About 29 out of every 100 American adults have no religion. Researchers call them the “nones,” because when a survey asks their religion, they check “none.” That’s a lot of houses. It’s more than Catholics. It’s more than evangelicals.
They come in three rough kinds. In Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study:
- Atheists (about 5 in 100 adults) don’t believe in God.
- Agnostics (about 6 in 100) say they don’t know, or think it can’t be known.
- “Nothing in particular” (about 19 in 100) is the biggest group by far. Many of them just don’t think about religion much, one way or the other.
Not what you might expect
Here’s what surprises many religious people. Most nones are not atheists. In Pew’s 2024 study of nones, most said they believe in God or some higher power. Only 29% rejected any higher power or spiritual force at all. About half said they think of themselves as spiritual, or that spirituality is very important to them.
They also aren’t uniformly hostile to faith. About 43% said religion does more harm than good. About 14% said it does more good than harm. And 41% said it does about equal amounts of both, which may be the most honest answer anyone gave.
And many celebrate religious holidays anyway. In a 2017 Pew survey, 85% of nones said they celebrate Christmas in some way. Nobody is turning down pie on principle.
Why they left, or never came
Nones give lots of reasons. Two-thirds say they question a lot of religious teaching or don’t believe in God. About 47% said disliking religious organizations was a very important reason they aren’t religious. About 30% pointed to bad experiences with religious people.
That last number deserves a pause. For a lot of our neighbors, the biggest argument against faith wasn’t a book or a scientist. It was one of us.
What many neighbors with no religion wish religious people knew
You can be good without going to church. Most of your nonreligious neighbors are kind, pay their bills, return your trash can when it blows into their yard, and would like that to be noticed without a sermon attached.
They don’t need to be a project. Friendship that comes with a hidden conversion goal tends to feel like a timeshare pitch. If you’re religious and you want to talk about your faith, do it the way you’d want them to talk about theirs: honestly, once, and then listen.
And some of them have stories. Some were hurt in a church, a mosque or a synagogue. A few have never set foot in one. Either way, they’re not the enemy. They’re the neighbor with the good ladder.
Try it on
Think of a neighbor with no religion. Have you ever asked what they do believe, and then really listened?