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SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, December 4, 2003: A growing number of Americans simply answer “none” or “no religion” when pollsters ask them their religious affiliation. Some “nones” identify themselves as atheists or agnostics, but the vast majority believe in God, pray and often describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious.” Nones are one of the fastest growing religious categories in the United States. According to a recent survey, their ranks have more than doubled in a decade and include 29 million Americans. They’re easy to find in the West and are the single largest religious group in Oregon and Washington, where they make up 21 and 25 percent of the population, respectively. In California nearly one in five people (19 percent) say they are nones. The sharp increase in the number of Americans nationwide who now claim no loyalty to a single faith has gotten the attention of many scholars. The shift has been noted in several polls, including the American religious Identification Survey of 2001, conducted by the city University of New York. This telephone survey of 50,000 Americans, which was also conducted in 1990, asked the open-ended question, “What is your religion, if any.” Based on those answers, the study estimated that the number of “no religion” Americans had jumped from 14 million in 1990 to 29 million in 2001. Out of that 29 million, only 900,000 would call themselves atheists. Those 29 million nones are outnumbered only by the 51 million Americans who call themselves Catholic and 34 million who say they are Baptist.



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