News U
By the staff of The Lutheran, ELCA News Service and Religion News Service
Survey finds record 19 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans
nbelief is on the uptick. People who check “none” for their reli-
gious affiliation are now nearly 1 in 5 Americans (19 percent), the high- est ever documented, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press.
The rapid rise of the Nones— including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe “noth- ing in particular”—defies the usu- ally glacial rate of change in spiri- tual identity.
Barry Kosmin, co-author of
three American Religious Identi- fication Surveys, theorizes why None has become the default cat- egory: “Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional reli- gion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theol- ogy than ever before.” Kosmin’s surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6 percent of U.S. adults. By the 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15 percent. By 2010, another report, the biannual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18 percent.
The 19 percent count is based on aggregated surveys of 19,377 peo- ple conducted by the Pew Research Center throughout 2011.
How high the Nones numbers might go depends on demograph- ics, said Mark Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University, Durham, N.C., and an expert on the General Social Survey. Two forces could hold Nones’ numbers down. First, they are dis- proportionately young, often single and highly educated—all groups with a low birth rate. Second, the number of believers who immi- grate to the U.S. from particularly religious nations, such as Roman Catholics from Mexico, fluctuates with government policies and eco- nomic issues, Chaves said. But the chief way the category grows is by “switchers.” A 2009 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life look at switching found more than 10 percent of American adults became Nones after growing up within a religious group.
©2012 USA Today. Distributed by Religion News Service.
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The idea that mere exposure to religious imagery, with no accom- panying proselytizing, is a form of religious establishment has no factual support, as well as being implausible.
Judge Richard Posner, in a dissent from a 7-3 ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that a Wisconsin school district violated the First Amendment when it held its graduation ceremonies in a church.
8 The Lutheran •
www.thelutheran.org Wednesday worship cooler
At one New Hampshire congrega- tion, sweltering July heat resulted in a Sunday worship attendance of zero. Even the pastor stayed home. Instead, worshipers gathered on Wednesday evening in the cool com- fort of the basement fellowship hall. The hot summer of 2012 thinned the numbers in the pews more than usual, causing some churches to rediscover Wednesday night wor- ship. Trondhjem Lutheran Church,
Lonsdale, Minn., revived its mid- week worship this year but attracted few regular Sunday worshipers. “It’s not a substitute for Sunday. It doesn’t make up the difference [in reduced summer attendance]. For us, it’s just an alternative style of worship,” said Howard E. White, pastor.
From pool hall to bank Cyndi Ganzkow-Wold has been preaching in a converted pool hall. But she and Elk River (Minn.) Lutheran Church are growing and preparing to set down new roots. Elk River formed in 2010 after some members left Central Lutheran Church, Elk River, which withdrew from the ELCA. Some 60 people started the church (January 2011, page 14), which now has more than 450 members. Their new home is downtown Elk River in the for- mer First National Bank building. For $1.2 million, the church got 19,000-square-feet of prime real estate for about the same amount as it was paying for rent at the pool hall, according to WCCO radio. They hope to be in the building by Christ- mas Eve.
Former church leader dies Randall Lee, former ELCA director for ecumenical and interreligious relations, died July 4 in Madison, Wis. Lee, 56, was a member of First English Lutheran Church in Wiscon- sin Rapids, Wis. He served pastor- ates at Bethel Lutheran, University City, Mo., the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke, Chicago, and Grace Lutheran in Evanston, Ill. He also served at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Evangelical Lutherans in Mission, and Aid Asso- ciation for Lutherans (now Thrivent). He worked with the ELCA Office of the Secretary before being named director for ecumenical affairs and interreligious relations.
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