Reasons to vote "None"

The Religion blog of the Dallas Morning News has run a symposium on the reasons why growing numbers of Americans see ourselves as non-affiliated with any religion, voting "None" in a poll on the subject.

The symposium is introduced by reporter Wayne Slater, who writes: "A new study by Trinity College suggests that more than one in five Americans will identify themselves as "Nones" in religious terms in 20 years (up from 15 percent now). Most would not consider themselves atheists. But they are increasingly skeptical of organized religion and clerics."

Well, the study isn't all that new. In March of this year I summarized its results of this study in this blog. Still, when we are talking about eternity, who sweats the months, right?

Anyway, the Dallas symposium includes an intriguing contribution from Cynthia Rigby, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Rigby says there are three reasons people vote "none." There are self-conscious doubters and deniers on the one hand.

There are secondly, those who "just aren't that interested in it," -- that is, in religion and the questions with which it deals.

And there are, thirdly, some for whom "none" means not so much "no religion" as "no single religion." Pluralists who are trying to craft a collage rather than embracing a creed. I like that break-down. And I'll keep working on my collage.

From the Warsaw Ghetto

Emmanuel Ringelman archived life and death in the Warsaw ghetto, and then buried the archives in milk containers that were unearthed after the war. The documents from the milk cans have been resources for historians on the Continent for some time, but as of yet seem to have been little known in the English-speaking world.

Samuel Kassow has set out to correct that. Kassow, a professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., is the author of WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY: REDISCOVERING A HIDDEN ARCHIVE FROM THE WARSAW GHETTO. The clothbound volume came out in 2007. It is just now available in paperback.

I've learned of it -- indeed, frankly I learned of the name Ringelblum for the first time -- through a brief review in the weekend edition of the Financial Times, by Eva Hoffman.

So I won't bother with my usual pose as a know-it-all. As a know-nothing, I'll just pass on the link. Here it is: Hoffman's review.

Religion in America

In a newly released study, a group based at Trinity College, Hartford, CT surveyed 54,461 American adults on the subject of their religious views, and found a significant growth (since a similar survey done in 1990) in the number of respondents who call themselves "non-denominational Christian." The number self-described that was was just 0.1% in 1990. It was 3.5% in 2008.

The ranks of non-denom Christians are growing at the expense of the traditional denoms, especially what were once called the "mainline Protestant" denoms: Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians.

The percentage of Pentecostals has remained stead -- it was 3.5% in 1990, and is 3.5% still.

The number of survey participants who identify themselves as being of no religion increased from 8.2% to 14.2%. Intriguingly, that group grew in EVERY state. The pace of growth differed, but there was no state out of the fifty in which fewer people said "no religion" in 2008 than had in 1990.

Mormon numbers have remained steady at 1.4%.

The number of religiously observant Jews has declined.

I'm not drawing any conclusions, I'm just putting some numbers out there.