THE UNAFFILIATED "NONES"

As I have mentioned in past posts and what is vastly being reported by religious polls of various kinds is that the number of those who describe themselves as unaffiliated is growing.  The estimate is that there are 1.1 billion people who have either left or who say they are not members of any theistic religious organization.  I constantly find articles written by those who have left their churches and mosques because they have become disenchanted with organized theism, particularly what they describe as the hypocrisy and hate-mongering that has emerged from these supposedly peace-teaching theistic religions.

This switch from being affiliated to unaffiliated is particularly noted amongst Christian evangelicals of  a more ardent fundamentalist brand.  The unaffiliated have become known as the "nones," a group largely composed of millennials ranging in age from 18 to 35 years.

Included in the nones are those claiming to be agnostics, atheists, those who believe in a deity but not associated with an organized religion,  humanists of a non-affiliated type, those who practice or believe in some form of spiritualism.  In other words, it is rather difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is the nones believe or what they are looking for.

This opens the door to speculation, a regular human pastime of mine. So allow me to engage in some speculation.  First let me say that at I have found myself, at times, on the verge of becoming a none and may well be on the fringe of being one.  I've literally walked out of churches with the momentary intent of never returning only to find myself doing so, but that is a topic for another post.  So why are people leaving organized religion?

THE EVANGELICAL EXODUS

One of the easiest aspects of this exodus too track is those leaving evangelical churches and those currently leaving or threatening to leave The Church of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormons (LDS).

Starting  with the exodus of  millennial evangelicals of a more fundamentalist type, I've read that many leaving their churches say they loved at one time is that they possessed or were possessed by an intense ideological belief system that proved itself to be hypocritical.  One of those beliefs that shaped their worldview was something they probably learned during their Sunday School experience, that God loves everyone and that one should always be good to others.

Evangelical Sunday Schools, as I am sure is true with Mormon Sunday Schools, is that they are really good at getting that point across and millennials saw and felt that love as very young children. Things, however, start changing once they started going through adolescence and entering into adulthood.  The God they fell in love with as a child starts to have a different personality once they start reaching the age where their church feels its time to curb the growing tendency to sin, otherwise known as sex.  Hell rather than heaven becomes increasingly unavoidable.

There seems to be a moral tax to pay to get the love that was so freely given to them as a small child, when forgiveness was readily available because one didn't know better and was just learning.  Being loved increasingly became conditioned on being right with God.  Becoming more aware, more intelligent became increasingly viewed as a challenge to faith as these church's ideologies increasingly became more restrictive as to give the "narrow path" to salvation a road map.

Then there is the ultimate encounter with life in the "real world." And by "real world" I mean the world that is not so black and white, where things are more of a gray mixture of not perfect and not intolerably imperfect human beings.  Millennials, if anything, impress me as trying to be more truthful about themselves as they search for what that means.  They are less attracted to pretense and have a more open attitude towards others, especially the people they get to know.

Evangelical and Mormon millennials are no different in this regard.  As they mature, they find that they are not "perfect" but that their imperfections, which are considered intolerable to the God preached about in their churches are not all that intolerable in their own lives.  It is no wonder then that the straw that is threatening to break the camel's back in fundamental evangelicalism and in the LDS is their stance against LBGTQ individuals.

While the older members of fundamentalist evangelicals are probably entrenched in their long-held beliefs, many millennials in their groups have come to personally know LBGTQ individuals who are open about their sexuality.  They have friends or family members who identify as such. They know that being LBGTQ does not make a person bad or good, but is part of what makes that person who that person is, and they are torn between a God who loved everyone because everyone is God's child and that same God who can hate a once loved child simply because he or she is admittedly gay;  a God who is presented as requiring those who love Him to hate those who he hates, those they have come to know and care about.

It is ironic that this issue, more than any other, is what seems to be driving millennial evangelicals and Mormons from the pews of their churches.  The rhetoric of hate leveled against people they know and love exposes what many see as a deep deception about God that they end up throwing God out as the metaphorical hypocrite representing those believers who are willing to destroy their own families and neighbors because they're more worried about having a fantasy afterlife than living this life more fully by being less judgmental and more compassionate and loving.

I sense a similar exodus amongst Muslims, but I feel this is not getting the attention that the Christian evangelical exodus is receiving.  What is driving younger Muslims from their mosques is the rhetoric of hate also.  Muslim intellectuals are also struggling with what they see as deep deceptions regarding Allah and the teachings of the Prophet and their personal experiences with the "real world" that they see being torn apart not only by geopolitical warfare, but also theopolitical warfare.

As a whole, I see this meltdown of monotheism happening worldwide, and it is largely the result of ancient ideologies that addressed little understood issues of an ancient era to foster hate and violence today for no other reason than the Bible said so.  This lack of intelligence and unreasonableness is, in my opinion, the greatest detriment to the God-concept and organized theistic religion.

AGNOSTICS

I have identified myself as an agnostic, but one who remains affiliated with a mainline church, The Episcopal Church of the United States.  Up to this point I have avoided naming the denomination to which I and my family joined some twenty years ago, simply because I don't want people to think that whatever heresy one might hear splashed across my posts as being taught in the Episcopal Church. Why I love the Episcopal Church is that there is a lot room in that church to exercise an open, questioning mind.

I am a self-professed agnostic not because I have no beliefs, but rather that I admit to not knowing whether what I believe is at all certain and I try to keep an open mind, a discerning mind, and a somewhat skeptical mind in order to distill and examine that elusive topic, truth.

The reality is there are probably a good number of agnostics sitting in church pews and attending synagogues and mosques.  I have no doubt that there are a smattering of atheists as well amongst the affiliated. That fact doesn't make us hypocrites, rather it is an attestation that there is more to corporate worship than having to check your mind at the door in order to give credence to the ideologies found there.

A number of the nones have identified themselves as agnostic presumably meaning one of several options:  they don't know if there is a God; they believe in the possibility of a God but don't think God is all that involved in what we humans do, the issue of God and religion is not something that interests them, or they have embrace a skepticism about all things religious.

I read somewhere that some Christian clergymen said  they'd rather deal with an atheist than an agnostic.  Presumably this is because they can argue the certainty of their opposing beliefs better with an entrenched atheist than they can with an agnostic.  The reason is obvious.. It is hard to argue with an open mind, one that can accept the other's belief as valid, but open to debate and questioning.

Overall, I see agnosticism on the rise, in part, as a response or stance against the certitude expressed by institutions and individuals who espouse strong ideological, moral beliefs that are based on nothing more than writings over a thousand years old, some of  which are considered irrelevant, if not an affront to the life experiences of  people today.

ATHEISTS

A number of atheists are, in fact, forming groups.  As I have noted in other posts, I consider atheism a form of theism. Although I believe a number of unaffiliated are atheist, I also think that number, if known, would likely include individuals affiliated with atheist groups, comparable in nature, to any organised theistic religion.  As such, I do not consider atheists to be anti-religion as they are anti-conceptualists who deny the existence of out-there-other commonly known as God.  The fact is some atheists are organizing and forming what I and some of them consider a religious community or religion similar to conceptually God-based theistic religions in form but not in substance.

I consider atheism a valid religion.  I find myself agreeing with many of their observations about the wrongful influence some fundamentalist, God-based theists have in their overt zeal to define the world strictly from their ideological perspectives.  While I too don't believe in the God most atheists don't believe in, I find the God-concept also valid and reserve space for an out-there-other that, paradoxically, is felt as an inside, intraconnected Self-observing-self or the sense of Being in which we live and move and have our being (Paul, the apostle).

If I were to offer a criticism of atheism it would be that some atheists are selling many God-based religions short; that there is a human richness that is residing in the God-based concepts of theism which are important to the human understanding of who we are, why we are, and what to do next in order to help the world.  I feel this this is an area where atheists and God based theists can find some common ground and can help each other in providing for a more humane world.

SPIRITUALITY

Spirituality is difficult to define. A number of "nones" identify themselves as spiritual but not religious.  Of course my definition of religion includes every form of spirituality.   Spirituality is frequently presented as a type of pantheism or panentheism that sees nature or the cosmos as having a spiritual connection to all living things or that all that exists has a spiritually interconnection with each other.

Spirituality is linked to the human spirit as the perceiving, creative property of being human, a property that permits us to change our world  or one's personal situation by appealing to the forces driving nature, the power inherent in being.

Spirituality is capable of embracing an inclusivity that understands the community of being   Those claiming to be spiritual often see no need to "belong" to a spiritual group (although such groups exist) or have membership in an identified religious denomination.  God is defined or better understood as being undefined in whatever the spiritually oriented person feels God to be. The unaffiliated person claiming to be spiritual may identify culturally as being influenced by Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism,  Native American religion, Wicca, or any number of theistic identities, but not belonging to any. Many see their spirituality expressed in being themselves a free spirit.

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At the beginning of this post, I asked what the "nones" are looking for?  The answer to that question is not so much what they are looking for as much as it is what are they trying to avoid or get away from.  I think those who are leaving monotheistic religions are doing so because the God-concept of these ancient religions is twisted in an endeavor to keep current the idea of unchangeable God of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Holy Bible and the Koran, who is both a God of love and peace and a God of hatred and vengeance.   A God-concept that holds even a smidgen of these contrasting views appears  nonsensical.  This is a God who cannot be trusted, much less believable when it comes to saving the world   I also know that monotheists of various kinds have answers to this apparent incongruity.

Religions of the Book are hard-pressed to find a universal expression of the compassion, love, and peace that is often contradicted by passages found in the very books they hold sacred. It's too easy to come up with a list of  "ifs," "ands," or "buts" that argues against being open-minded, open-hearted, and inclusive.  We have all sorts of demonstrations on just how difficult this is.

I recently listened to sermon by Dr.  William Lupfer, rector of Trinity Wall Street in New York, explain not only the difficulty churches and society as a whole have with being inclusive, but also how dangerous it is, how risky it can become and yet how committed he and Trinity is to being just that, inclusive, with its inherent dangers and risks.  Trinity is a rare, beautiful place that sits in the physical center of secular religion, Wall Street.  It knows whereof it speaks, and it is engaged in the struggle to be that haven of peace and inclusiveness that is desperately needed everywhere.
 

I feel that those who are leaving their places of worship and embracing atheism or agnosticism do so because holding to ideological beliefs that are conflicting and trying to reconcile and make them work isn't working for them. Progressive, open-hearted, and open-minded churches, synagogues, and mosques like Trinity Wall Street are few and hard to find, and those that are struggle with having to redefine the scriptures they use as the base of their theistic ideologies.

I cannot judge or criticise those identified as "nones."  Some nones were born into loving homes where such ideological beliefs found in organized theistic religions were not important.  Others left organized religion for any number of reasons.  Whatever the reason or the background for being a "none,"  being true to oneself and respectful of where others are in their lives at any given moment is what ultimately counts in making our world a better place to live.

In my next post, I will talk about why I'm still affiliated.

Until then, stay faithful.