The Rise of the Nones

A recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine was focused around its first-ever set of predictions about the future. Articles from some of the world's most "bleeding-edge" thinkers looked ahead at the planet in the year 2025.

As you can imagine, most of their predictions have already been set in motion by recent events and could easily have been predicted. For example, technology will take on a life of its own; micromulti-nationals will run the world; everything will be too big to fail; the South China Sea will be the future of conflict; the world will be more crowded (but with older people); the shape of the global economy will fundamentally change; and problems will be increasingly global in nature, as will their solutions.

What intrigued me the most, however, was a submission titled "Megatrends That Weren't." Joshua Keating took a careful look at "Yesterday's Next Big Things" that have yet to take place, concluding that "history can be awfully unkind to pundits wielding crystal balls." As his examples show, today's "Next Big Thing" can quickly become tomorrow's "Trend That Never Was." For example:

The Japanese Superpower. In the 1980s and early '90s, as Japan's industrial production surged by more than 50 percent, a cottage industry predicting Japan's economic dominance was born. Instead, Japan entered its lost decade of economic stagnation and was overtaken by China in 2010.

The Permanent Economic Boom. Prior to the current financial crisis, there was unbridled optimism that the good times don't have to end. Experts placed inordinate faith in the power of computerized trading, financial innovation, and the exploding housing market. The reality is that even by 2013, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has never faired significantly better than its then 2007 peak of 14,164.53. So much for predictions of the Dow reaching 36,000, 40,000, or even 100,000, as some predicted.

Peak Oil. While there is a finite amount of oil in the world and it's going to run out sooner or later, it was predicted that global oil production would tap out in the early 1970s. Peak-oil theorists failed to take into account both the discovery of new oil and new means of extracting difficult-to-recover reserves buried deep beneath the ocean or in tar sands in the Canadian tundra.

The Resource Crunch. In 1798, English scholar Thomas Malthus predicted that global famine and disease would eventually limit human population growth. As of the time of this writing, we are now more than 7 billion and growing without imminent global famine and catastrophe due to rapid population growth. There may come a time when the earth's population becomes unsustainable, but for now the problem isn't a lack of resources but how to distribute them to those in need.

The Internet Fad. Excessive skepticism can be as bad as buying into overly optimistic predictions. In 1943 IBM Chairman Thomas Watson saw a global market for "maybe five computers." Then there's astronomer and popular science author Clifford Stoll, who in a 1995 book and Newsweek article ridiculed the idea that "we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet" and argued that "no online database will replace your daily newspaper." And more recently, British entrepreneur Alan Sugar predicted in 2005 that the iPod would be "kaput" within the year.

But there is one prediction that recently has been supported with multiple stunning confirmations that few dispute: the future religious landscape of America will be increasingly dominated by the nones.

The ARIS Shock

The first indication of this new reality was evidenced by the headlines surrounding the results of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS):

"Almost All Denominations Losing Ground: Faith Is Shifting, Drifting or Vanishing Outright" (USA Today)

"We're Losing Our Religion" (Associated Press)

"America Becoming Less Christian" (CNN.com)

"US Religion ID Inching to 'None'" (Seattle Times)

"None of Thee Above" (Religion News Service)

Much in the study was to be expected: mainlines are losing ground; the Bible Belt is less Baptist; Catholics have invaded the South; denominationalism is on the wane. What generated the headlines was the increase in a category few had previously discussed: the nones.

What are the nones? The short answer is that they are the religiously unaffiliated. When asked about their religion, they did not answer "Baptist" or "Catholic" or any other defined faith. They picked a new category: none.

The ARIS survey found that the nones nearly doubled from a 1990 survey to 2008, from 8.1 percent to 15 percent, making those who claimed no religion at all the third-largest defined constituency in the United States. Only Catholics and Baptists represented larger groups. Further, nones were the only religious bloc to rise in percentage in every single state, thus constituting the only true national religious trend. The official ARIS report, titled "American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population," found that the 1990s was the decade when the "secular boom" occurred. During that era alone, each year 1.3 million more adult Americans joined the ranks of the nones.

But the nones weren't done booming.

Souls in Transition

The next confirmation that a sea change was underway came when Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, released another slice of ARIS findings. It is important to note that findings from ARIS have, by necessity, come in doses. Done in 1990 with more than 113,000 people, again in 2001, and then again in 2008 with more than 54,000 people, it was one of the largest demographic polls in history and perhaps the largest survey of American religions to date.

The headline? Gen Xers, as they age, are bucking all conventional wisdom and not returning to the religious fold. This was newsworthy because of the long-held view that young people raised in the church may sow a few wild oats, drift away from the compulsory attendance inflicted by their parents, but then return once they marry and begin having children. That's the way it worked with baby boomers—after all, Woodstock alums had led to the development of Willow Creek, then the largest church in North America. So there was little concern when Millennials left the church in droves once they became independent from their parents.

But that isn't what is happening. "The ARIS study seems to challenge what has been a core truth of American demographics: That people become more politically...