Ross Douthat has an interesting item on American religiosity in the Atlantic.
In the United States, the Bush era has summoned up — arguably for the first time in this countryâs history — a mass secularism that looks to Europe and sees a model for America to follow. [â¦]
Americaâs secular turn actually began in the 1990s, though it wasnât until 2002 that two Berkeley sociologists first noticed it. In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had âno religious preferenceâ had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population.
This unexpected spike wasnât the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as âa symbolic statementâ against the religious right. If the association of religiosity with political conservatism continued to gain strength, the sociologists suggested, âthen liberalsâ alienation from organized religion [might] become, as it has in many other nations, institutionalized.â (emphasis added)
I havenât reviewed the Hout/Fischer report in any real detail, but a large jump in the rates of those who claim no religious preference is rather unusual, particularly in light of claims, such as those from the president, that weâre in the midst of a âThird Awakeningâ of religious devotion in the United States.
I suspect there are a variety of explanations for the incremental increase. Perhaps itâs geo-political — with Americaâs enemies overseas being religious extremists, maybe more people are becoming secular. Perhaps the increased openness on the part of non-believers (i.e., best-selling books from Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens) makes people more comfortable in acknowledging spiritual doubts.
But if the Hout/Fischer analysis is right, and more people are turning away from organized religion because theyâre just so repulsed by the Dobson/Robertson crowd, well, thatâs just hilarious.
