Survey finds 19% without religious affiliation

[cbayer]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-07-19/no-religion-affiliation/56344976/1


By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY Updated 10h 40m ago


Unbelief is on the uptick. People who check "None" for their religious affiliation are now nearly one in five Americans (19%), the highest ever documented, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press.


The rapid rise of Nones — including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe "nothing in particular" — defies the usually glacial rate of change in spiritual identity.

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the "default category." He says, "Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before."

Kosmin's surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6% of U.S. adults. By 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15%. By 2010, another survey, the bi-annual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18%.

more at link

[rrneck]

1. More like religious dispersion.

People's minds, and faith, aren't changing. There are just a million new outlets for the same impulse.