What should be done about the Nones? by Rodger Jump - July 2016
Submitted by ftcsadmin2 on Sun, 08/07/2016 - 16:45.
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- By Rodger Jump
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- First, what are the Nones? When you go to the hospital for surgery, you fill out a form that asks for your religious affiliation. I suppose in case things don’t go well. One of the choices is “None.” So patients who have no religious affiliation get tagged with the appellation of Nones. So too in society at large, the religiously unaffiliated often become Nones.
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- Do we, as atheists and agnostics, care if these nonreligious people don’t identify with us? Are we willing to live and let live or do we feel we should be (gasp!) Evangelical about it? (For the sake of brevity, I’ll use the term secularist for the balance of this article to include atheist and agnostic.)
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- While many secularists believe religious fundamentalism is on the ascendancy, as expressed in a spring article in the Council for Secular Humanism’s Free Inquiry magazine, a recent Pew Research survey shows that is not true. It appears that the attention given to religion by the popular media and, perhaps, the intensity of religious activity is giving the impression of a resurgence that isn’t really there.
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- What is surprising is that even though more Americans are becoming nonreligious, they aren’t joining the ranks of atheists or agnostics. They are defaulting to the group of the religiously unaffiliated—the Nones. According to the Pew study, a full one-third of Americans do not believe in God or some universal spirit. However, many of these same people would not call themselves atheist or agnostic.
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- Perhaps the Nones prefer to remain simply unaffiliated rather than being tagged as atheist or agnostic because of the stigma attached to those terms in American society. Notice, almost no candidates for public office ever declare they are an atheist or an agnostic. That would be tantamount to saying, “I don’t want to be elected.”
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- However, “coming out” as a secularist to friends or family may be the next taboo to fall, similar to how self-identifying as gay or lesbian has become more tolerated. But isn’t it interesting that there is more negative stigma attached to not believing in God or doubting there is a god than being publicly gay or lesbian?
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- Apparently there is a sizeable cohort of Nones who might be interested in joining our ranks and learning our values if we secularists were not so prone to litigate when fundamentalists encroach in the secular sphere. We need to appreciate that many people just avoid confrontation and that getting into the middle of continual scrapping doesn’t appeal to them. In which case, we should consider mellowing our criticism of religion and focus more on communicating the positive and inviting attributes of the secular life.
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- Perhaps a way forward for secularists is simply to offer friendship and support to the Nones, and also to religious people harboring doubts, if they engage us. Another approach might be to present our positive messages in a public manner, perhaps at events like the annual “What If” and “Everybody Welcome” festivals in Colorado Springs. Yet another way might be to offer to team with a church or religious group in some project to benefit the community.
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- That way, the Nones will discover we secularists don’t have horns, and we do not all fit the narrow stereotype they, and society at large, often ascribe to us.
- Published July 27, 2016 with the quote below.
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We may differ on many things, but what we respect is open-mindedness, free inquiry, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.
Christopher Hitchens.