The evangelical response so far to ‘Nones’ outnumbering them

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Nones, or “none of the above” people who don’t affiliate with any religions, have taken center stage in America’s religious landscape. Recently, Pew Research announced a staggering new find: Out of every religious group in America, Nones outnumber them all. Of particular note, at 28% of American adults, Nones now outnumber Catholics (23%) and evangelicals (24%).

Let’s trace the rise of the Nones, see where America’s religious marketplace might be heading soon, and check out how right-wing Christian dysfunctional authoritarians are coping with this news.

Defining Nones

When a survey lists a number of religions and asks people which one they consider their own, those that respond “none of the above” qualify as Nones. Nones can be atheists, agnostics, spiritual-but-not-religious types, or anything else. All that they need to be Nones is a lack of affiliation with any specific religious ideology or group.

I first began seeing the term in the early 2010s from religious researchers, particularly Pew Research Group. In a 2012 report about Nones, Pew Research discussed the sharp rise in their numbers over just five years, from 15% of American adults in 2007 to 20% in 2012.

But the general sentiment has been in use since at least 2004, when AltaMira Press published Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone. The book’s creators call that part of America “The None Zone” because more people there answered “none” when asked about their religious affiliation than in any other part of the country.

For the most part, the number of Nones has risen dramatically while Christianity declines. It’s not an exact correlation, of course. Nones don’t rise in number in exact lockstep with the decline of Christian groups. Still, it’s a breathtaking change.

In 2015, Pew Research released more data about Nones as part of their massive 2014 Religious Landscape Study. By then, they barely had to remind people what “Nones” were.

In 2018, Pew Research released more information about why Nones didn’t affiliate with any religions, breaking answers down by atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular.”

Then, in 2022, Pew ran tests to see how Christianity’s numbers might change in 50 years. Thanks to those tests, Pew expected Nones to rise to about 34%-52% of the population—and Christians to decline to 35%-54%.

The latest news about Nones

On January 24th, Pew Research released a huge new study about Nones: Religious ‘Nones’ in America: Who They Are and What They Believe. Here are its main takeaways:

• About 28% of adults in America are Nones now. Of that 28%, about 17% are atheists, 20% agnostic, and 63% “nothing in particular.”
• Only 3% of Nones attend religious services at least once a month, while 90% say they seldom/never do. That said, many Nones believe in some kind of god or “higher power.” Some even say they believe in the god described in the Bible. Only about 30% of Nones reject all god-beliefs.
• Overall, they’re not anti-Christian. They just think religion can be harmful at times.
• Unfortunately, Nones don’t vote as often as religious Americans. They’re also less engaged with their local political and civic scenes.
• Nones tend to follow a moral code based on not hurting others (83%).

It’s an interesting study, for sure!

We’ll get to the percentage of Nones in just a moment.

Spiritual, religious, or both, or neither?

To go along with that study, Pew published a survey last week about adults in America becoming more “spiritual” and less “religious.” Notably, Pew did not define either term, though elsewhere they did ask their respondents to define “spirituality” in their own words. About 40% of respondents they’ve grown more “spiritual” over their lifetimes. Meanwhile, only 24% of respondents said the same about religion, and 33% said they became less religious.

Atheists were least likely to say they’d become more spiritual, with only 9% replying that way. They were the most likely, by contrast and by far at 49%, to say they’d grown less spiritual. Interestingly, evangelical Christians were the most likely, at 55%, to say they’d become more spiritual, and among the least likely, at 5%, to say they’d grown less spiritual.

Given how Christians have learned to badmouth the idea of “religion” as ickie, stultifying, pre-canned and warmed-over sludge, none of those results surprise me in the least. That said, evangelicals were also by far the most likely to say they’d grown more religious over their lives (47%), and almost the least likely to say they’d grown less so (16%). They might have been a little turned around by the lack of definitions in the survey.

(Related: Yes, it’s a religion; A hardline evangelical’s viral spoken-word poem attacking “religion.”)

Also unsurprisingly, the vast majority of atheists (74%) and agnostics (71%) said they’d grown less religious over their lives. They, at least, seemed very clear on the term. Meanwhile, 49% of atheists and 29% of agnostics said they’d grown less spiritual.

Whoa whoa whoa, was that a drop in the percentage of Nones?

Also on January 24th, Pew Research released another article about a very small decline in the percentage of Nones. See, in 2022, Pew found 31% of adults in America saying they were Nones. This year, they report 28%. Sure, Pew hasn’t recorded anything below 28% in five years, but what’s with that little dip?

Because evangelicals noticed it right away.

Though Fox News’ website tried very hard to avoid sounding overly optimistic, that was their headline on January 24 (archive):

Religious ‘nones’ decline for first time since 2016, Pew study finds
Pew Research states it is too early to determine if the data shows a plateau in religious ‘nones’

Weirdly, that was literally the only thing they found noteworthy about Pew’s study. It was the only topic in their article about it. Fox’s writer also had to end in a way that gives their almost-entirely-evangelical readership a (misplaced) sense of optimism:

Many “nones” reported a sense of spirituality or belief in God, but did not believe religious affiliation was necessary, beneficial, or the correct decision for themselves.

Young folks today might just call this assessment “copium.”

Where the Nones are 2024

In reality, that dip probably doesn’t mean much. As the Fox writer notes and as the study describes in detail, Pew’s seen similar minor hiccups of that nature for years. The overall arc is what matters. And it’ll be some years still before we know what that looks like.

The same thing happened to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Their Annual Reports tell a harrowing story of decline.

They’ve been declining for many years—decades, in fact. But for a long time, their downward-trending arc had brief spikes along the way. Between 1971-1975, they reported over 400k baptisms a year. But that number quickly fell back into the 300k range. After many years of 300k baptisms per year, they had a few more years from 1980-1982 and 1997-2000 where baptisms edged up into the 400k range. By 2006, those hiccups had mostly calmed down. After 2011, that arc turned into a freight train going over a cliff with zero deviations. They’re at 180k as of 2022.

The pandemic played merry hell with their baptisms, obviously. In 2020, church leaders baptized only 123k people. Ouch. Baptisms rose to 154k in 2021, then to 180k in 2022. It might have risen a bit more last year, but I don’t expect to see them really recover to their 2019 total of 235k. I’d be really surprised if they ever see 200k ever again.

(Hey, some people know everything there is to know about all the hockey teams in their country. And others maintain spreadsheets of SBC metrics going back to the late 1800s. We all have our hobbies!)

So while I can’t tell you where that 3% of Nones went between 2022 and 2024, I can tell you they are not flocking to SBC churches.

And evangelical leaders are having a tough time maintaining optimism over it all.

The myth of the ‘cultural Christian’

Former SBC President J.D. Greear thinks he knows exactly how to give the troops back their optimism: Insulting those who’ve left the denomination’s increasingly polarized and tribalistic ranks. He told Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN; archive):

Much of that [lack of interest in spirituality], the pastor said, is likely connected to the shrinking acceptance of Christian norms within American culture writ large.

“[A] lot of the decline in those numbers is cultural Christianity,” explained Greear. “But, if you look at the statistics in the amount of what I would consider true disciples, those numbers are actually encouraging.”

Insulting departing members by calling them cultural Christians is an old SBC strategy—it dates back to at least 2012, when another then-SBC leader, Ed Stetzer, began using it to explain away the SBC’s declining membership and baptisms. He went so hard on this talking point that I strongly suspect someone handed it to him with orders to use it everywhere.

In a 2012 column he wrote for Christianity Today, he declared: “Christianity isn’t dying, cultural Christianity is.”

You see, many in the USA who identify as Christian do so only superficially. These “cultural Christians” use the term “Christian” but do not practice the faith. [. . .]

Christian nominalism is nothing new. As soon as any belief system is broadly held in a culture, people are motivated to adopt it, even with a low level of connection. Yet, much of the change in our religious identification is in nominal Christians no longer using the term and, instead, not identifying with any religion.

So cultural Christians aren’t really super-dedicated to Jesus. Not like Ed Stetzer is. Not “true disciples,” like good little Christians should be. No, Christianity is just the culture these fakey-fake fake fakers grew up in and inconceivably consider their own. The moment the religious fat sizzles in the pan, these ickie fake Christians flee for more comfortable surroundings while the real Christians hunker down and Jesus harder.

Evangelicals still use this myth to cope with their decline, too!

He stands before the onrushing fleeing mob, his hands out, shouting “Remain calm! All is well!”

In May 2015, Stetzer repeated these talking points in two separate places: Church Leadership (archive) and USA Today (archive). That year’s very important. It’s the year that Pew Research released their Religious Landscape Study, mentioned above. And it’s the year that evangelicals as a group finally became aware of their decline. They’d been able to ignore the signs for years—and I had the comment-box arguments to prove it. Finally, the Religious Landscape Study tore their veil of willful ignorance away. It forced them to face facts at last.

So that year, the accusation Stetzer insinuated in 2012 became explicit. On May 13, 2015, Stetzer’s post title and subtitle at USA Today said it all:

Survey fail – Christianity isn’t dying: Ed Stetzer
Fakers who don’t go to church are just giving up the pretense.

In his opinion post, he insists that evangelicalism is “growing”:

Evangelicalism is growing

Yes, you read that correctly. Evangelical Christianity is growing in America. From 2007 to 2014 the number of evangelicals in America rose from 59.8 million to 62.2 million, according to Pew.

Weirdly, the SBC’s baptisms fell from 345k to 305k in the same period, their membership fell from 16.3M to about 15.5M, and Sunday School enrollments fell from 7.5M to 3.7M, with several years lacking reported figures entirely in that span. How strange! But Stetzer continued:

This is part of the growing “evangelicalization” of American Christianity in which the church in the U.S. is increasingly taking on the attributes of evangelicalism. According to Pew, half of all Christians self-identify as an evangelical or born again.

Later in his post, Stetzer tells his readers that The Big Problem Here really is that less Jesusy denominations, meaning those ickie, grody mainline and progressive ones, were finally losing all their fakey-fake fakers. That’s all! Nothing to see here! The future was for sure evangelical!

Later that month, Stetzer repeated the same accusations to CNN (archive), which then got put on the Church Leaders wiki site.

Of course, soon enough evangelicals’ decline caught up with the mainline/progressive groups’ decline.

Last year, the SBC reported a membership of 13.2M, with still no end in sight to their decline. They also recorded 101 fewer churches on record, which is a real surprise. That’s the first time I’ve seen that happen in my entire life. Before, even through the worst of their decline they always recorded a net increase of churches in their denomination. But not last year.

Whoops.

Coping and seething on main, since there’s really nothing else they can do about Nones

Though they haven’t had a whole lot of time to respond to the new Pew study about Nones, I’ve seen a few trying to tackle it head-on.

My Christian Daily (archive) summarizes the study, ending with:

For all the hard working, amazing people in ministry, we all know that there are those that have really let down Christianity, giving it a bad name and driving people away from the church.

Yes, that’s obviously exactly why Nones now outnumber both Catholics and evangelicals. Yep. Bad Christians. That is obviously what is fueling the American exodus from religion. That said, it’s weird that even Christians are aware of how easy it is for bad-faith actors to become pastors, then go on to hurt people in their flocks. Strange that they don’t even wonder why Jesus doesn’t do something about it, since it’s causing their decline and all.

(Related: The Ballad of the Bad Christians; The myth of the Bad Christian; An evangelical shows us why it’s so easy to fool a monster.)

Meanwhile, American Family News (archive) interviews someone who puts evangelicals on blast for having “squandered” America’s former “pro-Christian culture.” Interestingly, this person advises evangelicals to push extra-hard on the real-world benefits of joining their churches:

“Cultural vacillations aside, human beings are still human beings, and all human beings desire acceptance, significance, security,” the apologist notes. “These are the three felt needs that are common to all people.”

It’s weird how their interviewee went with real-world benefits and not all that PROOF YES PROOF apologists keep pulling out of their rumps to try to make their claims about Jesus and Heaven/Hell sound better.

Sidebar: Those fake Christians were all well and good while evangelicals’ star rose in America

And, of course, we’ve already seen J.D. Greear’s galaxy-brain take on the report. Over at CBN, he huffed pure copium as he further declared:

“What we’re after here is not demographic increase; what we’re after here are real followers of Jesus,” the pastor told CBN News, noting, “Unfortunately, a lot of [people] are not reached in the church by just doing great music, great guest services, and a relevant sermon.”

My, my. How sour are those grapes, J.D. Greear? They must be very sour indeed. You didn’t want them anyway, right?

Bear in mind that out of all evangelicals, the SBC was the least interested in making sure every one of their recruits was a true-blue, 100% all in, gung-ho “true disciple” or “real follower of Jesus.”

I do not remember ever hearing once about any SBC pastor kicking tithes-paying members out of a single church. Nor do I remember ever hearing about any purity tests administered to the flocks to ensure that only unsullied TRUE CHRISTIAN™ bottoms warmed those hallowed pews and donated money.

Of course, it’s completely impossible to do anything like that. Because there’s nothing objectively true about any Christian claims, the only way any Christian has of evaluating another’s devotion or fervor is by examining outward behaviors, speech, and demeanor. And those are all incredibly easy to fake.

If evangelicals really had that huge a number of fakey-fake fake Christians floating around in their churches, they sure didn’t care at all about addressing that problem until their membership rolls began to shrink. And their method of dealing with it, so far, seems to be just to use it as an excuse for decline.

As a friend of mine puts it, when a Christian group needs to demonstrate their superiority to other groups, suddenly the number of “true disciples” is teeny-tiny. When that group needs to crush the opposition with sheer dominance, it’s EVERYONE GET IN THE POOL RIGHT NOW!

Why evangelicals are taking all this research so poorly

This research about Nones hits evangelicals right in their dysfunctional-authoritarian heart.

(A dysfunctional authoritarian group is one that has lost any hope of fulfilling its own stated goals or even ensuring members’ safety. Such a group has become nothing more than a conduit for power for its bad-faith leaders. It still runs along very authoritarian lines, but those in power ignore whatever rules they please and protect each other from exposure and consequences.)

Dysfunctional-authoritarian Christians are the sorest losers (and winners) on Earth. They hate being on the losing team. They’ve learned to equate growth with victory, and victory with Jesus’ approval of them. If Jesus approves of a church, it grows. If he approves of an aspiring leader, that person’s career thrives.

The opposite is likewise true in this crowd: A church’s decline indicates divine disapproval. A church leader’s failure to gain traction indicates some secret sinfulness hidden away somewhere in that person’s life.

So just imagine how they’re feeling right now with all this nonstop news of decline.

And that’s not going to make potential recruits happy

Further, the kind of people who join dysfunctional-authoritarian Christian groups, which evangelical churches almost always are, fall into two overall camps:

• Authoritarian followers: They want safety, security, comfort, a safety net, a ready-made community, and easy to read social cues. Remember what that one apologist said above? He was describing these people to a tee. They want that stuff so much that they’ll ignore all the danger cues dysfunctional authoritarians give off.
• Authoritarian leaders: They want power of some kind, and evangelical groups invariably offer a much easier path to power than any other kind of authoritarian group can. It doesn’t matter if the leader is a little old lady who wants to climb the social ladder of the Women’s Prayer Group or a young man dreaming of megachurch pastor gigs.

In either case, a group in decline will deter both camps. The authoritarian followers will feel less safe and secure if their leaders are perceived as powerless or lacking in divine approval, while the leaders will not gain access to the kind of power they want to wield.

Since evangelicals have never figured out how to recruit and retain people who have no obligation to be part of their groups, all they can do is try to negate and vilify those who are leaving. In doing so, they’re sending a message to the flocks still warming church pews: If you leave too, this is what we’ll say about you.

Thankfully, they haven’t recaptured enough temporal power to be able to do much more than that. And hopefully, they never will.