What's Behind the “Nones‐sense”? Change Over Time in Factors Predicting Likelihood of Religious Nonaffiliation in the United States

The proportion of people in the United States who identify as unaffiliated with any religious tradition (Nones) has risen steadily since the 1990s. Empirical investigations have examined this phenomenon, and point to a range of sociodemographic and associational variables as significant predictors of religious nonaffiliation. To build on these, the research reported here uses nearly five decades of General Social Survey data and binary logistic regression to examine change over time in the direction and size of effect on the likelihood that various factors predict religious nonaffiliation. While some factors (like age and political orientation) behave as expected over time, other factors decrease in their effect on likelihood (e.g., residence in the Far West), lose effect on likelihood (e.g., being college‐educated), or never showed likelihood of effect in the first place (e.g., residence in New England).     

Being Religious: Working at Self-Maintenance and Self-Transformation

We see religion in the things people treat as crucial to what they are and to what they aspire to become, things that make the biggest difference in how people feel about themselves. They may be social aspects or personal (behavioral or characterological) aspects of the self. The things people are militant about, the practices in regard to which they are most scrupulous, and the things about themselves that distress them are indicators of where their religious concerns lie, whatever the subject matter. People work to maintain themselves as they want to see themselves and as they want others to see them; they seek ways to repair damage to their selves. They seek also to transform themselves so as to escape present unhappy definitions of self and to achieve ideal states of being. What needs to be changed may be perceived as aspects of personal self, as attitudes other people have toward otherwise unchangeable aspects of self, or as the entire socio-political system in which people feel trapped. The process by which people manage successfully to transform themselves includes social cooperation, including the formation of groups to provide mutual reinforcement.     

Patterns of Religious Education Policy in Switzerland: The Long Arm of Distanced Christians?

In spite of its different cantonal jurisdictions and traditions, the development of religious education in Switzerland over the past decade has taken a common direction: the state has assumed a more active role in the field of religious education in public (state‐run) schools. In this article, we ask the question: How do key social actors interpret these reforms and how do these interpretations relate to the social structure of religion in Switzerland, in particular with respect to the majority category of the so‐called distanced Christians? Drawing on qualitative interviews with members of the schools’ teaching staff, school administrators, and church representatives, the article highlights a dominant interpretative pattern that frames the socially accepted representation of religion in public schools. Thus, rather than addressing the pedagogical dimension of religious education, we discuss the significance of this pattern for the debate on the public presence of religion in Switzerland and Europe.     

西方宗教教育在思想政治教育中的作用

西方国家的宗教教育非常活跃,并行使某种思想政治教育的职能。西方国家的宗教教育在对国民进行道德熏陶和政治控制,培养公民的民族精神和社会信仰,调和阶级关系,维护社会稳定,以及解决公民日常的思想问题和精神困惑等方面起着重要作用,对我国思想政治教育有着借鉴意义。     

EXPLANATORY MODESTY

Although I certainly have differences with some of my commentators, I am grateful for the time, effort, and attention that each has devoted to my book, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. They have helpfully pointed out features of my positions that need clarification and elaboration. I am also grateful to the editor of Zygon, Willem Drees, for this opportunity to undertake that task here.     

IS A COMPLETE BIOCOGNITIVE ACCOUNT OF RELIGION FEASIBLE?

The biological and cognitive approach to religion has matured somewhat and reveals interesting results. Nevertheless, some questions arise about its foundation and development. The essay offers a review of current research in the cognitive field, focusing on its conclusions, the internal discussions, and the problems that need more study or correction. Emphasis is placed on a more intricate account of the factors involved in religious experience, discussing the proper use of the discoveries of biocognitive research and the limits that should be placed on said conclusions.     

The relationship between NEO personality factors and Hoge’s Intrinsic Religious Motivation

Personality traits have shown variable relationships to measures of religious motivation. For example, Costa and McCrae (1985) and McCrae and Costa (1999) suggested that individuals who are high in agreeableness and conscientious gravitate toward religion once they ‘meet’ with religion as a cultural identity Openness to experience involves varied expressions including sensitivity to aesthetics, and egalitarian values (e.g. McCrae and Costa 1996). As such, it has been shown to be negatively correlated with measures of religious fundamentalism, and positively correlated with intrinsic religious motivation. However, other reviews have found only small correlations between personality and religious motivation. Our study was designed to test the relationships among the Big 5 personality factors with Hoge’s Intrinsic Religious Motivation in an undergraduate sample. Results showed that only openness to experience and intrinsic religious motivation were significantly correlated, providing further support for the idea that religious motivation and personality factors may require further research elaboration.     

Sacred space: function and mission from a sociological and theological perspective

Drawing on interviews with 21 individuals who attend religious services mainly for religious holidays and rites of passage and case studies with a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation and a Roman Catholic congregation, we offer a sociological and theological discussion of ‘sacred space’. Sociologically, we argue that sacred space is an important reason for why annual attenders attend religious services when they do, mainly because sacred space helps to centre them with some semblance of meaning and direction, transition and transformation in life. Theologically, we show that church leaders, when thinking about and creating sacred space relative to the mission of their church, give importance to individuals' religious journeys and transformation. However, they appear to give greater ascendancy to the missional belief that sacred space should facilitate horizontal relationships between humans more so than vertical relationships between humans and God.     

‘Teshuvah baskets’ in the Israeli teshuvah market

As opposed to the approach that makes a dichotomous distinction between ‘rigid religiosity’ and ‘soft religiosity’, I would like to point to a reality in which these boundaries are blurred. I shall do so by examining the case of the religious revival movement in Israel (the ‘teshuvah movement’), which offers a broad range of teshuvah styles, out of which hozrim beteshuvah (penitents) select ‘teshuvah baskets’, which they fill and pack themselves, according to their own personal preferences. These ‘teshuvah baskets’ are dynamic, in that their owners can fill, empty and modify their contents, while they conduct an ongoing critical ‘market survey’. This dynamism creates a reality, accompanied by a discourse, which continuously blurs the symbolic boundaries separating the various types of religious ‘supply’ sources. It demonstrates how practices and beliefs related to ‘soft religiosity’ are expressed also by those participating in what is generally referred to as ‘rigid religiosity’.     

Spiritual But Not Religious? Beyond Binary Choices in the Study of Religion

“Spirituality” often has been framed in social science research as an alternative to organized “religion,” implicitly or explicitly extending theoretical arguments about the privatization of religion. This article uses in‐depth qualitative data from a religiously diverse U.S. sample to argue that this either/or distinction not only fails to capture the empirical reality of American religion, it does no justice to the complexity of spirituality. An inductive discursive analysis reveals four primary cultural “packages,” or ways in which people construct the meaning of spirituality in conversation: a Theistic Package tying spirituality to personal deities, an Extra‐Theistic Package locating spirituality in various naturalistic forms of transcendence, an Ethical Spirituality focusing on everyday compassion, and a contested Belief and Belonging Spirituality tied to cultural notions of religiosity. Spirituality, then, is neither a diffuse individualized phenomenon nor a single cultural alternative to “religion.” Analysis of the contested evaluations of Belief and Belonging Spirituality allows a window on the “moral boundary work” being done through identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” The empirical boundary between spirituality and religion is far more orous than is the moral and political one.