cultural Christianity… has also sharpened the line between belief and non-belief, strengthened the resolve of Christians young and old, and inspired them to find more creative, authentic ways to share the Gospel. That makes it good news for the people of God and for the culture in which they’re called to live and serve.”