The Growing "Nones"

This week the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008 was released. Conducted by The Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, Trinity College, Hartford Connecticut, 54,461 respondents indicated a continuing shift in American religious practice away from Christianity specifically and organized religion generally. ( 86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.)

The ARIS report declared, "The U.S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008. The "Nones" (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990 to 14.1% to 2001, to 15.0% in 2008."

In my estimation the survey's data point to the future of American religion: Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics will set the norm for Christianity, as the so-called main line Protestants continue to decline--probably at the expense of the "Nones." And the "Nones," eschewing organized religion and perhaps religion altogether, will continue to swell.