The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

Before continuing, please read Part 1 of this post.

What are the reasons for the rise of the nones? The media often propose some variation of a political backlash model, suggesting that organized religion has alienated young people with its stance on a cluster of issues related to sexuality and the family—divorce, contraception, abortion, gay rights, and the status of women. And in fact, the nones hold more liberal views on all of these issues. For example, 72% of them believe that abortion should be legal in most or all circumstances, while 53% of the population hold that view, and 73% support same-sex marriages, compared to only 48% of the population. However, these attitudes could be a result rather than a cause of their secularism, or they could all be caused by other social conditions.

Cross-cultural research on the sociology of religion has emphasized two predictors of religiosity, poverty and lack of education. The Existential Security Framework proposes that objective measures of security, such as material wealth, good health and a government-provided safety net, encourage secularity. When people lack these forms of security and can't do much about it, they turn to superstition as a way of asking for help.  Comparing countries, there is a strong positive relationship between poverty and religiosity. Non-believers are concentrated in European countries such as Sweden (64%), Denmark (48%), France (44%) and Germany (42%). On the other hand, fewer than 1% of people from Sub-Saharan Africa are non-believers. However, the United States is one of the richer countries that bucks this trend. In addition, this model may be better at explaining the worldwide decline in religiosity than changes here in the United States, since real wages in this country have been stagnant for the past 30 years.

If poverty is religion's friend, its worst enemy is probably education, especially insofar as it encourages scientific literacy and critical thinking. Data from Canada indicate that, holding other variables constant, each additional year of schooling results in a 4% increase in the likelihood that a person reports no religious affiliation. Braun attempted to find out which was the best predictor of secularism, education or economic security. He assembled 149 objective measures from some or all of the world's 193 countries. He grouped them into clusters of related measures with the help of factor analysis. He then used multiple regression to determine which measures were most strongly related to survey questions about the importance of God and religion in one's life.

He found that education was the strongest predictor of lack of religiosity, and that economic security had no additional effect when education was held constant. It's important to note that multiple regression is just an advanced form of correlational analysis. These data do not mean education is the cause of secularism, economic security or any of the other variables in the analysis. It merely indicates that education accounts for more of the variability in religiosity than any of the other measures that were available. 

Once again, the United States is an outlier in that we are more religious than our average level of educational attainment would predict, and the positive relationship between years of schooling and non-belief is weaker than in other countries. My own hypothesis, unsupported by data, is that political interference in the public schools prevents American teachers from referring to religion in any but the most favorable terms. Even at the college level, attempts to discuss critical thinking sometimes lead to complaints to administrators from religious students. (It's possible to lecture on critical thinking without mentioning religion, but students usually recognize that critical thinking is pretty much the opposite of religious faith and this invariably comes up in discussions.)

Whatever the reason for the shift, if the nones continue to increase, it is likely to benefit the Democratic Party in national elections. Here are the exit poll data from 2012, broken down by religion.

However, before you members of the Jackass Party break out the champagne, two words of caution:

• The nones make up 20% of the adult population but only 12% of the voters. One of the challenges for Democrats will be to mobilize this group.
• The 2012 presidential race probably overstates the effect of religion on voting, since Barack Obama was one of the candidates. Not only are religious people more likely to be conservative, they are also significantly higher in racial prejudice.

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

Poverty Causes Harsher Moral Judgments