The rise of the nones and the changing relationships between identity, belief, and behavior

ABSTRACT

One of the more remarkable trends of the past 30 years is the dramatic rise of individuals who do not identify with any religious tradition. While this trend has been well documented, some of the underlying dynamics and consequences have not been fully appreciated or explicated. We examine the General Social Survey in the period from 1972 to 2014 to examine how the increase in the ‘nones’ is tied to changes in the strength of religious identity among US adults and, in turn, how the rise of the nones has affected the relationships between religious identity, religious belief, and religious behavior. In particular, we show that, as the percentage of US adults who do not identify with a religion has grown, the correlations between religious identification, belief, and behavior have increased. In short, the rise of the nones has led to more congruence between measures of religion.

KEYWORDS:

• nones
• unaffiliated
• correlations
• belief
• behavior
• religion

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

CORRESPONDENCE: Christopher P. Scheitle, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, West Virginia University, PO Box 6326, Morgantown, WV 26506-6326, USA.

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no financial interest or benefit related to this research.

Notes

1. Of course, this may not be the case if such social pressure extends to religious practices, as an individual would feel pressure to identify and, say, attend religious services. We are focused here, however, on the assumption that the social pressure extended primarily or most strongly on identity and less so on expressed beliefs or practices.

2. Conducted annually or biennially since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center and funded primarily by grants from the National Science Foundation, the General Social Survey is seen by many as the single best source for attitudinal trend data covering the United States (General Social Survey 2016). These data are publicly available at www.gss.norc.org and in a number of online data archives, such as the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (www.icpsr.umich.edu). More details regarding the history and design of the General Social Survey can be found at http://gss.norc.org/Get-Documentation.

3. The 95% confidence interval for this percentage is 16.10% to 20.02%.

4. The 95% confidence interval for this percentage is 11.30% to 15.38%.

5. This is the RELITEN variable in the GSS codebook.

6. Regarding the question how the consistent over-reporting of religious service attendance affects these correlations (e.g. Hadaway, Marler, and Chaves 1993). To the extent that this over-reporting is consistent over time, this would not actually affect the correlations. As Roger Finke, Christopher Bader, and Edward Polson note (2010, 3), “Constant error introduces little or no bias into the relationship between variables and the strength of relationships remain the same.”

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this research.

Notes on contributors

Christopher P. Scheitle

Christopher P. Scheitle is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. His research examines the social dynamics between religion and science, organizational changes in American religion, and discrimination against and criminal victimization of religious individuals and organizations. His most recent book is Religion vs. Science: What Religious People Really Think (with Elaine Howard Ecklund).

Katie E. Corcoran

Katie E. Corcoran is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. She is a theoretical generalist who studies social groups and networks as links between macro-structures and micro-attitudes and behaviors. Her research applies these lenses to several empirical sub-fields—organizations, culture, crime/deviance, religion, emotion, inequality, and social movements. She is interested in exploring the processes by which individuals join and leave groups, invest time and resources in them, and come to hold their norms and values. She recently published Religious Hostility: A Global Assessment of Hatred and Terror (with Rodney Stark).

Caitlin Halligan

Caitlin Halligan is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, USA. She is interested in changing religious identities and secularism. Her master’s thesis examined how different religious socialization practices affect the stability of religious identities.