Survey finds record 19 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans

Posted on 21 July 2012

(RNS) Unbelief is on the uptick. People who check “None” for their religious affiliation are now nearly one in five Americans (19 percent), the highest ever documented, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press.

The rapid rise of Nones — including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe “nothing in particular” — defies the usually glacial rate of change in spiritual identity.

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the “default category.” He says, ”Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.”

Kosmin’s surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6 percent of U.S. adults. By the 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15 percent. By 2010, another survey, the biannual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18 percent.

Mormons and Baptists compete for converts

Posted on 20 July 2012

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Jake Pulsipher’s first day as a working missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began at 6:30 a.m. with prayer and exercise, followed by breakfast and study.

Then he put on a black suit, white shirt, and red tie, along with his official name tag, and headed out to knock on doors and tell people about Jesus.

In doing so, he became the latest of 20,000 Mormon missionaries in the United States.

In Knoxville, Tenn., Southern Baptists Kevin and Kristi Cabe quit their jobs and sold their cars and most of their belongings. They’re moving to Brooklyn, N.Y., where they’ll spend their two years as — two of the 4,000 who the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board placed nationwide.