Irreligion on the Rise in the United States

USA Today recently released some survey results that show a pretty dramatic fall-off of religious adherence since 1990. Some groups are still slightly "in the black" since 1990, but Baptists, mainline Protestants, and non-immigrant Catholics are leaving their faith traditions in large numbers, whereas those identifying as non-religious make up a much larger segment of the population than ever before. Increasingly, the religion of Americans is irreligion.


Note that when I call irreligion a "religion", I don't mean it in the deprecatory or polemical way that Christians usually do. Ironically, some defenders of Christianity think that the best way to beat irreligion is to call it a religion; in this they concede to the view that religion is something to be despised! What I mean when I speak of irreligion (or perhaps more aptly, "secular humanism") as a religion is that it is often framed in such a way as to provide ethical norms (human rights, honesty, and tolerance), eschatological expectations (progress, color blindness, transhumanism, and world peace), and narratives about the meaning of life (love, self-realization, conquest of violence and ignorance). In this sense, secular humanism is actually filling a spiritual vacuum left by churches that have found themselves unable to adapt their message to the modern world. I see that as a good thing, at least in a sense. I do worry, though, that secular humanism's life-giving religious characteristics depend upon its opposition to a dominant, deeply conservative religious culture. As American religious adherence wanes and humanism finds itself without a foil, I can't help but wonder whether its quasi-religious ethic and sense of wonder will give way to a more nihilistic outlook. That, in my mind, would be a very negative development.