Growing Faster than any religious faith in the U.S.

Only between 1.5 and 4 percent of Americans admit to so-called "hard
atheism," the conviction that no higher power exists. But a much larger
share of the American public (19 percent) spurns organized religion in
favor of a nondefined skepticism about faith. This group, sometimes
collectively labeled the "Nones," is growing faster than any religious
faith in the U.S. About two thirds of Nones say they are former
believers; 24 percent are lapsed Catholics and 29 percent once
identified with other Christian denominations. David Silverman,
president of American Atheists, claims these Nones as members of his
tribe. "If you don't have a belief in God, you're an atheist," he said.
"It doesn't matter what you call yourself."

Why are so many people leaving religion?

It's primarily a backlash against the religious Right, say political
scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In their book, American
Grace, they argue that the religious Right's politicization of faith in
the 1990s turned younger, socially liberal Christians away from
churches, even as conservatives became more zealous. The dropouts were
turned off by churches' Old Testament condemnation of homosexuals,
premarital sex, contraception, and abortion. The Catholic Church's sex
scandals also prompted millions to equate religion with moralistic
hypocrisy. "While the Republican base has become ever more committed to
mixing religion and politics," Putnam and Campbell write, "the rest of
the country has been moving in the opposite direction." As society
becomes more secular, researchers say, doubters are more confident about
identifying themselves as nonbelievers. "The collapse of institutional
religion in the first 10 years of this century [has] freed so many
people to say they don't really care," said author Diana Butler Bass...

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