he argues - theists. Many go to church or temple or whatever (if not as often as they tell pollsters they do) but for not particularly religious reasons, and it would never occur to them to have a religious opinion about the fact that some of their friends are of a different religion, or none.Today's papers include several articles on a new Pew study of religion in America (available here) which finds a few remarkable things. The New York Times article notes that a fourth of Americans have left the religious denomination of their childhood; fully 10% of the American population are ex-Catholics. But the factoid which caught my fancy was this one:
The survey also indicates that the group that had the greatest net gain was the unaffiliated. Sixteen percent of American adults say they are not part of any organized faith, which makes the unaffiliated the country’s fourth-largest “religious group.”
Something's garbled in this formulation - the unaffiliated are, by definition, neither a "group," let alone a "religious group"! But, as Jonathan Rauch would have predicted, many of the "unaffiliated" are nonetheless "religious":
The rise of the unaffiliated does not, however, mean that Americans are becoming less religious. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.”
There's no bright line between agnosticism and apatheism, and none between these and religious practice. Indeed, I doubt you'll find a bright line between them and most of the "affiliated" either! Maybe most Americans are, when it comes down to it, moralistic therapeutic apatheists. (Remember MTD!)
