The Rise of the Nones and American Civic Life: Trends in Religious and Secular Volunteering

• In Event: 2431 - Religion, Politics, and American Civil Society

Abstract

This study examines the extent to which recent declines in religiosity in the United States have had any spillover effects on civic life. Using data on volunteering from 2002 to 2015, we examine both national trends and trends for large metropolitan areas. We make a distinction between volunteering for religious and secular causes as well as between volunteering rates and volunteering hours. We report three sets of findings. First, we map how the importance of faith-based organizations in the civic sector varies substantially across metropolitan areas, with some areas “specializing” in religious volunteering, others in secular volunteering, and still others scoring consistently along both dimensions. Second, we observe significant declines in the total supply of voluntary labor. The decline is larger for secular volunteering, because although secular and religious volunteering rates have declined in parallel, the decline in the latter has been partly offset by a recent surge in the average number of volunteering hours among religious volunteers. Third, we find higher rates of civic decline in areas where volunteering used to be more common, implying civic convergence across local areas. More specifically, our evidence points to greater civic decline in areas that used to rely more heavily on religious volunteers. Altogether, our findings offer some hints that declining religiosity has real civic impacts, but at the same time also emphasize the resilience of civic participation through religious organizations.

Authors

• Chaeyoon Lim, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Dingeman Wiertz, University College London