The Nones

Who the Nones are

“Nones” is survey shorthand for people who answer “nothing in particular,” “agnostic,” or “atheist” when asked about their religious affiliation. It is not a single worldview. It is a category defined by what people aren’t— namely, affiliated with a church, mosque, temple, or any organized tradition. Inside the category sit committed atheists, working agnostics, and a much larger group who simply shrug at the question and tick “nothing in particular.”

Pew Research Center’s 2023–2024 data puts US Nones at roughly 28–29% of adults — larger than Catholics, larger than white evangelicals, and second only to Protestantism as a whole. In 1990, the figure was around 8%. In 2007, it was 16%. The curve has been bending upward for three decades and shows no sign of stalling.

The numbers, briefly

The rise of the Nones is one of the most thoroughly documented shifts in modern American life. Pew, the General Social Survey (GSS), PRRI, and Gallup all converge on roughly the same picture:

Share of US adults: ~29% Nones (Pew, 2023). Gen Z: around 45% identify as Nones. Millennials: around 40%. Boomers: around 20%. Silent Generation:around 13%. The generational gradient is the single clearest signal that the trend is not a blip. Each cohort is less religious than the one before it, and they are not “returning” as they age in any volume earlier theories predicted.

Globally, the pattern rhymes. The UK’s 2021 census recorded “no religion” as the largest single category at 37%, up from 25% a decade earlier. Australia’s 2021 census reported 39%. Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, France, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all show majorities (or near-majorities) who are non-affiliated. See secular countries for the fuller international picture.

What Nones actually believe

The biggest misread of the Nones is that they are all atheists. They are not. Pew’s breakdown of US Nones is roughly: about 17% atheist, about 20% agnostic, and about 63% “nothing in particular.” Around 30% still say they believe in God or some higher power. Many describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” mix practices from multiple traditions, or hold private, deinstitutionalized forms of belief.

What unites them is disaffiliation, not metaphysics. When surveyors ask why they left, the top answers are remarkably consistent: they stopped believing core teachings, they dislike the politics of organized religion, they see religious people as hypocritical, and they object to religious institutions’ handling of sex, gender, and money. For a fuller narrative treatment of the deinstitutionalization story, see The Rise of the Religious Nones.

Why the trend is accelerating

Several drivers show up in the literature. First, generational replacement: older, more religious cohorts are being replaced by younger, less religious ones. Second, political repulsion: the tight alignment of white evangelicalism with a single political party has pushed moderates and liberals out faster than it has pulled anyone in. Third, scandal fatigue: the Catholic Church’s clergy-abuse record and similar failures in Southern Baptist and other communities have drained institutional trust. Fourth, the internet: people inside insular communities now have frictionless access to counterarguments, deconversion stories, and outside perspectives that were much harder to reach a generation ago.

These forces compound. Political and scandal-driven exits hollow out congregations; weaker congregations pass the faith less reliably to the next cohort; the next cohort grows up online and fluent in doubt. The “conveyor belt” that used to deliver the next generation of believers is breaking down in the developed world, and nothing structurally equivalent has replaced it.

Political and cultural implications

The Nones are not a voting bloc, but they vote. In the US they lean Democratic by roughly two to one and are now a larger share of the Democratic coalition than white mainline Protestants. They skew younger, more educated, more urban, and more socially liberal on LGBTQ+ issues, abortion, and drug policy. Their growth reshapes the electorate every cycle whether or not candidates court them explicitly.

Culturally, the Nones pose a challenge that is easy to underestimate: religion has long carried heavy loads — community, ritual, grief, moral formation, a calendar of meaning — that a secular society has to carry some other way. The secular humanism tradition, modern grief support networks, and new secular rituals (Darwin Day, HumanLight, Sunday Assembly) are partial answers. The question of what fills the congregation-shaped hole is arguably the most important open question in the Nones story.

Why the Nones matter

The Nones matter because they are no longer a margin. A group that was 8% of the US in 1990 and is closing on 30% in the 2020s is the fastest-growing religious category in American history. For people questioning their own faith, the headline is simple: you are not a statistical oddity. You are part of the largest and fastest-growing belief cohort in your country — and, increasingly, in your generation, globally. For institutions that rely on religious membership to sustain moral authority, budgets, or political power, the headline is equally simple: the demographic ground has moved. It is still moving.