Opinion

August 30, 2019

By Princess Jade A. Flores

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Photo credits to https://www.atheistalliance.org

Nowadays, people go with the flow. And having no religion is developing and becoming more common. So, what is religion, what are the nones and why do they choose to be nones?

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Society had implanted to us that “English are meant to be Christians” for the last 1, 700 years. But having no religion seems to become the new trend especially among British people nowadays and the younger they are, the more likely this is to be true. This now seems to have changed forever.

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According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, religion is 1.) The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. 2.) A particular system of faith and worship and 3.) a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance. Right now, religion around the world is on the decline.

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Prof. Linda Woodhead, Professor of Sociology of Religion at Lancaster University, researched about the growing number of non-religious people worldwide, the "nones". These “nones”, as they are known in the jargon, are not all fervently atheist: only 40% are convinced that there is no God or “higher power”, and 5% of them are absolutely certain that He does exist. They also claim that they are not becoming secular, YouGov survey revealed.

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Of the adult population as a whole, 46% now identify as having no religion (nones) and 44% with Christianity.  The proportion of people reporting “no religion” is rising with every generation. The survey revealed in the under 40 age group there are twice as many nones as Christians, in the 40 to 59 age group there are equal numbers, and in the over 60 age group there are nearly twice as many Christians as nones.

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In January 2013, 37% of the population of Great Britain reported having no religion. By February of 2015 that had gone up to 42%, and, in a survey undertaken last month with YouGov using the same questions, the figure had increased to 46%. The findings support the British Social Attitudes survey which found 51% reporting no religion in 2013, against the census of 2011 which reported a lower proportion.

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The point about British nones that distinguishes them from, say, American ones, is that they are almost entirely the people who would have been Anglicans in previous generations (for instance, they are overwhelmingly white) – and Anglicans generally have never been fervent believers. They are now being replaced by children and grandchildren who are unfervent nonbelievers. Because of the fact that the younger generations believe that they don’t need God in order to have a good life here on earth.

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Nonbelief takes rather different, often more enthusiastic forms in countries with different traditional ways of being Christian. This means that the growth of nones and the decline of Christianity in this country were not inevitable. In other places with different traditions, such as Scandinavia, identification with Christianity has declined much less. The proportion of Danes declaring no religion is still only 12%, even though Danes hardly ever go to church.

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Most of the ‘nones’ reject the category of ‘secular’ as well as ‘religious’. They believe in something or someone; they just do not identify with any religion as such. A quarter of them report using some spiritual practice. They are happy for religious leaders to speak out in public, but do not accept their authority. Instead they make up their own minds. They are all (100%) liberal in matters of personal morality, compared with 83% of the British population as a whole. They are predominantly young.

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As the Sunday Assembly (is not that it’s against religion, but that it’s in favor of life) recognizes, this doesn’t mean we’ve all become atheists. Looking at the surveys again, only one in five people in Great Britain are atheists, and younger people are only a little more likely to say there is no God than older people. Half of us believe in God, and the remainder are not sure. We wouldn’t be knocking on the door of the old “Ethical Society” in greater numbers, and Richard Dawkins is never going to be made Pope.

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As a society then, a majority have become increasingly hostile or indifferent to institutional forms of religion, whilst remaining open to faith, a spiritual realm, or just “something more.” It’s this large pool that the Sunday Assembly is tapping into. Its trick is to build on a residual memory of a Christian service, filling it out with more resonant content from popular culture. Many of its values – love, honesty, helping others, community – are also recognizably Christian, though other religions and philosophies share them too.

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 Where the Sunday Assembly really parts company with much traditional church Christianity is in its rejection of paternalistic puritanism. Its meeting was the very opposite of sitting politely in a pew and being told what not to do by a “Father”. The service is led by women and men in equal roles, and they are cheerleaders and MCs rather than preachers. They assume that we are all adults capable of taking responsibility for our own lives, but that we can do it better together, and sometimes with a helping hand. It seems a growing number of people agree.

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“No religion is the new norm,” says Professor Woodhead, “and there is every indication that its majority share will continue to grow.” “In terms of upbringing, no religion is particularly sticky,” adds Professor Woodhead. “We can see that 95% of people with a ‘no religion’ upbringing retain that identity, whilst 40% of those with a Christian upbringing lose a Christian identity.”

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In other words, British church leaders are tightening up what it means to belong to their church. The people describing themselves as ‘nones’ would have described themselves as Church of England two or three generations ago. That description has been taken away from them as the churches have increasingly defined themselves in opposition to British culture, most obviously with respect to women and gays.

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Professor Woodhead comments: “The rise of the nones may be due not only to the fact that people have become less religious, but that the churches have become more so – more set apart from society. It used to be quite common for people to identify as Church of England simply because they were English, but now they’re more to think of themselves as having no religion.”

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The shift is more pronounced in Britain than in other counties with a similar or related religious history. The Scandinavian countries retain strong Christian majorities, as does the USA. Overall, these findings reveal a revolutionary generational change in Great Britain’s religious identity from the default or norm being Christian to the default or norm being no religion.

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Why the Church of England lost its grip on the English imagination is a long and complex story. The obvious reason is that society has become less religious. In particular, it has become very much less obedient to traditional authorities.

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 Nones can’t stand to be preached at, and neither do they take any notice of religious leaders (with two and a half exceptions: they respect the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu and, to some extent, Pope Francis). But in this they are simply taking over the attitude of traditional religious believers in Britain, who also reject the official teachings of their churches.

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The Roman Catholic rejection of the Vatican line on contraception and divorce is well known, but majorities of all the large Christian denominations in this country are in favor of euthanasia and liberal abortion laws. It’s just that the nones are more solidly in favor, and this divide is more marked when it comes to same-sex marriage.

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Along with the statistician Bernard Silverman, Woodhead has developed a measure of liberalism on moral attitudes, defined as allowing people to make their own decisions, providing these do not harm others. Polling reveals that nationally there is a liberal moral majority of 83% as against 17% authoritarian. Even among Muslims and Baptists, there are majorities for this kind of live-and-let-live liberalism – certainly among Catholics (85%) and Anglicans (92%); but among nones it is absolute. All of them reject religions as a source of authority on personal morality.

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But at the same time as people have been growing less religious, the Church of England has been growing more religious: more exclusive, more of a club for self-conscious believers, prouder of being out of step with the people it once served.

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Clearly the ‘nones’ do not think this matter, and neither do we. We suggest that belief matters in two ways. One is that if you believe, as we do, that Christianity in some form or other is true, then it’s a good thing if each society accepts this truth. It isn’t necessary for every individual to know a lot about it, any more than every car-owner needs to know how their car works. What is needed is that there is somebody we can turn to when in need.

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The second is that our beliefs affect our actions. The person who believes God hates Muslims will behave differently from the person who believes God loves everybody. Some beliefs about God help us live better lives, some do the opposite.

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 Beyond these two, we don’t think we should put pressure on people to believe things which have no practical relevance to their lives. Most people today simply don’t need to know whether Jesus rose from the dead, physically or otherwise. If the message from the churches is that people who hold no opinion on such matters are ‘nones’ instead of Christians, we don’t think God will mind.

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Better still, perhaps the ‘nones’ can remind church leaders of something they tend to forget. Religious disputes usually increase dogmas. We believe this, they believe that; if you want to be one of us, you have to believe this and deny that. As dogmas increase, believers are tempted to forget that we are talking about a reality far beyond human understanding.

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There are some features that believers do need to attribute to God. Like, for example, ‘God is love’. But not many. Most of what God is like is beyond our understanding. Perhaps the ‘nones’ can remind us that the labels we stick on ourselves are less important than the humility to admit how much we don’t know.

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Religion shouldn’t be an issue for no religion can save us. What should matter the most is the way how we live our life, see the good side of everything and do our best not to hurt someone’s feelings. Diversity should bind us together, the world rather.

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Having different beliefs and opinions must not be the reason why our world would fall apart. If there are shortcomings, then we who can help to fill it up, let’s fill it. If there are wrongdoings then condemn it in a right manner.

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Maybe youths nowadays are only finding where they truly belong, they have no concrete decisions yet. But in the latter part of their life, they will realize that they had so much time in the world that was wasted on things that won’t really matter until their last breath.

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We are not into clashing or crushing anyone’s belief. We value whatever or whoever they believe in. As much as we respect them, we hope they respect us the way we respect them and their opinion and the way how they view life and religion.