Holly sent me this link yesterday. Go check it out for yourselves. From the website of Trinity College:
WHO IS SECULAR IN THE WORLD TODAY?
A SymposiumA special pullout supplement to the Fall 2006 edition of Religion in the News (Volume 9, No. 2). It features nine articles contributed by international scholars on what it means to be “secular” in the world today. The pieces included are:
1. Introduction by Barry A. Kosmin
2. “Secular Americans: Freethinkers in a Free Market”
by Ariela Keysar and Barry A. Kosmin3. “Understanding American ‘Nots'” by Frank Pasquale
4. “Is Anyone in Canada Secular?” by William A. Stahl
5. “Secularity in Great Britain” by David Voas
6. “Laicite and Secular Attitudes in France” by Nathalie Caron
7. “Secularism: The Case of Denmark” by Lars Dencik
8. “Secularism in India” by Asghar Ali Engineer
9. “The Secular Israeli Jewish Identity” by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
10. “Secularism in Iran: A Hidden Agenda?” by an Iranian scholar
I am afraid that I did not have the time to read every article yet. I read three of them, though, and I found it to be very interesting. Tomorrow I will have more time to read the articles and comment on it in length, but I wanted to share it immediately with you all.
From the article Secular Americans: Freethinkers in a Free Market of Religion:
The actual size of the secular population is open to interpretation according to the criteria one considers relevant for measuring or identifying secularity among the public. It can be claimed to be anywhere from 1 percent to 46 percent of Americans according to whether the criteria are strict and limited to atheists and agnostics or inclusive of anyone unaffiliated with a religious congregation.
One obvious social manifestation of secularity is being distant from or out of touch with religion. This can be measured by a lack of affiliation with organized religion. The causes or reasons for this unwillingness or inability to “belong� can vary widely from ideological attitudes to physical access issues. Nevertheless, the actual population of those who do not presently “belong� to a religious congregation or institution is very large. ARIS found that 46 percent of American adults or nearly 100 million people did not regard themselves as or claim to be members of a religious group in 2001.
An alternative measure of “belonging� with which to identify the non-religious population is the response to the key ARIS question on religious identification, what is your religion, if any? The responses that we categorized as “No Religion� amounted to 14 percent of the national adult population or 29.5 million people. The most common “secular� response, given by 13 percent of the population, was “None.� An additional 1 percent offered a “positive secular� response. The actual estimates were 991,000 Agnostics, 902,000 Atheists, 53,000 Secular (so stated), and 49,000 Humanists. In addition, over 5 percent of the sample, amounting to over 11 million adults, refused to answer the question. As we state in our book, there are indications to show that this group was mainly irreligious; certainly it did not feel a compelling need to assert a religious identity. This means we can identify a “No Faith� population of adults who either professed no religion or refused to answer the question amounting to 19 percent of adult Americans or over 40 million persons. The accompanying map clearly illustrates that there is a regional dimension to this social phenomenon.
The map:
More information:
If one counts as seculars those who have a secular or somewhat secular outlook and say they have no religion, then more than one in five adult Americans can be included. That amounts to around 46 million individuals. Interestingly, some corroborating statistics for the size of the secular population have recently appeared in a Gallup Poll on attitudes to the Bible. It found that 19 percent of Americans thought the Bible was a “collection of fables.”
Ariela Keysar and Barry Kosmin go on to write that ‘the seculars’ are highly independent: not just religion-wise, but also regarding politics. They are reluctant to join institutions, whether those institutions are religious or political. If the secular part of America’s population continues to grow, it will make it more and more difficult for either political party to focus on its own ‘base’, since ‘the base’ would be a too small part of the entire population.
Again, go check it out for yourself: I will read more articles tomorrow and I will comment on it then.
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