religious affiliation
Will the looming fertility bust destroy religion?
As the global population ages, it’s unclear what will bind people to faith.
Nones against none-ism?
Last week Pew released some more data from its spring survey on the rise of the nones. They asked people if they thought the growing number of "people who are not religious" is good, bad or neutral for American society. One interesting finding: while most of the nones said neutral, nearly as many said "bad" as "good." Almost a fifth of the nones think the growth of the nones—of their own group—is bad for society.
Lots of people seem surprised by this finding.
Nones on the Democratic bus
The possibly-spiritual-but-definitely-not-religious are growing in ranks, says the Pew Forum, and the resulting Nones On the Bus blogo-tour is as usual drawing good crowds.
Paul Waldman highlights one interesting subpoint: the Nones are growing not just more plentiful but also more Democratic. He credits Republican hostility to nonbelievers.
A sense of where you are
Anyone who likes maps, religion and useful or odd bits of data will have fun poking around the website created by the Association of Religion Data Archives, which now includes information from the 2010 census. The site allows for all kinds of searches by denomination and region.
For example, the curious can find out what U.S. counties have the highest or lowest percentage of Episcopalians.