This week’s Weekend Plug-in features a retrospective from columnist Bobby Ross Jr. on his 25 years on the Godbeat. Plus, a major new study on ‘nones’ — and, as always, all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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A new report on “nones” — one of the largest ever conducted on this fast-growing demographic — attempts to drill down into what these Americans believe, their feelings towards organized religion and politics. The decades-long rise of the “nones” has been one of the most talked about phenomena in the United States.
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(OPINION) 29% of the adult population currently self-describes as either atheist, agnostic or — by far the biggest category — “nothing in particular” regarding religion. Americans depend on what’s called “organized religion,” actual face-to-face gatherings now weakened by both COVID and societal undertow. Organized secularism simply cannot offer a substitute for building and serving communities.
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(OPINION) As liberals increasingly drift away from organized religion, Democrats — with some exceptions — may pin their election hopes on the religiously unaffiliated.
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(OPINION) The number of religiously unaffiliated people has reached or surpassed some of the largest religious groups in the U.S. Researchers are puzzled about why left-leaning churches are losing so many young people while the country moves left on many moral issues. It may be due to what they think “religious” actually means.
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(COMMENTARY) On Election Day 2018, we can expect black Protestants, Latino Catholics and Jews will join the “nones” as solidly Democratic while Mormons plus evangelical Protestants go Republican. More interesting two big blocs of religious swing voters - Non-Hispanic Catholics and white “mainline” Protestants - each have a negative view of President Trump at 52 percent, roughly tracking his standing with the over-all public.
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