People Leaving the Church: Part 1
Review of The Nones
Introduction
This is the first part of a two part series on the massive numbers of people exiting churches. Both of the books under consideration are united in a common theme and purpose. The Nones by Dr. Ryan P. Burge is a data-driven analysis of church affiliation in America, from 1972 to 2018. Dr. Burge is interested not just in the data, which is conclusive, but also about what can be done to positively impact people leaving the church in record numbers. Written two years later, The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham builds explicitly on Burge’s work, quoting passages of The Nones at length. It adds to the data by including the results of a board approved, nationwide, quantitative study. This study was run by Dr. Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe. The Great Dechurching then seeks to understand these demographics in a more personal way with an eye to what the Church could engage. Both books show us the scope of the problem of people leaving the church, who is leaving and why, and what evangelical churches could do about it. In part 1, we will analyze The Nones. In part 2, we will summarize The Great Dechurching and add its insights.
Summary of The Nones
The goal of The Nones is to understand the changing American religious landscape and acquire details on the rising numbers of people who consider themselves unaffiliated. The "nones" are defined as those who mark ‘atheist’, ‘agnostic’, or ‘nothing in particular’ when asked about their religious affiliation. Their numbers have been rapidly growing in America since the 1990s. As a Christian and a pastor, Dr. Burge is interested in the data from an academic standpoint, but also from a compassionate perspective. Why are people leaving? What should the Church learn as a lesson? And can anything be done to spiritually pursue and help these people? For those in Christian ministry, this analysis should influence our strategy. Knowing why people are leaving would help us prevent losses, smooth hurts, or even potentially win back members.
Dr. Ryan Burge is an Associate Professor at Eastern Illinois University. He teaches on American institutions, political behavior and research methods. He founded Graphs About Religion, a website dedicated to informing the public about religion and politics. He is the author of four books, including three on this topic of religion in America. In this book, Burge underlines two key points about his life to help us understand his perspective. First, at the time of writing in 2021, he has pastored Baptist churches for fifteen years. Second, he has a PhD in political science. His goal “is to take all the education I have had in the social sciences to make the theory comprehensible and the data accessible.” He is critical of well-meaning, but mistaken Christian leaders or media who discuss trends inaccurately. He summarizes,
While talk of the decline of Christianity swirls around us, The Nones seeks to give objective data on what’s happening in social trends. As a practitioner, Burge’s hope is that the American church does not give up.
The Data
As a political scientist, Burge is focused on the survey data of American political affiliation and uses it to fact check social trends. He references extensively from the General Social Survey (GSS) and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), later renamed the Cooperative Election Study (CES), The GSS is a five decades long study of social characteristics and attitudes in the United States. Burge refers to it as, “the gold standard in measuring religious change in America” since it “has been asking the same religion questions in essentially the same way since its creation in 1972.” This makes it very good at tracking changes over time. The CCES has a huge sample size. “While the 2016 waves of the GSS contained about three thousand respondents, the CCES conducted in the same year had a total sample size of sixty-four thousand,” Burge informs us. These large samples give solid confidence the survey data is accurate. The GSS has been going for decades but the CCES has only existed since 2006. This shorter tenure of the CCES turns out to be an unfortunate circumstance, since this means it misses a significant time period when it comes to the rise of the nones.
The unchurched are those who have not been church attenders. The dechurched are those who formerly attended a church but do so no longer. Are the numbers of unchurched and dechurched rising? The answer is a resounding, “yes”. When it comes to understanding why people no longer belong to certain institutions, it helps to have a definition of religious affiliation. Sociology frequently uses three “B’s” as dimensions of religious attitudes: behavior, belief and belonging. Religious behavior is “tangible evidence of an individual’s faith.” Someone who attends church several times a week is likely more religious than someone who attends every few years. The frequency an individual prays or donates to their church are also useful markers. Burge states, “from a social science standpoint, using church attendance as a measure of religiosity makes sense. If someone says that they are Catholic but attend mass only once a year, they will be much less likely to be exposed to the theology and religious culture of Catholicism than someone who is a faithful weekly attender.” The book acknowledges this method has drawbacks, such as elderly people who cannot attend or religions without a strong emphasis on attendance. Belief is “what most people think about when they are asked to describe the goal of religion.” This is one’s viewpoint about matters of religion. The GSS asks statements about individual’s thoughts on the Bible along with other questions. Belonging is one’s own sense of their status or membership in a group. That is, “how do people orient themselves in social space?” The descriptions people use to identify themselves and the organizations they choose to say they are part of both speak to their affiliation. Someone who says they are a Protestant is more likely to be a Protestant. Burge argues religious affiliation is a very malleable demographic factor. He gives the example, “Consider someone who took a survey a year ago and noted that they were Presbyterian, but when they were asked the same question about religion this week, they indicated that they had no religious affiliation. Did their actual religious behavior change dramatically between last year and now? More than likely, the answer is no. What is more plausible is that they were rarely attending services before but still clung to their religious identity. But for reasons that can never be completely understood, they made the conscious choice to say in the most recent survey that they have no current religious affiliation.” So we see, behaviors, beliefs, and belonging all add together to determine our membership and religious affiliation. Behaviors usually change slowly over time, beliefs even more so, but a sense of belonging can change at any moment.
The GSS breaks religious traditions into seven categories:
- Evangelical Protestant
- Mainline Protestant
- Black Protestant
- Catholic
- Jewish
- Observers of other faith traditions
- Nonaffiliated.
According to the GSS, the evangelical Protestant market share hit its high-water point in 1993. Evangelicals peaked in the 1990s and have slowly, but surely, experienced a small decline since. Mainline Protestants consist of several church traditions, such as Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Presbyterian churches. Until 1983, mainline Protestants were the largest religious tradition in America. This is the only tradition to have broken 30% of the U.S. population. Mainline Protestants have dropped from 30.8% of the population in 1975 to 19% in 1988, then to 9.9% in 2017. These are massive losses. Black Protestants, Catholics, and Jews have fared largely unchanged but always been a small minority. Other faith traditions have grown from 3% in 1980 to 6.2% in 2018, a modest increase. This has been fueled by the growth of the Mormon church as well as immigration of Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims to America. More Americans are also rejecting specific religious labels and marking themselves as “other” but religious.
According to the GSS, the only group to have exploded in growth is the nones, those who marked no religion. From 5.1% in 1972, the nones held minor growth until the 1990s. Suddenly, the nones went from 5% to 10% over a five-year period. From then, the nones have experienced straight upward growth, 15.8% in 2007 and 23.7% in 2018. The GSS does not differentiate between atheist, agnostic, or spiritual without religion. The CCES does better for Burge’s purposes, asking the nones whether they are atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. Burge notes the questions in the CCES seem to make it “easier for people to indicate their honest assessment of their religion”, especially when they are unaffiliated. Given superior options, people are able to better identify themselves, giving us a more accurate impression.
The book continues with these three categories: atheist, agnostic, and nothing in particular. These are helpful because one of the book’s goals is to “illustrate, in some detail, that nones are not created equal.” Atheists and those who say they are “nothing in particular” do not tend to think, act or vote in the same ways. Burge wants to know what makes the nones tick. He is determined to find out why the nones are now one of the largest religious groups in America.
Why Are the Nones Rising?
According to Burge, there is not one single causal mechanism for this dechurching movement. He discusses several theories in the book. First, there’s the popular idea of secularization. In general, the religiosity of countries tends to decline as their GDP increases. Is America just getting richer and more materialistic? This tends to make people less religious. However, the two major outliers to this data are the United States and China. China should be more religious given its GDP and the U.S. should be less. Secularization may be a factor in America, but if anything America bucks the secularization trend.
The second theory is social desirability bias. This is “a nice way of saying that people lie.” In surveys if the social bias against having a certain belief is high, you may lie about your answer on the survey even if it is what you believe. Would you admit to how much pornography you watch or whether you had an affair? Or would you lie and underreport activities and perspectives which you think are frowned upon? Religious activity is a hot topic in the United States and therefore has baggage. Burge gives the example of a telephone poll of adults in northeastern Ohio. Overall, 35.8% of Protestants polled said they attend church weekly. Afterwards, the surveyors created a database of every Protestant church in the area. They got attendance records for the last year and counted cars in the parking lots for churches which did not respond. Using these and statistical methods, they estimated the average attendance in the area was just 19.6%. Burge concludes, “in essence, half of the people who said they attend church once a week lied about it.” Part of the job of social scientists is to suss out people’s preferences without relying only on their expressed opinions. It is possible people feel pressure to say they are affiliated somewhere, even if they never attend. Burge believes the erosion of the social desirability bias about religion is pushing larger portions of the population to report their actual behavior. The nones are exploding as people admit the truth. They are not attending Christians, and sometimes not believing Christians. They have been this way for some time, but are now more frank about it. He considers this a good thing as “an individual who is willing to be honest about where they stand in matters of spirituality is more open to reconsidering their future.”
His third theory is the internet. One big change to society during the inflection point of the 1990s is the propagation of the internet. Previously, people living in politically conservative areas would meet few people with different opinions. Would this motivate them to share their religious doubts or true beliefs? Unlikely. The internet contains a wealth of viewpoints, readily accessible and with relatable people. Burge notes the “Atheism” subreddit has 2.5 million members, while “Christianity” has 215,000 members. This proportion is way off of the general population, where there are ten times the number of Christians to atheists. The internet contains a disproportionate representation of non-faith people than one would find meeting people on the street. Someone who is unaffiliated is much more likely to find digital compatriots after the 1990s than previously. Thus, the internet may be having a large impact on the social desirability bias. As non-faith perspectives become common, the impression of them being undesirable or scary is reduced. The takeover of home internet was sudden in the U.S. In 1997 only 18% of households had the internet. By 2000, this had jumped to 41.5% of households. The problem with this theory is while the internet changed, so did lots of other features of American society. This makes tracing the causality of the internet as a single factor difficult.
The fourth theory of the rise of the nones is politics. In 2016, 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. This may seem like business as usual given 77.4% voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and 79.1% voted for John McCain in 2008. “It’s important to understand that the connection between the devoutly religious and the Republican Party hasn’t always been this strong,” Burge explains. In 1978, half of white weekly churchgoers identified as Democrats. This shift to the right among the devoutly religious happened during the 1980s and 1990s. It may be causing moderates and liberals to flee churches as they experience dissonance with church values or fail to relate to other members. This view is supported by the research of Michale Hout and Claude Fischer, who show the disaffiliation was stronger among people on the left side of the political spectrum. Using their data, “what can be observed is clear and unmistakable- disaffiliation is directly related to political ideology.” A liberal is twice as likely as a moderate and four times more likely than a conservative to be unaffiliated. This is not to say right-leaning people are not leaving churches, just that left-leaning people are leaving in higher numbers. While many people fear religion’s influence on politics, recent scholarship indicates people pick their church based on their politics.
Demographics of the Nones
The amount of people who would choose “no religion” in the GSS would equate to fifty million Americans in 2021. A group this large is going to be diverse and exist across age, income, and educational spectrums. Burge says, “my hope is that a lot of pastors and denominational leaders will come away... with the realization that they had no idea what the nones really look like.” We should not be quick to put the nones in boxes. When controlled for age, education, gender, or race, there is no segment of American society immune from the rise of religious disaffiliation. There is evidence both young and old people are moving from religious tradition. There is no racial group without at least 30% unaffiliated. This is the largest mission field in the United States.
Burge discusses atheists, agnostics and nothing in particulars as three separate groups. Atheists make up only 6% of the adult population in the U.S. and only 20% of the nones. Agnostics make up 6% of the adult population. The “nothing in particulars” are one of the largest religious groups in the U.S at 20% of the adult population. This means 26% of Americans are unsure about their religious perspective as opposed to 6% who are firmly decided no God exists. This is the fastest growing religious group in the country. While atheists and agnostics are predominately men, the nones are evenly split between genders. While atheists and agnostics tend to be left-leaning politically, the nothings average out to the center.
Where Are They Going?
As a pastor, Burge is interested in the change in affiliation of the nones, particularly if they may be won to Christ. He analyzed those who claimed to be agnostics in 2010 and where they ended up in 2014. Just over half, 54.9%, remained agnostic. Of those who changed, 25% became atheist, 16.1% became nothing in particulars, 3% converted to a non-Christian faith group, and 3.6% identified as Christian. The atheists saw less change with 80% staying atheist. If they did change, most became nothing in particular, with very few becoming agnostic or joining at non-Christian faith. Only 0.7% became Christians. Burge comments, "stories of atheists having a dramatic born-again experience seem to be common in evangelical circles but appear in this data to be very rare events.” As Christians, we’ve known many atheists to come to Christ, though we’ve also known many who have not. I would qualify Burge’s comment with the personal observation that four years is a short window among adults, shorter than many of the testimonies I know, where atheists became Christians on very long timelines.
Among the nothing in particulars, the retention rate was also high, 62.1%. However, those who changed were more likely to become Christian than anything else! Of those who changed, 16.4% became Christian as opposed to 13% to atheism or agnosticism and 9% to non-Christian faiths. Burge encourages churches to consider focusing on the nothing in particulars.
The analysis of the nones broken into atheist, agnostics and nothing in particulars helps illuminate these groups are not all the same. Not only are the demographics of the groups different, their openness to change appears to be varied. As the fastest growing religious group, churches should look to the nothing in particulars all around them.
Evaluation
Sifting through the dry data is not something many would seek or be competent in doing. Therefore I appreciate the work of people like Dr. Burge who wade in to give us all understanding. The statistical confirmation of the rising tide of unaffiliated Americans is not shocking. Those of us who have attended church have probably seen the drop in attendance nationwide, or at least know people who have left. As someone in my forties, my social circles are filled with those who went to some sort of church as a child, but no longer do and are not raising their kids in any church. Raising kids with morality, and even sometimes spirituality, is popular, but regular church attendance is not. Friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors all fit into this mold. This makes me extremely curious as to why this is happening and what can be done. Burge’s book is a good scratch for this itch.
Burge points primarily to social pressures in the rise of the nones. The study sponsored in The Great Dechurching confirms the same. Burge’s theory is that the social desirability bias is dropping. This means less people feel the need to stay in a church. Their sense of belonging is taking hits as politics, feeling connected to those around them, and shifting priorities change their outlook. They are increasingly exposed to non-religious viewpoints and these are considered normal. It is more socially acceptable to be a none than it was before 1990. In some ways, this is good news. People who have felt pressured to attend, or put up a front, are being more honest. Those who had doubts, were disinterested, or even did not believe are marking themselves as such. It is better to approach church and faith honestly. This is a healthy spiritual attitude. God wants authentic faith and a genuine heart. Consider, “For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” God looks to our inner beliefs, not just the social exterior we project. Jesus bemoans, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Jesus wants a genuine faith, not gestures if those gestures are empty. Being free from social bias allows people to make more vulnerable choices and have a real faith.
While American religion already suffered a massive shift in the 1990s, we should not be fatalistic that this trend is our doom for the future. America, and the world, have seen shifts for and against interest in the Bible and in Christ. While the Bible predicts darkness in the end times, it also consistently mentions those who are faithful. Burge’s outlook seems a little dark here. There are positive trends since publication, such as the 22% increase in Bible sales in 2024. A more historically accurate expectation is we will see surges and declines in spiritual interest in our society.
I strongly agree with the calls to prioritize in-person human relationships over politics. Jesus exhorted us to love our enemies. This includes so-called enemies on the other side of the political fence. Peter encourages us to respect everyone, but to particularly love our brothers and sisters in Christ. I hope the sobering statistics of dechurching sinks in. Especially how negative political bashing has been a major factor in alienating people from churches. This is a lesson every church could stand to learn (and one that will be underlined again in The Great Dechurching). To put it bluntly, if you are a church member vocally calling for one-sided political action and failing to distinguish Christ from politics, you are driving people from the church. If one side of the political spectrum is being viewed as Christ’s political party, we need to break this illusion. Burge exhorts us to “preach sound biblical doctrine that cuts across the political spectrum." Christ sided neither with the Romans, Pharisees, or Sadducees of his day. There’s no way he would wholeheartedly endorse Republicans or Democrats.
If a sense of belonging is what people need, we should be mindful to emphasize this. People are welcome in our church. Do they sense this? We want them to feel like they fit in and are part of something. Do we actively communicate it? This is the number one take away for church retention. Some people lose their faith and leave. Others change their behavior, prioritizing school, work or hobbies. But most people who leave experience a long drift beforehand, feeling a lack of belonging. Eventually, this sense of not belonging hardens into a different view of their identity, that they are not a member of the church. Burge’s book shows there are a massive number of people in this category, many of whom are not intellectually opposed to God or church. Perhaps there are people in your life who have casually dechurched who could use an invite back.
Conclusions
Every single survey respondent is a person. All of these nones have a story to tell. “We should be seeking out people willing to tell their stories, inviting them to tell us, and listening- really listening- to them,” Burge exhorts. We may hear stories of parents rejecting their children. Some may share about feeling unwelcome when they ask too many questions. Others have rebelled against controlling households. We should listen to them and seek understanding. The trends we hear about in society are more than trends, they are movements of people. We may only have a remote intellectual curiosity, or worse, a sharp bitter critique at the direction of the world. We need to build empathy and concern for all those people out there who belong to nothing in particular.
The book ends with the parable of the soils from Matthew. In this parable, Jesus tells of a farmer planting seeds. Some seeds fall on inhospitable soil and never grow. Other seeds find their way to good soil, take root, and provide a lush harvest. Burge says, “I firmly believe that the church needs to stop trying to control where the seed lands.” It may be that some seeds fall on rocky soil. Perhaps there is even more rocky soil out there these days than in the past. This makes it easy to give up. But giving up is not our way. The Nones indicates much of the soil is not as rocky as it looks. Most of the dechurched out there are not opposed to God. Many of them are open to returning to church. Paul says, “let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” Don’t give up!
References
. “Faculty | Dr. Ryan Burge” https://www.eiu.edu/poliscigrad/faculty.php?id=rpburge
. https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/
. p.XI
. p.6
. p.136
. https://gss.norc.org/
. p.1
. https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/
. p.5
. p.9
. p.9
. p.10
. p.11
. p.12
. p.27
. p.27
. p.31
. p.32
. p.42
. p.43
. p.44
. p.46
. p.48. “Athesim” now has 2.9 million subscribers in 2025, while “Christianity” has 558,000.
. p.50
. “Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations”. 2002
. p.52
. p.70
. p.119
. 1 Samuel 16:7
. Matthew 15:8
. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/260849/bible-boom-why-are-people-buying-so-many-bibles
. Matthew 5:44
. 1 Peter 2:17
. p.133
. p.129
. Galatians 6:9