Feature: Americans Increasingly Choose "No Religion" by Sid Groeneman and Gary A. Tobin page 3

Like other research, most notably the American Religious Identification Survey conducted by researchers Egon Mayer, Barry Kosmin, and Ariela Keysar, and Hout and Fischer’s analysis of the General Social Survey data, our analysis indicates that non-identifiers are far from adamantly, persistently, or consistently nonreligious in motivation or behavior:

Combining these measures to produce a net "secular" figure, only 45 percent of the non-identifiers met this standard—that is, having attended no recent religious services and having no expectation of adopting a religion in the future. Thus, no more than half of the "nones" could be described as estranged from organized religion.

Altogether, the HARI study showed that while, as a group, non-identifiers are not as religiously distinctive as might be inferred from a superficial glance, they are nevertheless still different enough to be a focus of social research. And they are growing in number.

As citizens, there are a variety of reasons why we should be interested in this declining attachment to organized religion. First, religious participation is instrumental in building "social capital"—a powerful concept, popularized by Robert Putnam in his 2000 book Bowling Alone, that refers to social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. Social capital is especially critical for those who are on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder or otherwise disadvantaged, such as by racial or ethnic discrimination. As such, it has tremendous potential to produce personal and collective benefits. To the extent that declining religious identity lessens religion-based participation, this potential is diminished.

Second, research demonstrates a positive relationship between church-based participation and forms of altruistic behavior, like charitable giving (to both religious and secular organizations) and volunteering one's time to help others. While skeptics might argue that the direction of causality is ambiguous—that altruistic people might be attracted to religious participation—the theoretical connection between religious instruction and belief on the one hand and charitable behavior on the other seems too compelling to dismiss. A recent in-depth survey analysis by Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center found that religious involvement—for example, attending church and praying—is associated with greater empathy and altruism.

Most prominently discussed of late are the overtly political implications of religious identity. The most attention has focused on the strength of “moral values” issues such as gay marriage, abortion, school prayer, and personal expression of faith in mobilizing devotees (especially conservative Christians) to support particular political positions. But the interjection of religion into politics can—and, some would argue, already has—generated a reaction among those who object to what they view as an illegitimate intermixing of religion and politics. This counter-mobilization is most evident among the more secular Americans espousing no denominational identity. Indeed, Hout and Fischer make a strong case that the growth in religious non-identification has, in part, directly resulted from moderates' and liberals' repudiation of the political agenda of the Religious Right, beginning in the 1990s.

The putative impacts on social capital formation, altruistic behavior, and political participation are three reasons to monitor religious attachment.