Four dramatic shifts in American faith over the past 50 years — GetReligion
Then, 1991 happens and everything begins to change. Very rapidly. Between 1991 and 1998 and share of young folks who identify as Christians dropped from 87% to 73%, while the share who had no religious affiliation rose from 8% to 20%. All in a span of seven years. That’s an insane level of growth/decline in such a short period of time.
One could say something like: well, a lot of people aged out of the 18–35-year-old category in those eight years and a lot of younger folks moved into adulthood. That might explain some of it, but it certainly doesn’t explain all this movement so quickly. And also, why didn’t that same level of generational churn not show up at that same rate before or after this little window of time in the 1990s?
There has to be something unique happening between 1991 and 1998 that caused a lot of young folks to flee the pews and join the ranks of the nones. I’ve written about this at length for Religion News Service, but I will briefly summarize that here.
Political Polarization. The Republicans won the House in huge numbers by following the example of Newt Gingrich who delighted in demonizing the Democrats. They weren’t just wrong on policy, they were evil. That meant that people felt like they need to pick a side. For many marginally attached religious folks, that was the nudge they needed to walk away from their church.
The Cold War ended. The conflict between the United States and the USSR was oftentimes described in religious terms. It was the God fearing, freedom loving capitalists at war with the godless, communists. “Under God” was added to the Pledge of the Allegiance in “In God We Trust” was included on the currency in the 1950s, largely to make this point plain. The United States were Christians, the Soviets were atheists. Then the Berlin wall fell. The stigma against atheism began to fade a bit.
The Internet. This is one that feels so descriptive, but I have not found a way to actually test this one with any data. A big reason is because a huge chunk of America got home internet in a very brief period of time. Thus, there’s no really good “control” group. And even then, there’s a bunch of socioeconomic factors that drove some families to get broadband earlier than others. So it would be apples to oranges. But there’s no doubt in my mind that young people began researching their own faith, as well as what other religions believed. That was enough for some to throw their hands up and walk away entirely.
The Explosion of the Nones (1991-2010) — Sometimes digging through scholarly archives can yield tremendous stuff. Glenn Vernon wrote a paper that was published in 1968 entitled, “The Religious ‘Nones’: A Neglected Category.” Glenn was on to something, he just happened to be about twenty-five years too early. Between 1972 and 1991, the share of Americans who claimed no religious affiliation rose just 1.2%. That’s nothing more than a blip. Just statistical noise that would have likely been imperceptible to the average person.
