Civic Values and Political Activity of the "Spiritual but Not Religious"

• In Event: New Political Science & Religion and Politics Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Religion and Politics Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

As new data consistently shows a rapid growth of the nonreligious in the United States, scholars have approached this demographic group with little consensus on how to classify types of nonreligion. Popular approaches have used self-identification as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” (e.g. Schwadel 2020); self-identified affiliation or non-affiliation with religious traditions (e.g. Gullickson 2018); and religious histories from panel data (Bengtson et al. 2018), among others. While existing research acknowledges that “nonreligion” is a significantly broad and heterogenous belief type (Burge 2020), existing classification schemes have either focused on differentiating between religion and nonreligion or between types of nonreligion. We propose an alternative classification scheme that allows for parsimonious belief type contextualization while addressing serious concerns about known survey measurement errors. Using 2020 Religion and Spirituality Survey data, we argue that there are three macro-categories of belief types: the Religious, the Spiritual, and the Secular. We build on the foundation of nonreligious research by casting an alternative explanation for the evident “liminality” (e.g. Hout 2017; Lim, MacGregor, and Putnam 2010) and exploring nonreligious spirituality as an emerging phenomenon in American civic life. In particular, we replicate previous studies and find that our classification system corroborates the fundamentals of the existing literature. Further, we explore the consequences of belief type on civic values and political involvement, finding respondents’ belief types to significantly determine which civic values are important to them and in which political activities they are involved. Finally, we discuss the consequences of recent religious-demographic trends on civic life and what the shifting (non)religious landscape means for a pluralist America.

Authors

• Nathan Barron, University of Oklahoma

• Abigail Lee Bitterman, University of Oklahoma