Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations

The Diverging Beliefs and Practices of the Religiously Affiliated and Unaffiliated in the United States

“…Furthermore, these cohort effects were particularly strong for the baby boomer cohorts, who came of age in the 1960s (Schwadel 2010). Hout and Fischer (2002) suggest that the rise in religious nonaffiliation may be a legacy of the social disruption of the 1960s, which caused many to turn away from organized religion. If this is true, then we would expect that cohorts who came of age during this time period may continue to hold more religious beliefs and practices than those who came before and after.…”

“…The η parameter gives the difference in this linear trend for the unaffiliated before the year 2000. The dilution hypothesis proposed by Hout and Fischer (2002) expects this term to be positive, indicating a convergence in scores between the affiliated and unaffiliated before 2000. The parameter γ for the main effect of the spline term gives the change in the linear trend for those with a religious affiliation after 2000.…”

“…As I will show, how one interprets this category has a significant effect on conclusions about the beliefs of the unaffiliated (Marwell and Demerath 2003). Hout and Fischer (2002) consider the higher power category to indicate belief in God and include unaffiliated respondents who choose this response in their "unchurched believer" category. However, this category also explicitly indicates a lack of belief in a personal God and thus seems to be distinct from traditional Western religious practice.…”

“…In an influential article, Hout and Fischer (2002) showed that the growth of the religiously unaffiliated between 1990 and 2000 was not a function of declines in religious belief or practice. In fact, the religiously unaffiliated increased their belief in God and the the afterlife and prayed more frequently over this time period (2002:173-75).…”

“…This unprecedented growth in the religiously unaffiliated has re-ignited academic debates about the exceptional character of American religion and the process of secularization (Hout and Fischer 2002;Marwell and Demerath 2003;Voas and Chaves 2016;Schnabel and Bock 2017). A key question in this debate is the extent to which this rise in nonaffiliation reflects underlying changes in religious beliefs and practices.…”