Who’re Religious “Nones?”

Here’s my interview with Ryan Burge, author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going. The religious nones are growing and commonly misunderstood. Few are atheist or agnostic. Some are occasional attenders of nondenominational churches. Download podcast audio directly to your mobile device here.

Ryan Burge Explains the Religious “Nones” (Transcribed by Collin Bastian)

Mark Tooley: Hello, this is Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy here in Washington, D.C. with the pleasure today of talking with Ryan Burge. I hope I’m pronouncing your last name correctly, Ryan.

Ryan Burge: You got it, yep.

Mark Tooley: Author of a new book that is very relevant to today’s conversations about religion in America. The book is called The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where Are They Going? obviously referring to the growing demographic in America of those who profess to have no formal religious affiliation. They are much discussed, the “nones”, maybe misunderstood in terms of who they are and what they don’t believe, but they are a growing element in American society, so Ryan is going to explain what they’re all about. So, Ryan, what persuaded you to write this book?

Ryan Burge: Well, it was a tweet, really, that kind of got the book all started. I was a guy who had like 500 Twitter followers, and one day I sent out this tweet from the General Social Survey data, which said that the “nones” were as large as evangelicals or Catholics and they’re continuing to grow very rapidly. And that tweet, for reasons I don’t fully understand even to this day, went viral, and it got retweeted over a thousand times, and all of a sudden, people from CNN, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, I mean, people all over the world were calling me, wanting to talk about the “nones.” So I thought, if I want to write a book, I might as well write a book about something they already care about, kind of what I’m known for.  And there was just, you know, there’s this this latent desire to understand how American society is changing. Everyone kind of knows that we’re becoming less religious, but no one’s ever been really sort of able to quantify and kind of explain it in a meaningful way.  So, I mean the book was my attempt to kind of translate all the data that I know to a lay audience, who was interested and engaged, but maybe doesn’t really want to dig into you know, a big academic text. So, I wanted to kind of go to that middle audience, that trade-level, academic-level audience, and that’s where The Nones came from.

Mark Tooley: And where do you teach and what is your background?

Ryan Burge: So, I’m an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois.  I have a Ph.D. in political science from SIU Carbondale, got that in 2011. I’m also a pastor.  I’ve been a pastor in the American Baptist Churches for almost 20 years now, I serve my current church, First Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois.  I’ve been the pastor there for over 15 years now. I’m the longest serving pastor in the history of the church.  I say religion, politics, generally speaking, so I kind of take both sides of my life and kind of mix and match it together.  I remember when I was 17 years old, one of my teachers in high school was like, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I said I want to be a lawyer and a youth pastor, and she laughed, you know, saying “like, that’s kind of an impossible thing.” And I saw her a couple of years ago and I was like, “well I mean I kind of got it right in the same kind of ballpark on both aspects.”  So, I’m bi-vocational in the pastorate because it’s a very small church, about 15 or 20 people, and then I teach full-time.

Mark Tooley: And the “nones.” Who exactly are they? People assume they’re overwhelmingly secular but many of them are self-identified as spiritual, some of them attend places of worship regularly.

Ryan Burge: Yeah, so the “nones” are about 30% of America. Different polls would have a different number, anywhere between 27% and 34%. But I think 30% is kind of the right number. So, if you put five “nones” in a room, one’s an atheist, one’s an agnostic, and three are a group called “nothing in particular,” that’s really the group I wanted to kind of zero in on in the book and talk about a lot more, is the fact that 60% of the “nones” are “nothing in particular.” And they look completely different than atheists or agnostics on all kinds of other measures. For instance, only 21% of nothing in particulars have a four-year college degree, it’s 47% of atheist and 44% of agnostics so you know, in terms of education they’re not on the same planet. “Nones” are at the very bottom and atheists and agnostics are near the top. Economically, 60% of “nothing in particular’s” make $50,000 as a household per year or less, which means that most of these “nones” live in poverty. Amongst atheists, only 40% make $50,000 or less and 25% of atheists make more than $100,000 a year. So, completely different worlds. Atheists and agnostics do not go to church, or very, very, very rarely. 95% of them never go to church or seldom go to church. Amongst “nothing in particular’s,” about 30% of them said they go at least once a year, if not more. There’s a new book that came out called Secular Surge by Dave Campbell and (Geoffrey) Layman and John Green out of Notre Dame. And they make this really interesting kind of comparison, they say that atheists, agnostics are secular; they have a secular worldview. Which means they’re basically anti-religion, they don’t like religion, they don’t want any more religion in America, they want to fight against religion as much as possible. But then there’s the “non-religious.” And the “nothing in particular’s” are “non-religious” because it’s not like they’re anti-religion. But they’re not pro-religion either. When they hear the religion question, I think, for most of them, they kind of shrug their shoulders and go, “I’m not for that, but I’m not for that either.” So, they’re not anti-religion, they’re not turned off by faith, they just don’t feel some sort of deep abiding connection to it, just don’t want to affiliate with religion on surveys.

Mark Tooley: The stereotype about “nones” is often that they’re urban, educated millennials, but it’s much more complicated you’re saying.

Ryan Burge: Oh, you can’t get to 30% of population by being one thing, right? You got to be everything now. So now, it’s old and young. It’s black, it’s white, it’s Asian and Hispanic, it’s every generation, it’s every economic stratum, and even increasingly now, we’re seeing more “nones” are Republicans or conservatives, political conservatives, because they’ve kind of hit the ceiling when it comes to drawing in liberals. Now that’s not to say that liberals are not more likely to be “nones,” that’s absolutely true. But we’re seeing more and more, the “nones” are becoming a politically diverse coalition, which kind of creates all these interesting problems for the future of American politics and religion, about how the parties kind of, you know, navigate this changing world, because the world looks completely different today than it did even 30 or 40 years ago when it comes to religion.

Mark Tooley: To what extent does the rise of the “nones” reflect increased secularization, and to what extent does it reflect the collapse of the Protestant denominations and the decline of institutional Christianity?

Ryan Burge: I think it’s both/and. One thing that I think most people don’t realize is that the rise of Nondenominational Protestant Christianity in this country is just unprecedented. In 1972, 3% of all Protestants were nondenominational and now it’s 25% of all Protestants are Nondenominational. If you look back over the last 10 years, the only Protestant tradition that grew in size was Nondenominational. Baptists are down, Methodist are down, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, all down. Over the last 10 years, the only one that has grown in size is Nondenominational, and one of the reasons that evangelicalism is still so robust in this country is because Nondenominationals kind of picked up the slack that has been left behind by like the Southern Baptist, for instance, who lost 2.1 million members in the last 15 years. So, I think that’s part of it, is this Nondenominational shift we’re seeing in American Protestant Christianity. The other side is, you know, there’s this whole theory that America was destined to be less religious because it became more economically prosperous and have higher levels of education. There’s this old theory in sociology called “secularization theory,” which says that the more education you have, the less God you need. And you know the evidence of that is Western Europe. I mean countries like Germany, only 8% of Germans go to church once a week, you know, and even in Italy it’s only 20%. So, you know we were going to look more and more like Western Europe. The interesting question is, why did it take so long and why is it gone so slowly? I mean we should be, if we were on the trend line, zero percent of Americans should say “religion is very important,” but instead it’s over 50% of Americans who say, “religion is very important,” so we’re still much more religious than we should be comparing ourselves to Western Europe.

Mark Tooley: Is it fair to say that many of these “nones” are at least sporadically attending Nondenominational churches, but don’t really identify as anything specifically Christian?

Ryan Burge: There’s this category that kind of bops around academic literature called SPNR, “spiritual but not religious.” And you see that data, like, for instance, 37% of people say they’re very spiritual, but only 21% of people say they’re very religious. Because you know, religion has this negative connotation in American life, and I don’t think it’s just religion, by the way, I think it’s all institutions have a negative connotation. We reject labels. We don’t want to be branded by anyone or anything, this, that, or the other. So, we’re seeing more and more people say they’re politically independent or politically moderate when they’re really not. People say they’re not religious when they actually do go to church. So, like I mentioned before, 30% of “nothing in particular’s” go to church at least once a year. And if you look, and I think this is really kind of for the church to think about – so there’s this panel data, where they asked people in 2010 and 2014 what their religion was. Same people, so you can track change at the individual level. Okay amongst atheists, 99% of them were still “nones” four years later, okay?  Amongst agnostics it was 96% were still “nones” four years later, so very little switching there. But amongst “nothing in particular’s,” four years later, 16% of them were Christians and 8% of them moved to another faith tradition, whether it be Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Islam. So, you’re talking a quarter of “nothing in particular’s” switch from being a “none” to being a “some” four years later. So, they’re not really that anti-religion. There’s this term we use called “liminal,” they kind of move in and out of these spaces, where they’re very, very religious and then they’re secular for a while, and they kind of bounce back and forth, back and forth. That’s what the “nothing in particular’s” are. We almost always see when someone leaves religion, they don’t go from being like an evangelical to an atheist, they kind of stop at that “nothing in particular” pathway, on the way there, and on the way back, by the way. There’s very little data that says the atheists become, you know, evangelicals are Catholics. Almost always that “nothing in particular” is sort of like a waystation, like a transfer station between religion on one side, and secularism on the other side and most people pass through that pathway, and I think that’s really where the battle of American religions is being fought is in that “nothing in particular” group.

Mark Tooley: And the numbers of self-professed atheists and agnostics have risen but still relatively small. So, is it accurate to say that America is becoming more secular, or is it more accurate to say America is less institutionally religious?

Ryan Burge: Yeah, I would say we’re less religious and slightly more secular, right? So, in 2008 about 6% or 7% of Americans said they were atheists or agnostics, now it’s 12%. Which is still a rise, but you still got to think, 88% of Americans do not identify as atheist or agnostic and, I posted this stat on my Twitter the other day, even amongst never attending people, so people who never attend church, you ask them how they believe about God? People are just as likely, amongst that group, people are just as likely to say that God exists, without any doubt, as they are to say God does not exist. So even amongst never attending people, there’s still a lot of belief in this country, and I think that’s something that is easily looked over. So, when we think about religion, we think about three dimensions. There’s behavior, which is like going to church. About 45% of Americans never go to church, okay? And there’s belonging, which is like I say I’m not religious, I say I’m atheist, I say I’m agnostic, I say I’m “nothing in particular.” That share of Americans is about 30%. And the last share is, what do you believe about God? Only about 10% of Americans say they don’t believe in God, or they have an agnostic view of God, where He might exist, but they just can’t tell for sure. So, 40%, 30%, but only 10% of Americans say they don’t believe in God at all. So, there’s only about 5% or 6% of Americans who don’t believe, don’t belong, and don’t behave, so really the “none, none, none” of America is about 1 in 20 of us, we are still a deeply religious place. Although, I do think secularism is on the march because, especially on social media, and you probably have seen this as well, atheists and agnostics are very loud. They are very proud of their position. They actually like the opposition. There’s actually data I just saw the other day that said that even when they’re confronted with discrimination and anger for their beliefs, atheists actually dig in more because of that, so they’re very, very reticent, in what they believe. So, things like Empty the Pews is a very like atheist/agnostic secular idea, so they’re a group that are small in number, but I think they’re actually overrepresented on social media and they’re actually overrepresented in politics too because atheists are the most politically active religious group in America today. Even if you control for education, they’re still more active than evangelical Protestants are. In 2020, over 50% of atheists donated to a candidate or campaign, over 50%. It was only 22% of white evangelicals so they punch above their weight, atheists and agnostics do. So, I think it’s kind of like a thing where like their actual numbers aren’t that large, but the perception of what they do is much larger because of how engaged and active they are in the political process and in the social media dialogue.

Mark Tooley: So, atheists and agnostics obviously in their politics lean much farther to the left than the general population. In terms of the religious “nones,” they also are farther to the left than obviously religious Americans are, but to what extent?

Ryan Burge: So, atheists, agnostics – agnostics are actually kind of a lite version of atheists –  so like 80% of agnostics voted for Biden, or, I’m sorry if 80% of atheists voted for Biden, 75% of agnostic did, so just slightly towards the center from atheists. Atheists are the most liberal religious group in America today, even black Protestants don’t call themselves “liberal.” More black Protestants call themselves “moderate” than “liberal.” Atheists are loud and proud about how liberal they are. I actually looked at this data to ask people to put themselves on a scale from one to seven, one being very liberal and seven being very conservative. The atheists over the last four years actually see themselves turning to the left, like towards the very liberal side, and they actually see the Democratic Party moving towards the middle. They’re the only religious group that said that. Most people saw correctly that the Democratic Party is staying where it was or even moving a little bit to the left. Atheists are like, “whoa, the Democrats are way too moderate for us now, and we’ve gone out to the edge,” so they’re actually like very liberal and very proud of it now. Amongst your “nothing in particular’s” they are center-left people, okay? So, they generally lean towards the Democratic Party 60%-40%, in like a generic election. It varies though. So, for instance, in 2016, they were only 55%-45%. 55% for Clinton, 45% for Trump, and I think one reason is because they like Trump, because he was a guy like them, who was the outsider, like, “I represent you, no one’s representing you, and I’m representing you and I’m going to shake Washington up because it’s not working for you.” And a lot of these “nothing in particular’s” are anti-institution, right? Society’s not working for them, they like outsiders. So, what’s interesting is they voted, you know, 55%-45% in 2016, then 2020 comes around, and it goes right back to the way it was before: the old guard of 62%-38%, or 60%-40%. Because I think they saw Trump, they thought he was going to be this rebel, right? This guy who was an outsider, “drain the swamp,” all that stuff, and then after four years in office, they realized he was just like everyone else. Just like a politician, like everyone else, and so they went back to that normal configuration, which is they favor the Democrats about 60%-40%. And I think they’re actually one of the most interesting, most consequential religious groups in America today, “nothing particular,” because you got to think, about 21% of Americans are “nothing in particular,” it’s the same size as evangelicals. No one’s talking about the “nothing in particular” vote, and everyone talks about the white evangelical vote, but if you can swing 5% of the “nothing in particular’s” in your direction, that can mean the difference in a swing state.

Mark Tooley: Now the term, the word “evangelical” has gone from being primarily theological to a cultural or a political label such that even supposedly some Hindus and Muslims and Jews identify as evangelical because of their politics. What’s going on there?

Ryan Burge: Yeah, so this is something that makes everyone mad when I tell them there’s Muslims who are evangelicals, there’s Jews who are evangelicals, there are Catholics who are evangelical – now about one in five Catholics is evangelical, up from about 12% 10 years ago. And so, a couple things going on here. One is we’re seeing more and more people grab on to the evangelical label who don’t go to church at all. Right, so the share of self-identified, that’s the keyword, self-identified evangelicals who go to church less than once a year, is now 40%. It was 28% in 2008, so we’re seeing a rapid rise in people grabbing onto the evangelical term, not because of the theology or the church behind it, but because of cultural and political ideas. There’s something else going on, which is what we just talked about: the rise of born-again Muslims and born-again Jews and born-again Catholics. And if you look at the data, for a long time, everyone thought that was just survey error, people didn’t know what they were doing when they clicked the button, and they’re just mistakes. But if you look at the data what you see is there’s really two things that predict people picking the born-again option, like Muslims, for instance. It’s “I go to mosque a lot, more than once a week,” and “I’m also a Republican.” So, what evangelical has become for non-Christians is a moniker that says, “I’m very religious and I’m conservative, politically conservative and theologically conservative.” So now what we’re seeing is this label sort of jumped the fence out of theology and become social, become political, become something bigger than all that stuff, and people are grabbing onto it, and then the old school evangelicals, like the traditionally theological evangelicals, they’re going “whoa, well that’s not what we’re about.” But at some point, you can’t tell people what they are and what they aren’t. You know, if they want to grab on to it, it’s my job to try to figure out why they’re grabbing onto it and how that label is kind of morphed and changed over time. And it now means something completely different than it did even 20 or 30 years ago.

Mark Tooley: Perhaps it’s too early to say, but the rising generation of Z’s, will they be even more prone to be “nones” than the millennials, or what do you expect?

Ryan Burge: So, about 44% of millennials are “nones,” and it’s about 45% of Gen Z. Now there are some caveats with that in that Gen Z has not reached full flower yet. So, the oldest members of Gen Z were born in 1996 so they’re 25, 26 years old, we’ve still got a lot more Gen Z to go, like a lot of them still have to come of age and become adults. And then the other part, is the older Gen Z has to move into parenthood, getting married and all the things that go along with that. So, I think it’s still too early to say, but I think the millennials and Gen Z are actually going to have a lot more similarities when it comes to religion. Millennials were the first non-religious generation in American history, I wrote a piece about this for RNS. Gen X looks a lot more like the baby boomers than they do like the millennials. Gen X is still very religious, actually the share of Gen X that says “God exists without any doubts” has gone up over the last 20 years, so they’re still very religious, very faithful. Millennials have really fallen off the table when it comes to religion, whether it be belief, behavior, or belonging, and they look a lot more like Gen Z now.

Mark Tooley: Ryan Burge, author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, thank you for a very interesting interview.

Ryan Burge: Thanks, Mark.