Others, Nones, and Religious Education

​It has been fashionable for some time now to insist that religiosity in America is in a freefall decline. Now, it seems as though the reports of American religiosity’s death are greatly exaggerated.
 
According to a study described in a recent Wall Street Journal article, most studies showcasing religious decline in America erroneously lump new congregations, denominations, and non-Christian religions into “Others” and “Nones.” The scale of the error is so significant that pollsters may be missing somewhere around one-third of total religious adherents in the United States. Many of these so-called others and nones are non-Christian religions and breakaway congregations from America’s mainline Protestant denominations which, indeed, have been in freefall decline for decades. A religious transformation is underway in America, but not the one most commentators thought.
 
This religious transformation demonstrates why it is just as important as ever that Americans continue to enjoy the right to educate their children according to their faith traditions. Protect The 1st supports efforts to protect religious schools and education for people of faith as an expression of the “Free Exercise” clause of the First Amendment.
 
Brad Wilcox at the Institute for Family Studies said, “childhood religiosity predicts a variety of positive outcomes.” When compared to the general population, adults who went to church routinely from their youth onward report higher rates of happiness, community engagement, and a greater sense of purpose and meaning, while also reporting lower rates of boredom.
 
Hostility to religion, however, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
Barriers to the ability of religious adults to raise their children according to their faith traditions would likely lead to the decline of religion in a couple of generations. Recent Supreme Court decisions such as Carson v. Makin, which struck down the state of Maine’s exclusion of religious schools from participation in rural vouchers, are welcome reminders that many of our leaders today continue to recognize the role of religion in America. There had to be, after all, a good reason for the founders to include the free exercise of religion in the First Amendment.