Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
Living the religious life of a none
Growing numbers shed organized church for loose spiritual sensibility
Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer
Kellee Hom was raised in the Roman Catholic Church but never imagined she'd become a religious none.
No, not "nun." That's "none," as in "none of the above."
Hom is among a growing number of Americans who simply answer "none" or "no religion" when pollsters ask them their religious affiliation. Some "nones" identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but the vast majority believe in God, pray and often describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious."
"My sense of God transcends all the different religions,'' said Hom, a clinical supervisor at Asian American Recovery Services in San Francisco, which helps people with substance-abuse problems. "It's an energy."
Nones are one of the fastest growing religious categories in the United States.
According to a recent survey, their ranks have more than doubled in a decade and include about 29 million Americans.
Posted by P6 at December 4, 2003 12:25 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2419I think I would have to check "none" if given the traditional list, but Bnai Noach is pretty close to my belief system.
I'll have to look at that link later.
For myself, I don't do belief.
I read that article and it seemed they were responding to something that's actually been around a long time. First, Unitarian Universalists are an example of a church without a dogma or a doctrine. And some of them are quite passionate about it. My fiancee, for example, is a very committed UU, and I'll be joining her church ASAP. I like it because it has room for my own syncretical belief system (I'm Christian, but I don't like the "branding" characteristics of most churches in most denominations I've seen. The tendency to organize worship into rival "firms" is, IMO, counterproductive).
The other point is that, "agnostic" really describes someone without a concrete notion of religious doctrine. A person could believe in God but refuse to have any exclusive notions beyond that.
It would be interesting to see how much of this applies to the experience of non-Christians. While these religions obviously provide a full belief system, they don't usually don't have the kind of organizational structure of churches and denominations that Christians in America do. A lot of times people who would never worship together in the home country where each group has its own structures, do so in America because they can't afford to set up separate places of worship or don't have a large enough group to support it. And people who might feel stifled in those other countries and stay away from organized religion there, are comfortable going to places of worship in America because of the diversity here. I tend to fall into this category.
Again, what I'm trying to say is that the experience of non-Christian religious people may not match up entirely with the experience of Christians and adds just a bit more variety to the picture presented here. I am definitely not a "none", I identify with a specific religion (Islam). But I see a lot less of people dividing themselves up by denomination than I did in Christianity.