The Infidel and the Indifferent -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

To quote Richard Dawson:  "Survey Says . . ."  (I know Steve Harvey is the current host of the long running game show, I just like Newkirk!).  Surveys tell us that a growing number of Americans, especially younger Americans, are "religiously unaffiliated."  Martin Marty, who wrote a book long ago entitled The Infidel:  Free Thought and American Religion, seeks to better understand what all of this means.  When we dig deeper we find that this category has some complexity to it.  But, at least as I read the posting, is there not another category we need to be looking at -- those who are "Indifferent."  It's a good question.  I expect there might be many folks populating pews that are "indifferent" when it comes to matters theological and religious.  In any case, I invite you to read and offer your response.

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Sightings 
Sightings
The Infidel and the Indifferent
by Martin E. Marty
Monday |  April 29 2013
Fifty-two years ago—can it be?—I published The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion, and have been tracking “the infidel” ever since. Whether he or she was dubbed “free-thinker,” “agnostic,’ “atheist,” “secularist” or many things more, the infidel thrived on the reaction of the “religious” majority. By publishing date in 1961, the infidel had gone off center stage, and scholarly colleagues and I had to ponder what “the religiofication” (as scholar Eric Hoffer called it) of American culture would mean. Infidels not only “went,” from time to time, they “came.” Again.

In recent years opinion surveys, pop culture, and scholarly literature have discovered the unmistakable presence of the current round of “infidels.” The term of choice currently is “the religiously unaffiliated,” a very relaxed term which suggests that “religion”=”affiliation.” Unsatisfied with that big-tent designation, opinion surveyors have helpfully studied and redefined sub-groups in the category. One of the most popular sources finds and names three sub-categories. The American Values Survey (see source at end of this column) looked at the 19% of the population which was “unaffiliated” and found that almost one-fourth of these were “unattached believers,” over one-third were “self-identified atheists and agnostics,” and almost forty percent were simply (well, sometimes maybe complexly) “unaffiliated secular Americans,” not “secularists.”

Columnists like authors of Sightings mine these surveys and use their findings to assess spiritual life in today’s America, often as a step in comparing these to other situations around the globe, especially in the southern world—Africa, Latin America, and the Asian sub-continent—where religious affiliation grows. The most recent mining was by Daniel Cox in the Huffington Post (April 24, see source). Cox and others turned the question into one of class, and dozens of posts were written by people who took it from there.
         
Needless to say, connecting “class” with affiliation or religious involvement/non-involvement is difficult, as Cox himself recognizes. He and other surveyors and commentators have to make guesses or pursue correlations to other surveys to do some identifying, especially of the “atheist and agnostic” minority. Many private post-ers, as is often the case on the internet, are not given to nuance or dialogue. They blast. Some are sure that the number of agnostics and atheists has grown because the population of the higher-educated camp has grown, and—doesn’t everyone know?—higher education purges ignorance. Thus the ranks of the unbelievers grow. Cox and the authors of the American Values Survey do share the understanding that higher education, as now pursued, does cut into the ranks of believers. But they and others do not find simple and consistent correlations, and they adduce other evidences for- and against- religious belief and practice in a complex culture. In our current cultural episode, debates will increase.

Were I an opinion surveyor, I’d try to assess the degree to which something as simple as “indifference” to theological, religious, philosophical, and communal claims and commitments prevails. Thoughtful religious leaders have to work to promote affiliation and commitment as they seek and sometimes find company among the non-religious who would stir interest in the deeper things of life. This is a mission for them in a time of when gloss is favored in many sub-cultures.

References:

2012 American Values Survey. “’Nones’ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation,” http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx, (accessed 27 April 2013).

Cox, Daniel. “Is Atheism Only for the Upper Class? Socioeconomic Differences Among the Religiously Unaffiliated." Huffington Post, April 24, 2013.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-cox/is-atheism-only-for-the-upper-class-socioeconomic-differences-among-the-religiously-unaffiliated_b_3146894.html?utm_hp_ref=religion.

Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.


Author Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

Editor Myriam Renaud is a PhD Candidate in Theology at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. She is a 2012-13 Junior Fellow in the Martin Marty Center.


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