In 2002 we reported that the fraction of American adults with no religious preference doubled from 7 to 14 percent…
Unchurched believers
The politics of spirituality
A critical discussion of recent studies on America’s growing “no religion” population and the manifestations of spirituality and spiritual movements in political life as they take shape around various contemporary issues, including ecology, health and the body, race, and sexuality.
Who has ‘religion’?
More and more Americans say they have no formal religious affiliation. National surveys, scholarly findings, and media coverage make that…
Shifting drivers of change
Today, contemporary voluntary religion entails a “common-sense” epistemology that in some ways is strangely unaware of its own limits. Today’s…
An untapped constituency
In his 2008 documentary (some might prefer to call it a mockumentary) Religulous, comedian and satirist Bill Maher wonders aloud…
Religion’s reputation
In 2008, roughly 15 percent of Americans told telephone surveyors with the American Religious Identification Survey that they had no…
Beyond believing but not belonging
Religious identification is on the wane in the United States, as in most other nations in the developed world. Yet,…
Was early America a Christian America?
The furious debate in some quarters over whether America was born a “Christian nation” is ironic. The historical record shows…
The rise of the seculars
Kosmin and Keysar and others are already analyzing who has given up worship, belief, and other modes of religiosity. I…
Civil earth religion versus religious nationalism
My contribution to these discussions seeks to expand the analytical horizon of the foregoing discussion of civil religion both chronologically…
Religion, spirituality, and the sexual scandal
Religion and the sex scandal are still closely linked, though the targets of public outrage have morphed: it is often…