The rise of the “Nones”: Does education explain the decline in religious affiliation? by Victor Sensenig

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that the number of Americans who answer “none” when asked about their religious affiliation has been increasing over the last 20 years. According to the 2012 survey, almost 20 percent of the American public do not identify with a formal religion, an increase from 10 percent in 1970 and from about 15 percent in 2007. The percentage of whites identifying as Protestant, either evangelical or mainline, has declined most dramatically, from 21 and 18 percent of the population in 2007, to 19 and 15 percent respectively in 2012. Other types of Protestants, however, as well as Catholics and Mormons, saw little, if any, decline.

One of the survey’s main conclusions is that the trend away from religious affiliation is a result of generational replacement. Each generation since the Greatest Generation (born from 1913-1927) has lower rates of religious affiliation than the previous generation. Younger Millenials (born from 1990-1994) have the lowest religious affiliation of all, as shown in Figure 1. The figure also indicates that religious unaffiliation has increased slightly within all generations in the last 5 years, with the exception of the two oldest generations.

These trends invite a tempting association with the increasing educational attainment across these generations. In fact, the percentage of religiously unaffiliated people closely tracks the proportion of the US population 25 years and over that has completed a bachelor’s degree. This percentage was about 10 percent in 1970, 15 percent in 1990, and over 20 percent in 2009 (Figure 2). When considered at a generational level, educational attainment is positively related to the rise of the percentage of people who do not identify with a religion.

According to sociologists of religion Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (2000), the belief that education corrodes religiosity is widely held in modern social science despite an absence of empirical support. This doctrine, they argue, holds that the religious mind is fundamentally irrational. According to this view, intense exposure to scientific worldviews, as available in higher education, displaces anti-scientific religious beliefs and so has a secularizing influence. They point out that this notion of the withering effect of education on faith is often implicit in the claims of social scientific studies, rather than directly stated. According to one of the authors they cite, “The college experience, particularly at the better colleges, stimulates free inquiry, encourages the questioning of dogma, and undermines the force of tradition and authority, all of which combine to shake fundamentalistic religious belief” (Caplovitz and Sherrow 1977, 127).

Stark and Finke, on the other hand, insist on the underlying rationality of religious behavior. They are guided by the principle that “within the limits of their information and understanding, restricted by available options, guided by their preferences and tastes, humans attempt to make rational choices” (44). People make religious decisions the same way they make other decisions—by weighing anticipated rewards and costs. In the case of religion, these choices rely on certain assumptions about the supernatural, but people approach the supernatural with a very hard-headed rationality, generally making choices that are consistent with religious beliefs and values. In their view, as part of the process of modernization, the massive expansion of education and the cognitive benefits it offers can promise no end to religion.

The assumption of the corrosive effect of education on religion can be seen in a claim made by former Senator Rick Santorum, while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. He argued that President Obama’s calls to expand access to higher education amounted to an attempt to “indoctrinate” young people, citing data that “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it” (Kaplan 2012). Though he did not cite his source for this statistic, he may have been referring to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which indicated that 64 percent of young adults enrolled in 4-year institutions decreased their church attendance (Uecker, Regnerus, and Vaaler 2007). On the face of it, Santorum would seem to be on to something.

Unfortunately, drawing the conclusion of “secular indoctrination” requires some diligent cherry-picking of the data. The study actually shows that although 64 percent of college-educated young adults decreased their attendance, 76 percent of their peers who did not attend college decreased their church attendance as well (Uecker, Regnerus, and Vaaler 2007). College-educated young adults, one could say, are actually slightly more religious than their non-college educated peers, and a decline in religious participation seems to be a common feature of young adulthood, rather than a product of higher learning. Another study suggests that higher education has complex effects on religion because it is a multidimensional phenomenon. Higher education seems to decrease trust in religious authority but increase voluntary participation (Schwadel, 2003). There also seem to be varying effects depending on students’ field of study with slightly more declines in religious participation in the humanities and social sciences than in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering (Schwadel, 2003).

The Pew Forum’s survey also does not support the idea of education as a general secularizing influence. One of the most interesting points in the demographic breakdown is that this rise in unaffiliation is occurring almost uniformly across gender, income levels, and education levels. The percentage of those without a college degree who were unaffiliated increased from 15 to 19 percent between 2007 and 2012. The percentage of people with at least a bachelor’s degree who declared themselves unaffiliated also increased by 4 percentage points, from 17 percent to 21 percent (Figure 3). In 2012, the 21 percent of the college educated who were unaffiliated was only slightly higher than the percentage of unaffiliated people in the general population, 19.6 percent.

The Pew Forum’s survey offers a fascinating picture of a rapidly changing society. For many people the choice of “none” involves what Davie (1990) calls “believing without belonging” in an earlier study of similar trends in Britain. It’s important to note that even among the unaffiliated, levels of subjective religiousness remained high. More than two-thirds of those choosing “none” for their religious affiliation professed belief in God. The recent exodus from organized religious practice is significant, but in the absence of further evidence, broad claims about education effects on religious belief and participation must be viewed skeptically.

References

Caplovitz, David, and Fred Sherrow. 1977. The Religious Drop-Outs. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Davie, Grace. 1990. “Believing Without Belonging: Is this the Future of Religion in Britain?” Social Compass 37: 455-469.

Kaplan, Rebecca. 2012. “Santorum: Obama College Plan Aimed at ‘Indoctrination.’” National Journal, February 23. Retrieved from http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/santorum-obama-college-plan-aimed-at-indoctrination–20120223.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2012. “‘Nones’ on the Rise.” The Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx.

Ryan, Camille L., and Julie Siebens. 2012. “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009.” US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/p20.html#eduattn.

Schwadel, Philip. 2003. “The Persistence of Religion: The Effects of Education on American Christianity.” PhD diss.,The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Sociology & Crime, Law, and Justice.

Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Uecker, Jeremy E., Mark D. Regnerus, and Margaret L. Vaaler. 2007. “Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood.” Social Forces 85 (4): 1667-1692.