The 'Nones' and Us.

My Lilly Fellow group read a report from the Pew Research Center called "'Nones' on the Rise: One-In-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation." If you would like to read it you can click here.

The study shows that there has been a real growth in people saying that they are unaffiliated with any particular religious group. Some part of this group is atheist, and another small segment is agnostic. But the majority just doesn't belong to any group at all. 68% of these folks do believe in God. But more than believe just in God, they have active religious lives: 21% say they pray every day, and 41% say they pray at least weekly. 

The scary part for the Church is that 88% of them say they are not looking for any religious affiliation.  

The Pew Study mentioned a number of potential explanations for the rise in the unaffiliated religious folks. One of them was the rise of the religious right, and the resulting feeling that religion was too connected to politics and power.  The next explanation talked about broad social disengagement: younger Americans live more separate lives and are a part of fewer "communal groups". This idea might be familiar to you if you have read Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone. "Another was that it is getting easier in certain parts of the country to "come out" as not affiliated with a church. This one was interesting to me as a New Yorker because many people who go to church in New York feel like they are the only one among their friends who does. 

At one of my earliest preaching opportunities at St. Luke in the Fields church about six years ago I learned this lesson. I was still a student at Union Seminary and was learning a lot about what it meant for Christianity to have changed from a religion suppressed by the Roman Empire to the religion of the Empire. I preached a sermon about Christianity being in a position of dominance today in the U.S. and how different that was than for those writing the Gospel. I thought is was an okay sermon, but people seemed to look very puzzled by it. Afterwards three people stopped to talk about how strange they felt as Christians in most of their social interactions in New York. They told me they felt awkward talking about religion with their friends. They felt their friends thought they were foolish for having any part in it.  Finally they felt their friends assumed that being Christian meant being a part of the religious right. 

It was a good lesson for me as a preacher--even though Christianity is a dominant force in the U.S. it doesn't mean that it feels that way in the West Village. 

Have you had an experience like that? 

I wonder what you might make of the Pew study? 

I wonder what those 88% of people who are not looking for a church are looking for?  

And what should we do as the Church?

 I mean, we shouldn't be reactive. And it's impossible to attract people who aren't looking for us. But I do think it's a reminder that we need to stay actively engaged in the important issues of the day to show people in our communities that the Church is relevant. I think we need to be helpful to those who need help. I think we need to be servants. I think we need to come together each week for worship, which renews our commitment to go out and do the work that God has given us all to do. Is this going to catch the eye of someone who prays daily but is not looking for a church? I don't know, but it is what we are called to do.