Of Atheists, Agnostics, and Apathetics

In February, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported the results of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. This mammoth survey received input from over 35,000 Americans and updates our religious demography. The biggest surprise is the large increase in those who say they are "unaffiliated" with any particular religion.

People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups.

These unaffiliates not only include the atheists (1.6%) and agnostics (2.4%), but also the "secular unaffiliated" and the "religious unaffiliated". Although the atheists and agnostics comprise only a quarter of the unaffiliates, we can extrapolate the results of the poll to show that some 12 million Americans profess no faith in God (based on an overall population of 300 million). The remaining unaffiliates comprise 12.1% of the population, or some 36 million Americans. They either don't care one way or the other about religion, or have some faith, but not enough to get them into a church on a regular basis. Let's call them the apathetics. The atheists, agnostics, and apathetics are the fastest growing group surveyed, and there numbers are destined to increase further:

People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups.

At 16.1%, the "triple-A"s make up the fourth largest "religious" tradition in the U.S. While the apathetics are not entirely dissuaded from faith in God, it is likely that they are not proponents of the extremes of Christianity (e.g. Intelligent Design, Young Earth, Biblical literalism), finding the silliness all too overwhelming to be associated with it. Similarly, it should come as no surprise that the tech-savvy younger generation (the 18-26 year olds) make up the fastest growing component of the unaffiliates, while the hard-nosed evangelicals and protestant mainstreamers are aging out of their faith.

The writing is on the wall: the unaffiliates are the new in-crowd. Christian extremism is the crazy old uncle in the room and will succumb, if not to reason then to attrition.