"no religion" designation

I often wonder to what extent this is merely a more accurate reflection rather than a gradual change. In the UK it always used to be pretty standard to list religion as "Church of England" even if you hadn't set foot in a church in years and believed the core teachings of Christianity were "every man for himself".

jsimms435 said:

"For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey.
Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion."

this is from this web site
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/13/us/no-religion-largest-group-first-time-usa-trnd/index.html

I'm not surprised by this view personally.

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Judges 17:6 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
... everyone did what was right in their own eyes...
The slogan of the disunited states of america.

If 23% claim no religion that suggests 77% do claim a religion. I guess if you break the major world religions into small enough groups you can make atheists and agnostics look like the normal, even if they do represent less than a quarter of the population.

tango said:

If 23% claim no religion that suggests 77% do claim a religion. I guess if you break the major world religions into small enough groups you can make atheists and agnostics look like the normal, even if they do represent less than a quarter of the population.

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That's right. We ought to be careful about accepting the possibility that No Religion now is the most popular religion in the country. The survey results split the Christians into a number of separate groups, somewhat arbitrarily IMO, comparing each of them with the No Religion people irrespective of all variations in the beliefs of the NR people. Christianity, as a religion, clearly has more followers than No Religion.

jsimms435 said:

"For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey.
Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion."

this is from this web site
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/13/us/no-religion-largest-group-first-time-usa-trnd/index.html

I'm not surprised by this view personally.

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Perhaps it is because of the way USA Christianity is so tightly allied to politics now that people think ill of it and prefer "no religion" to Christianity.

Albion said:

That's right. We ought to be careful about accepting the possibility that No Religion now is the most popular religion in the country. The survey results split the Christians into a number of separate groups, somewhat arbitrarily IMO, comparing each of them with the No Religion people irrespective of all variations in the beliefs of the NR people. Christianity, as a religion, clearly has more followers than No Religion.

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Catholics and evangelicals self define the split don't they? Evangelicals often say that Catholics are not Christians. It is less common for Catholics to say that evangelicals are not Christians. So the survey is not breaking new ground by separating Evangelicals and Catholics one from the other.

MoreCoffee said:

Catholics and evangelicals self define the split don't they? Evangelicals often say that Catholics are not Christians. It is less common for Catholics to say that evangelicals are not Christians. So the survey is not breaking new ground by separating Evangelicals and Catholics one from the other.

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Whoever defined the split, if "Catholic" plus "Evangelical" is more than "no religion" then more people believe in the God of the Bible than don't, regardless of how the stats are presented.

MoreCoffee said:

Catholics and evangelicals self define the split don't they? Evangelicals often say that Catholics are not Christians. It is less common for Catholics to say that evangelicals are not Christians. So the survey is not breaking new ground by separating Evangelicals and Catholics one from the other.

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Flip it MC. Your church has taught that all non-Roman Catholics are going to hell. Most Protestants, including myself, believe that God has chosen a remnant from Rome who believe. Many who are chosen within the Roman Church ultimately leave because they recognize the significant paganism living in the Roman Church.

MoreCoffee said:

Catholics and evangelicals self define the split don't they? Evangelicals often say that Catholics are not Christians. It is less common for Catholics to say that evangelicals are not Christians. So the survey is not breaking new ground by separating Evangelicals and Catholics one from the other.

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I think I know what you are saying, but I think the fundamentalist are what you mean. Some fundamentalist even say that evangelicals are not Christian. Having written that, there are people from all groups that make less of another group. I would think that evangelicals being the larger group would get caught up in any subset group's behavior.

MoreCoffee said:

Perhaps it is because of the way USA Christianity is so tightly allied to politics now that people think ill of it and prefer "no religion" to Christianity.

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I doubt that, there are people on both sides of the political divide who claim support from their faith that this doesn't really seem relevant. A lot of people refer to "the religious right" but it's not as if there aren't Democrats insisting that Christian values support their stances.

Maybe people are just being honest - it's hard to seriously consider oneself a follower of any religion without partaking in at least some activity associated with that religion. If you're only ever in church at Christmas and Easter (if you even attend that frequently), never read the Bible and never pray (with exceptions offered for the occasional saying of grace for show, or maybe reading 1Co13 at a wedding) you might as well be honest and say you don't have a faith than to claim you follow whatever church denomination happens to be local to you.

I know a few people who often wondered what the Church of England did to deserve a notional membership vastly higher than any attendance figures could support. I never did work out whether they regarded that as an unfair advantage of apparently having lots of followers, or an unfair disadvantage being stuck with all the people who had nothing to do with it but still claimed allegiance.

MoreCoffee said:

Catholics and evangelicals self define the split don't they?

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What I said is that these (and others which were also listed) are Christians, so for the survey to report their numbers separately while lumping all atheists, humanists, agnostics, etc. etc. together as No Religion is to deliberately skew the results and give an inaccurate picture of the situation.

Albion said:

What I said is that these (and others which were also listed) are Christians, so for the survey to report their numbers separately while lumping all atheists, humanists, agnostics, etc. etc. together as No Religion is to deliberately skew the results and give an inaccurate picture of the situation.

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It does seem a bit like grouping people into "Women", "White men", "Black men", "Asian men", "Oriental men" and "Mixed race men" and then observing that women were by far the largest group.