Natalie Charles felt unwelcome to the Baptist congregation, even in her mid-teens, with a conservative view of immigration, gender, and sexuality. So she left.
“I don’t feel it gelled in my view of what God is and what God can be,” he identified as a queer and is now at Princeton University. A freshman, 18-year-old Haitian Charles said.
“It was not a very loving or nurturing environment for someone’s faith.”
After leaving the church in New Jersey three years ago, she identified her as an atheist and then an agnostic, and then embraced a spiritual but non-religious life. In her dorm, she blends rituals on the altar, sings Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu mantras, and pays homage to her ancestors while meditating and praying.
The path Charles followed places her among religiously unrelated people. This is the fastest growing group in the survey asking Americans about their religious identity. They describe themselves as atheists, agnostics, or “nothing in particular.”
According to a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center, this group (commonly known as “none”) now accounts for 29% of adults in the United States. This is an increase from 23% in 2016 and 19% in 2011.
Elizabeth Dretcher, a part-time professor at Santa Clara University, said: Book About anyone’s spiritual life.
Religiously unrelated people used to be concentrated in urban coastal areas, but now live throughout the United States, representing a variety of ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds.
The Associated Press-A recent poll by the NORC Public Relations Center shows that even in their personal philosophies, none of the United States is very different. For example, 30% say they feel connected to God and higher power, and 19% say that religion is of some importance to them, even if they do not have a religious relationship.
About 12% describe themselves as religious and spiritual, and 28% describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. More than half describe themselves as neither.
According to AP-NORC polls, nearly 60% of people say that religion was at least to some extent important when the family was growing up. We found that 30% were meditating, few were praying personally several times a month, and few were in regular consultation with religious or spiritual leaders.
“There are people who are actually practicing in either the particular tradition of faith we recognize, or in multiple traditions of faith,” Dretcher said. “They are not interested in formal membership in those communities or identifying them as someone in that religion.”
In recent years, the prevalence of nothing in the United States is almost comparable to that of Western Europe, but overall, Americans are more religious, as described in the Bible, of daily prayer and belief in God. The percentage is high. According to a 2018 Pew survey, about two-thirds of American Christians prayed daily, 6% in the UK and 9% in Germany.
According to the new, growth in the United States has largely come at the expense of the Protestant population in the United States. Pew survey.. Forty percent of adults in the United States are now Protestant, down from 50% ten years ago.
Among the former Protestants is Shianda Simmons, 36, from Lakeland, Florida. He began to establish himself as an atheist in 2013.
She grew up as a Baptist and attended church regularly. She says she left mainly because of unequal treatment of women in the church.
Simmons said that not all of her family knew she had abandoned her religion, and some who knew it had a hard time accepting it.
“Some people can’t say I’m an atheist,” she said. “It pulled me away from my family.”
Similarly, her cosmetology shop feels that atheism needs to be “hidden” from clients for fear of going elsewhere.
Like Simmons, Mandy Sathomas is a black atheist. It is a challenging identity in many African-American communities where the church is a powerful force. As a child, Thomas sang in the church choir, but was not raised as a Christian.
“Within the black community, we are facing ostracism,” said Thomas, who lived and founded near Atlanta. Black unbelievers, 2011 support group. “When you reject religion, you have this idea that you somehow reject your blackness. Atheism is what whites do.”
Another supporter of the absence is Kevin Boring, who grew up in a military family and was a boy on the Roman Catholic altar. At college, he began to question the role of the Church and was disappointed with the Church’s position on sexuality after appearing as a homosexual.
He is now Secular Student Alliance, There are more than 200 branches in universities nationwide. He said the chapter serves as a haven for secular students and those who doubt their faith.
“I think this generation could be the first generation, where the majority are non-religious, while the majority are religious,” he said.
Being Catholic was also a big part of Ashley Taylor’s upbringing-she became an altar server at the age of nine. Now at the age of 30, she identifies her as religiously unrelated.
“It means finding meaning, and perhaps even spirituality, without practicing religion … pulling from something that makes sense to me or fits my values,” she says. rice field.
When she got cancer at the age of 11, her faith empowered her, but Catholic growth adversely affected her emotional and sexual development and emerged as a queer. I feel that I have delayed it.
Eventually, Taylor discovered Sunday rally, It provided her with a congregation-like community, but in a secular way, provided activities such as singing, reading clubs, and trivia quiz nights. She is currently the chairman of Parliament Pittsburgh on Sunday.
“They aren’t trying to tell you what’s true,” Taylor said. “There is always a spirit of curiosity, doubt and openness.”
For some, like 70-year-old Zayne Marston in Shelburne, Massachusetts, their spiritual journey has been evolving for decades.
Growing up near Boston, Marston attended a Congregational Church with his family. He remembers itching in flannel trousers when he attended Bible studies, church-sponsored dance, and Sunday services.
Through high school and college, he “away” from Christian beliefs and embarked on a serious and long-lasting journey into spirituality while rehabilitating in his thirties to curb his alcoholism.
“Spirituality is a soul-based journey into the mind, entrusting the will of one’s ego to a higher will,” he said. “We are looking for our own answers beyond the programming we grew up in.”
His path was sometimes rough, with his wife’s death from fast-moving cancer, financial problems leading to the loss of his home, but his spiritual practice replaced anxiety with “gentle joy” and desire, he said. increase. Help others.
He used to work as a landscape designer and real estate appraiser, but now runs a school that teaches Qigong. Qigong evolved from China, which combines slow and relaxed movements with breathing and meditation.
“When I was a kid, I had a white beard, judged, and thought of the god who took the throne, but that changed completely,” Marston said. “My higher power is the universe … if I can get out of the way of my ego, it’s always there for me.”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,083 adults was conducted October 21-25 using samples designed to represent the US population. All respondents have a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The Pew survey was conducted on 3,937 respondents from May 29th to August 25th. Respondents’ complete sample tolerance is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.
The Associated Press writer Mariam Fam contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’s religious coverage is supported by Lilly Endowment through The Conversation US. AP is solely responsible for this content.
Copyright 2021 AP communication. all rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission.
What is your religion? In the United States, the current common answer is “none.”Lifestyle
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