We’ve had much discussion lately about the “decline and fall of Christian America,” as the Newsweek cover story put it. That article was based on a survey showing the percentage of Americans calling themselves Christian dropped from 86% in 1990 to 76% earlier this year while the percent saying they had no affiliation jumped from 8% to 15%.
From the hoopla, one might have the sense people are driving straight from church services over to their secular humanist meetings.
But based on a new survey that came out from Pew Religion Forum, I’d like to pose a different theory: what we’re seeing is not a flight of the religious but rather the changing nature of the irreligious.
The Pew study founded that 79% of the currently unaffiliated –also known as “nones” in the survey–started off life connected with a religion. But get this: only 30% of “nones” who used to be Catholic and only 18% of former Protestants said they’d had strong faith as a child. This is true even for those who attended church regularly.
AFP/GettyIn other words, perhaps it’s not that the devout have lost their way, it’s that the nominally religious have stopped pretending to be religious. Perhaps what we’re seeing is not an increase in the number of “nones” but an increase in the numbers willing to admit it.
Another bit of evidence for this theory is that the rates of church attendance during this same period from 1990 to 2009 have remained stable. The pious are just as pious; it’s the more tenuously connected that seem to be fleeing.
That still leave the question of why those with a weak connection have drifted away rather than being drawn closer. When the stats about the rise in “nones” first came out, liberals and conservatives offered different explanations (surprise!) Liberals said overly politicized, intolerant, exclusivist preachers were turning people away. Conservatives said the decline occurred because folks were rebelling against the liberal mainline Protestant church’s emphasis on liberalization and inclusiveness.
The latest data seem to buttress the liberals more than the conservatives. Of the unaffiliateds, 17% had been raised as a mainline Protestant, while 22% had been raised evangelicals (27% had been raised Catholic.) What’s more, the reasons cited for the switch tend to reinforce the liberal interpretation. When asked why they left their childhood faith, survey participants’ three top answers were:

• “Religious people are hypocritical/judgmental/insincere”
• “Many religions are partly true, none completely true”
• “Religious orgs. are too focused on rules, not spirituality”

There’s one sign of hope for those wishing for a more pious population. One-third of the unafilliateds are still open to joining a church. They just feel they haven’t found the right fit yet
First printed in WSJ.com