Seeking God beyond the wall: Evangelicals, social justice, and the rise of Nones

Abstract

Ongoing research into the rise of religious Nones, people with no particular religious affiliation, demonstrates a rapid growth in this segment of American society (Hout 2017, 53; Thiessen and Wilkins-Laflamme 2017, 64; Twenge et al. 2016, 64-65). According to the Pew Research Center, one-fifth of the U.S. public, and a third of all adults under the age of 30, were religiously unaffiliated in 2012 (Pew Research Center 2012). Studies by Pew showed that in the five years preceding 2012 unaffiliated populations grew by 5% across the United States from 15% to just under 20% of all American adults (Pew Research Center 2012; Henao, Asiedu and Crary 2021). Of this, the largest group were people who held no particular religious affiliation, also called religious Nones, with nearly 33 million people falling into this category (Pew Research Center 2012; Windmueller 2015). For this study, the Nones refer to the increasing number of people who either associate themselves with being "spiritual but not religious," agnostic or having no particular choice when it comes to religion (Woodhead 2017, 247; Vernon 1968, 220-223; Drescher 2016, 53-88).