(RNS) — Over the past few years, clergy, academics, the media and atheist activists have been intently talking about the growing number of Americans who no longer identify with any religious tradition — those whom pollsters identify as “nones,” because they answer survey questions about their faith with “None of the above.”
Between 1998 and 2000, 8% of Americans indicated no religious affiliation; by 2022, this had grown to 27%. The unaffiliated percentage is even higher among younger Americans. Nones now constitute 31% of the millennials between 25 and 40, and 33% in Generation Z (those between 11 and 24 years of age).
What’s becoming more clear is that while these nones don’t affiliate with any faith institution, they display some religious characteristics. Twenty percent are sure that God exists; 31% believe in a higher power. More than three-quarters of Gen Z nones (78%) claim to be spiritual and 45% say that they pray. While 58% say they do not feel a need to be connected to a religion to pursue their spiritual interests, there does seem to be potential among many for engagement by churches if effective means are used.
Indeed, even some who attend church may be counted as nones. Studies of megachurches by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research indicate that approximately a quarter of those joining megachurches may qualify, as they have not been members of churches for years, if ever. More than 70% have attended other churches in the recent past and are looking for more meaningful worship communities.
In this sense they are not nones, but “betweeners” who are part of the growing number of Americans who are switching church memberships — 24% of Christians in 2022.
Evangelicals are known for their strategies to capture these floating Christians, but other groups have begun to work to attract the lapsed and disaffiliated. The U.S. Catholic Church loses 6.5 members for every convert who joins. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI endorsed a “new evangelization” to win them back. The U.S. Catholic bishops’ pastoral guidelines on how to be successful in evangelization focus in part on better intellectual formation of younger Catholics in the basic teachings of the church.
But better intellectual training in traditional Catholic doctrines may not be enough to attract former Catholics or nones given several official moral and disciplinary teachings. Research on the attitudes of young Catholics leaving the church indicates that, though they may not be as knowledgeable of Catholic doctrine as their grandparents, what they do know of the church’s teachings they strongly disagree with: prohibitions against abortion and contraception, requirements for clerical celibacy, and exclusion of women from priesthood.
Instead, one of the most creative strategies to engage the religiously disaffected to Catholicism is the Nuns & Nones movement, a national organization that includes several hundred Catholic sisters and younger nones. The sisters invite nones to meals in their communities to explore the aspirations nones have to deepen their spirituality and discuss the moral values that motivate them.
These nones show interest in learning meditation techniques from the nuns and ways to create meaningful community experiences. Some have participated in shared living experiments in convents for months at a time, conversing over meals and meditating with the sisters while maintaining their work routines.
The sisters have discovered common values in areas of social justice and protection of the environment, resulting in hands-on projects such as turning vacant convent land into ecologically sound farming communities eventually to be owned by minorities.
The theology underlying these efforts is one of accompaniment, not proselytization. They affirm for nones signs of the Holy Spirit already at work in their lives through their moral and spiritual lives and their desire to promote justice. This approach is less threatening to many nones who want to explore spirituality and meaningful community but are turned off by efforts to get them into churches.
Dominican sisters and millennial women gather for a Sisters and Seekers meeting, affiliated with Nuns & Nones, on July 7, 2019, at the Dominican Center at Marywood in Grand Rapids, Mich. (RNS photo/Emily McFarlan Miller)
The sisters see in these younger nones reflections of their younger selves, when they entered religious communities with lofty ideals for service to others. The nones, who may have had negative experiences of organized religion, are pleasantly surprised by positive interactions with faith-filled women who value and support them in their life journeys.
Linda Mercadante, in “Belief Without Borders,” her 2014 study of the spiritual but not religious, suggests that churches create “outer rim” communities for dialogue with nones on spirituality and shared moral values to serve society. Most megachurches already have developed small-group communities to deepen the spirituality of members, and these could be expanded to follow some of the strategies of the Nuns & Nones movement.
Churches can also adapt in small ways to the Nuns & Nones’ strategies. The Synod on Synodality, the Catholic Church’s recently completed, two-year discussions in Rome on the future of the church, recommended a greater pastoral role for laity and especially women in the ministries of the Catholic Church.
Clerical male celibacy requirements for major orders are likely to continue for the near future, but lay women and men could do more in engaging nones as do the sisters. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate has found that there already are many small communities in Catholic parishes that are led by primarily by lay women. Lay women and men could do more to expand these small communities — and bring in Nuns & Nones participants to advise them.
Spiritual accompaniment might build bridges between those on the “edge of the inside” of organized religion with those on the “edge of the outside” (to use terms coined by the Rev. Richard Rohr) who are looking for ways to explore spirituality, discuss their struggles with faith and experience communities that take their spiritual journeys seriously.
There is a saying attributed to St. Teresa of Avila that “God works straight through crooked lines.” There are some spiritually crooked lines today in the way nones are being welcomed. Pressure to make them into spiritual straight lines may interfere with God’s plan to collaborate gradually with them where they are.
(Brian H. Smith, the emeritus Charles and Joan Van Zoeren Chair in Religion, Ethics and Values at Ripon College, is the author of the forthcoming “Reaching the Religiously Disaffiliated: Comparative Strategies to Engage the Nones.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
