DID THE NONES PUT JOE BIDEN IN THE WHITE HOUSE? AN ANALYSIS OF THE VOTING PATTERNS OF THE RELIGIOUSLY UNAFFILIATED IN 2020

The fastest growing segments of the American religious landscape are atheists, agnostics, and nothing in particulars. In 2008, these three groups together (often called the Nones) represented 22% of the population, but just twelve years later their numbers surged to 34% of the populace. Given that one in three adults is a None, it stands to reason that they are having a growing influence on electoral politics. To that end, this analysis focuses on how those three types of unaffiliated Americans shifted their political ideology, partisanship and voting patterns from 2016 to 2020. The results indicate that Donald Trump’s baseline of support dropped among all types of Nones, and that the drop was especially acute for nothing in particulars who had high household incomes in 2020.

Religiously Disaffiliated, Religiously Indifferent, or Believers without Religion? Morphology of the Unaffiliated in Argentina

This article aims to characterize the socioeconomic and demographic profile of the population without religious affiliation in Argentina as well as their beliefs, practices, and attitudes toward a range of issues related to public and private life. This is a social conglomerate that has grown exponentially in the region and worldwide, but it has been little explored by the social sciences of religion in Latin America. The research was based on the Second National Survey on Religious Beliefs and Attitudes in Argentina, which was carried out in 2019. The study universe was made up of the population of the Argentine Republic aged 18 years or more, living in localities or urban agglomerations with at least 5000 inhabitants. A total of 2421 cases were selected through a multistage sampling. The analysis of the data reveals that it would be inaccurate to say that the religiously unaffiliated do not convey religious beliefs. Almost three out of 10 (most of those who responded do not belong to any religion but neither defined themselves as agnostics or atheists) believe in God and in Jesus Christ. Given that they are the most numerous sub-group and with the highest growth rate within the religiously unaffiliated, it would be unwise to consider this fringe of the Argentine citizenry as a-religious. Nor can we unify them under the category of disaffiliates. Although six out of 10 have a history identified with some religion (and in those cases, it is indeed possible to observe a process of religious disaffiliation), the remaining 40% show paths defined by the alienation from the institutionalized religious spaces since their earliest age.

The buffered, technological self: Finding associations between Internet use and religiosity

Explanations for the rise of the religiously unaffiliated have regained attention from sociologists in light of recent declines in religiosity. While the secularization thesis has seen revisions across disciplines, few studies link lower levels of religiosity with greater Internet use. This article draws from Charles Taylor’s widely regarded account of secularity and his concept of ‘the buffered self’ to argue that individuals who use the Internet more frequently are less religious. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (2017), I find that with higher levels of Internet use, individuals are less likely to pray, read sacred texts, attend religious services, consider religion personally important, or affiliate with a religious tradition. Greater Internet use is further associated with being an atheist, while other media activity such as watching television is not similarly linked. These findings ground Taylor’s theoretical work by specifying empirically measurable, contextual conditions that explain recent declines in religiosity.

Non-Affiliated Believers and Atheists in the Very Secular Uruguay

In recent years, literature in the field of religion has presented attempts to understand and characterize people who define themselves as believers but are not affiliated with any religious institution, along with those who define themselves as non-believers, or “nones”. Several quantitative studies covering this phenomenon in Latin America show clear disparities between the countries of the region. This article draws on a qualitative investigation into the way in which individuals relate to the transcendental, or live as non-believers, in the city of Montevideo, Uruguay. The objective of the article is to know and analyze those who define themselves as religiously unaffiliated. In doing so, the analysis takes into account the cultural framework of Uruguay—a country that moved the religion from the public to the private sphere a century ago, establishing a model similar to French secularism and unique within Latin America.

Introduction

This introduction describes the book’s fashion-focused approach to religion and its central argument. It sets up the concept of fashionable religion, which highlights how fashion constructs a specific vision of Christianity that celebrates beauty and wonder, innovation and enchantment. To establish this, the introduction provides an overview of the book’s primary sources and identifies how the book’s approach differs from existing scholarship on religion and dress. Rather than focusing on what religions do with or say about dress, the introduction highlights the importance of the fashion industry for thinking about the changing religious landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including the rise of spirituality and the increase in the religiously unaffiliated or “nones.”

Mladi in religija v severovzhodni Sloveniji po letu 2000. Sekularizacijske težnje in relativno vztrajanje institucionalne religioznosti

Category: 1.01 Original scientific paper Language: Original in Slovene (Abstract in Slovene and English, Summary in English) Key words: religion, youth, northeast Slovenia, statistical regions, privatization of religion, 2000–2018 Abstract: This article deals with trends in youth religiosity in northeastern Slovenia in comparison to other Slovenian regions. The analyses are based on data gathered through several representative youth surveys in Slovenia: Youth 2000, Slovenian Youth 2013 and Slovenian Youth 2018. A special attention was devoted to the privatization thesis in the field of religion and the related secularization thesis. The latter was confirmed through the finding that the share of religiously unaffiliated youth has, during the period between 2000 and 2018, substantially increased in all regions of the northeastern Slovenia (Mura region, Drava region and Carinthia region), as well as in other Slovenian regions. However, the crucial finding in this paper is that the northeastern regions of Slovenia stand out by disproportionally high levels of institutionalized religiosity and by relative low levels of privatised religiosity.

Meet the Twentysomethings

Four young adults with thoughtful religious, spiritual, and secular views are profiled. Maria, a devout Catholic Latina who is a graduate student in speech pathology; Jeremy, an enthusiastic Mainline Protestant whose gay and biracial identity left him wary of religion; Lee, an Evangelical convert who switched from a Chinese to a multiracial congregation; and Abby, who rejected the White middle-class Evangelicalism of her childhood for atheism and then adopted an eclectic spirituality. Emerging adulthood is then described, as is the book’s qualitative and survey methodology and its focus on 91% of American twentysomethings who identify as Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, or religiously unaffiliated (i.e., Nones). The book’s seven scholarly contributions are stated and the next six chapters are introduced.