The Death of Religion?

A new book challenges the narrative of religious decline in the US

One of the most important developments in American religion over the past several decades has been the rise of the "Nones"—people who tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation. According to the Pew Research Center, about 29% of American adults now fall into this category, compared with 16% in 2007. Among younger Americans, the figure is even higher. Many observers see these numbers as evidence of the continuing secularization of American society.

A provocative new book challenges this conventional wisdom. In The Death of Religion? Nones, Others, and the Flourishing of Faith, sociologist Byron Johnson and historian Thomas Kidd argue that surveys greatly exaggerate the decline of religion in the US. I interviewed Kidd about the book in the most recent Legal Spirits podcast.

The book maintains that conventional surveys, including those conducted by Pew, give a misleading picture of American religious life. People who identify as religiously unaffiliated are not necessarily unbelievers. Some Nones retain religious commitments even though they have no formal connection to a denomination or congregation. Some Americans belong to religious communities that surveys fail to capture adequately, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities. Consequently, surveys may systematically underestimate the vitality of religion in the US.

Of course, there is evidence of genuine decline in some traditional religious institutions, like mainline churches. I asked Kidd about this during our conversation. Still, the authors make a useful point: religious affiliation and religious belief are not the same thing, and trends in one do not necessarily establish equivalent trends in the other.

For me, the most interesting part of the book is its historical account. It turns out that Americans have been worrying about religious disaffiliation for more than two centuries. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans sometimes referred to people without a definite religious affiliation as "Nothingarians" and suggested doing missionary work among them. Orestes Brownson, the famous Transcendentalist-turned-Catholic, maintained that Nothingarians made up the majority of antebellum Americans.

The historical parallels raise an interesting question. Americans have long been suspicious of institutions and hierarchies. It would not be surprising if this suspicion extended to religious institutions as well. Could Americans' longstanding preference for personal autonomy and self-reliance help explain the persistence of religious disaffiliation, even among people who retain spiritual beliefs?

Whether or not one accepts all the authors' conclusions, their book offers an interesting corrective to overly simple narratives about the disappearance of religion in America. You can listen my interview with Kidd here.