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It used to be that if you had no religious affiliation in the United States, you were probably atheist or agnostic. You didn’t identify with a particular faith because you didn’t believe in God or were uncertain about whether God exists. Researchers have called these people the “nones” since the 1960s because they answer “none” on surveys about religious affiliation.
But something has shifted over the past 50 years as this group has grown from just 6 percent to almost one-third of the population: Today, nones are the biggest single religious group in the country. They’re hardly monolithic, however. Many of these new nones do believe in some kind of God or higher power. What’s more, the nones who believe in God may be relatively conservative on social issues, according to new research published by University of Nebraska professor Philip Schwadel in the journal Sociology of Religion. On 16 different measures, ranging from military and welfare spending, to abortion, to racial resentment, to capital punishment, to political intolerance and welfare, many God-fearing “nones” mirror their God-fearing religious counterparts, Schwadel reports. This was the case even when Schwadel controlled for political party when analyzing his survey results, he says.
I caught up with the sociologist to talk about who he believes the “nones” are, where they might be getting their ideas about God and religion, and what might explain the shift on social issues. We also talked about secular churches like Sunday Assembly and the ethics of Schwadel’s effort to spin his findings into prescriptive recommendations for Republicans in press materials.
Schwadel, who declared no sources of funding or conflicts of interest in his research, also claimed in our interview that “not many Americans identify as liberals anymore,” which you’ll see in his answers below. I wanted to correct the record, however, as recent polling actually shows the opposite. At the end of 2025, the number of United States adults embracing the “liberal” label had climbed to 28 percent, the highest percentage since Gallup started asking the question in the 1990s.
Why do you think we’ve gotten the “nones” so wrong all this time?
In popular discourse, we tend to conflate the people who say they have no religion with atheists. But in sociology as well as psychology and religious studies, we’ve known for a long time that as the proportion of Americans who say they have no religion has grown, they’ve become a lot more diverse. It’s feasible that 40 or 50 years ago, when 6 percent of Americans said they had no religion, most of them were relatively irreligious, but that population is now up to 28 to 30 percent, depending on the survey. For a lot of nones, it’s more of an opposition to organized religion, not necessarily a lack of spirituality or a lack of other kinds of beliefs. This is really not new to social scientists, but in the popular discourse, it’s not very commonly pointed out.
And why are religious nones growing so rapidly in the U.S.?
American political scientist Ronald Inglehart is probably the main person who’s made this argument that as society has modernized, people have become less reliant on religion because they basically have their daily needs met. There’s more certainty to life, fewer questions. But researchers also point to politics. Over the last few decades, religion has become more politicized. As Christianity in the U.S. has become associated with one party, we’ve seen a lot of people leave. It doesn’t mean they don’t have beliefs. It just means that they don’t want anything to do with this thing that we now see as a politicized institution.
What do we know about who the nones are in terms of socioeconomics, race, and family origins?
We know a fair amount about them, and it’s changed over time. The nones are disproportionately white, though that’s changing a little bit. We’re seeing more who say they have no religion among Latinos and African Americans and Asian Americans, as well. But historically, it’s been a disproportionately white phenomenon in the United States. More men than women say they have no religion. But other factors have changed over time. A few years ago, I published an article looking at generational changes. Among generations of Americans born in the early 1900s—the teens, ’20s, ’30s, into the ’40s—those who graduated from college were much more likely to say they have no religion. But over time that’s changed. In fact, among people born in the 1970s and later, those who went to college are more likely to attend religious services than those who don’t have a college education.
What do you think is going on there?
When it was a much smaller percentage of the population, I do think having no religion was more about secularization and modernity. But now I think religion has become associated in our popular culture with politics and certain perspectives, which is having more impact. We tend to talk about religion as this unidimensional concept: Either you’re religious, or you’re not religious. But that’s not really a very useful way to talk about religion. People in our society, in the U.S. at least, who have higher levels of education, are indeed more likely to attend religious services, but they’re less likely to say that the Bible is the word of God. They’re less likely to believe in hell. So it depends what aspect of religion we’re talking about.
You note in the paper that in Western Europe, almost 60 percent of nones are atheist or agnostic compared with less than 30 percent in the U.S. Why is American secularism so theistic compared to Europe?
Until very recently, we often talked about the U.S. as an outlier, religiously speaking. We were more religious than the rest of the industrialized world. Over the last two decades, we’ve started to see that change. A lot more people say they have no religion, but they’re still more likely to believe in God than their counterparts in Western Europe. So secularism in Europe occurred a lot earlier than it did in the United States. It seems more acceptable there than it is in the United States, socially and culturally speaking. So I think that we’re seeing that the people in Europe who say they have no religion are more okay saying they also don’t believe in God or have no religious beliefs.
Western Europe also has more infrastructure for non-religious people. They have secular churches in parts of Western Europe, organizations that model themselves directly after churches. They don’t talk about God or deities, but they have activities once a week, usually on Saturday or Sunday. It’s basically about providing the kinds of social components that religion provided to people who are no longer religious. Secularism just happened earlier there. So they’ve already built institutions.
What are those institutions called?
Secular churches. There are a few different major brands. They’re chains basically. There’s one in the United Kingdom that’s pretty popular.
Do we know where the God-believing nones are getting their religious beliefs from? Obviously, they’re not going to church.
It’s popular culture, social media, politics. This applies to the religiously affiliated as well. Most religiously affiliated Americans don’t attend church. We still have this misconception that the majority of Americans are attending church on any given Sunday morning, but our research suggests it’s a considerable minority. It’s somewhere around a quarter or 30 percent of Americans. Now more than a quarter of Americans attend church at some point during the year, but it’s still not a lot of us on any average Sunday. And so, people aren’t getting the same religious messages they used to get.
Read more: “We’re Bad at Understanding Our Political Opponents”
You write in your study that atheism is inherently political by nature, which surprised me. I can see that some people probably leave the church because they don’t like the politics. But Pew research suggests that many people leave organized religion because they disagree with church teachings or stop believing in God, or have bad experiences with the church.
People can come to a lack of belief through various sources, various routes in their lives. But when we’re talking about strict atheism, someone who says, “I definitely don’t believe in God. There is no God,” versus a more agnostic view where you might think, “I don’t necessarily believe in God. I don’t know if there’s a God. I don’t think anyone can know if there’s a God.” That view is a lot more common. But a strict atheist view is often seen as political because it’s taking a particular stance against organized religion.
You also controlled for political party. Nones who believe in God seem to support certain social policies that are aligned with political conservatism whether they identify as conservative or not. How does that work?
Regardless of people’s political stances, we still see that believing in God is associated with greater support for the death penalty, greater support for prayer in school. Whether you’re moderate or liberal, belief in God is still associated with greater opposition to abortion. Regardless of people’s political orientation, if you believe in God, even if you say you have no religion, you’re still likely to hold certain policy perspectives.
If these beliefs are not coming to people through party affiliation or church, where are they coming from?
People get messages in lots of different ways. Just because someone says they’re moderate, or even liberal—though not a lot of Americans identify as liberal these days—they may still get messages that lean toward the conservative end of things. Especially for someone who believes in God and has interacted with other people who believe in God and might have those kinds of perspectives.
Was there anything about the specific social issues that the different groups supported that surprised you?
I expected a difference when I went into this, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. But I was surprised at how different the nones who believe in God were from other nones. In terms of the individual outcomes, some of the spending ones really struck me. Atheist nones were much more likely to support spending on science and welfare. Nones who believe in God were unlikely to support spending on science and welfare. It was the size of the effect that was somewhat surprising.
Why?
Science is a good example. I would’ve thought that people who have no religion would generally support spending on science regardless of whether they believe in a higher power or believe in God, whether they’re atheist or agnostic. I was surprised to see that spending on science varied so much by their belief in God, and welfare, too. Because obviously, there are theological arguments for spending on welfare. Among people who say they have no religion, I thought there would be more across-the-board support for spending on welfare.
In the press release for this study, I noticed that you offered a prescriptive path for Republican politicians, a way for them to use your findings.
I’m a sociologist. We’re all supposed to be liberal, but the data tell me what the data tell me. In this case, the data say, “Hey Republicans, you could probably get some of these non-religious people to vote for you if you just tone down the Christian-centric language.”
Do you worry about the ethics of offering those kinds of instructions to Republicans only?
I try to be objective in my research. In this case, it suggests that this is a constituency that Republicans might be able to appeal to. I have my own personal political opinions. They play no role in my research.
Do you think there’s anything that the Democrats could do with the findings?
That’s an interesting question. I hadn’t thought a lot about that. I think Democrats could do something with these findings. Firstly, they could appeal more to the religious constituents as well. But they already tried to do that. But perhaps by making it clear that it’s okay to not affiliate with an organized religion, they might be able to appeal more to some of these constituents. As we’ve already talked about, some 28 to 30 percent of Americans say they have no religion. I think one senator says they have no religion, if I remember correctly. So they’re not aligning with the populace. They could make more non-religious, non-theological appeals.
You noted that your future research might aim to address the religious language that politicians use. What are you hoping to learn?
There was an interesting article recently about how the Christian rhetoric among public politicians has actually increased since Mike Johnson became House speaker. I’d like to do some experiments not just looking at what politicians are saying, but also looking at how people react to that—how it affects their political stances. I’d like to see how that’s influencing people on the right and the left or in the middle.
Do you see anyone out there finding innovative ways to shape religious discourse, since people aren’t going to church? Because it seems like people who believe in God may be getting spiritual ideas that are out of alignment with historical religious tradition, which emphasizes values such as compassion, justice, charity, and showing hospitality and compassion toward the foreigner.
There are religious leaders in the middle and on the left who are certainly doing so. We tend to associate religion in our society with conservatism. But there are, of course, moderate and liberal progressive theologians and religious leaders. Going back to the civil rights movement, we could talk about all of the progressive religious leaders who played a role in that. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was directed specifically at them. Some of them did heed the call. 
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