Nebraska Lecture with Philip Schwadel

Mike Kamm Author

03/31/2023 Added

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Watch the March 30, 2023, Nebraska Lecture, "Declining Religion in the U.S.: The Causes and Consequences of Religious Disaffiliation Among Young Americans," presented by Husker sociologist Philip Schwadel.

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[00:00:00.934](upbeat music)
[00:00:03.510]Hello, I'm Chancellor Ronnie Green.
[00:00:06.270]Thank you for joining me for today's Nebraska Lecture.
[00:00:10.020]This distinguished lecture series features some of the
[00:00:12.352]University of Nebraska Lincoln's most notable scholars,
[00:00:16.046]researchers, artists, and thinkers.
[00:00:19.229]At Nebraska, we believe in the power of every person.
[00:00:23.297]For about two decades,
[00:00:24.924]the Nebraska lectures have showcased some of Nebraska's
[00:00:27.472]finest scholars,
[00:00:28.781]people who embody the spirit of this institution and are
[00:00:31.997]committed to sharing their knowledge with the public.
[00:00:35.912](music continues)
[00:00:38.760]Our speakers are renowned experts in their fields.
[00:00:41.940]They are scholars who strive to collaborate,
[00:00:43.748]breaking down the barriers between disciplines.
[00:00:47.310]They're educators who are committed to mentoring and shaping
[00:00:50.275]the next generation.
[00:00:52.410]They're problem solvers who have spent their careers
[00:00:54.621]addressing some of society's most pressing challenges.
[00:00:58.819]I'm so proud of their accomplishments and dedication to our
[00:01:02.333]university and the state of Nebraska.
[00:01:06.330]Thank you to the Office of Research and Economic
[00:01:08.308]Development, the university's research council,
[00:01:12.030]the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute,
[00:01:14.550]and other partners for
[00:01:15.750]making this lecture series possible.
[00:01:18.029]I hope you enjoy today's Nebraska lecture.
[00:01:20.749](music fades)
[00:01:27.602](cheerful music)
[00:01:30.810]Good afternoon.
[00:01:31.860]I'm Bob Wilhelm,
[00:01:33.150]vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development at the
[00:01:35.503]University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:01:38.220]Welcome to our spring Nebraska lecture.
[00:01:40.908]This lecture series highlights some of Nebraska's finest
[00:01:43.739]artists, researchers, scholars and thinkers.
[00:01:48.384]Today's lecture features Dr. Philip Schwadel.
[00:01:52.500]Carl A. Happold professor of sociology.
[00:01:56.370]Phil has researched the growth in recent decades of
[00:01:59.820]religious disaffiliation in our country,
[00:02:03.360]especially among young Americans.
[00:02:05.880]Religion has traditionally been an important part of
[00:02:08.283]Americans' identity,
[00:02:10.920]but as more and more people identify as non-religious,
[00:02:14.109]it is likely to profoundly impact the future of our society.
[00:02:18.600]We look forward to Phil sharing his
[00:02:20.165]thoughts about those impacts.
[00:02:23.580]Phil received his bachelor's degree in religious studies
[00:02:26.330]from the University of Florida, and his master's and PhD in
[00:02:30.056]sociology from Penn State.
[00:02:33.810]He came to UNL in 2005, and also spent 2018 to '19 as a
[00:02:39.563]senior researcher in religion with the Pew Research Center.
[00:02:44.077]Thank you for joining us and thank you to our
[00:02:46.622]co-sponsors in bringing you these lectures,
[00:02:52.260]the Office of the Chancellor, and the Research Council,
[00:02:54.911]as well as in collaboration with the
[00:02:57.168]Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
[00:03:00.059]And please stay tuned after the lecture for a live Q&A
[00:03:05.160]with Dr. Schwadel.
[00:03:06.660]If you have a question for Phil,
[00:03:08.460]please email it to unlresearch@unl.edu.
[00:03:15.808](music ends)
[00:03:21.300]Good afternoon.
[00:03:22.530]It is my honor and privilege to be here delivering the
[00:03:24.600]spring 2023 Nebraska lecture.
[00:03:27.780]I'd like to thank Chancellor Green,
[00:03:29.430]vice Chancellor for research, Wilhelm for inviting me.
[00:03:31.752]I'd like to thank the College of Arts and Sciences and
[00:03:33.960]Sociology department for everything they've done to help me
[00:03:36.017]get here, for supporting my research along the way.
[00:03:38.586]And I'd like to thank Professor Christian Olsen for
[00:03:41.160]nominating me for this prestigious honor.
[00:03:43.223]Now, before I get going,
[00:03:45.750]I wanna tell you just a little bit about myself.
[00:03:47.483]I am a sociologist of religion.
[00:03:49.820]My research focuses on religion and youth,
[00:03:52.229]which I'll be talking about today, religion and politics,
[00:03:55.524]religion and social class,
[00:03:56.940]which will come into today's talk as well.
[00:03:59.283]And religion and social change,
[00:04:01.680]which is really the background behind a lot of what we're
[00:04:04.350]talking about today.
[00:04:05.302]I got my undergraduate degree from University of Florida,
[00:04:09.540]my graduate degree from Penn State.
[00:04:11.065]And then I did a two year postdoctoral research position
[00:04:14.702]with the National Study of Youth and Religion.
[00:04:16.890]And I'll be talking more about the National Study of Youth
[00:04:18.627]and Religion today.
[00:04:19.859]And then I came to the University of Nebraska in 2005 and
[00:04:22.687]I've been here since.
[00:04:24.551]Now in today's talk I'm gonna be talking about American
[00:04:27.622]religion or specifically about American non-religion in the
[00:04:30.201]21st century.
[00:04:32.820]I'll be summarizing two decades of my research and other
[00:04:35.790]research on religion and youth in the US.
[00:04:38.090]This talk will be broken up into three parts.
[00:04:41.490]The first part will summarize the state
[00:04:43.127]of American religion.
[00:04:45.000]This will be relatively brief.
[00:04:46.770]The second part will also be relatively brief, where
[00:04:49.650]I'm just gonna talk about what I'm
[00:04:50.842]referring to as the causes of
[00:04:53.550]religion non-affiliation or disaffiliation.
[00:04:56.280]And in that sense,
[00:04:57.113]I mean the demographic factors that lead some people to be
[00:04:59.879]more likely to have no religion than other people.
[00:05:02.883]And the bulk of the talk,
[00:05:04.171]the third part of the talk will focus on what I'm
[00:05:06.641]calling the consequences of non-religion.
[00:05:10.290]In other words,
[00:05:11.123]how non-religious young adults differ from religious young
[00:05:14.640]adults, and why this is important.
[00:05:16.839]And while I realize that the
[00:05:18.169]title of the talk refers to
[00:05:19.500]the Causes and Consequences of Religious Non Affiliation,
[00:05:23.190]I was a bit overly ambitious,
[00:05:25.380]and so the talk will mostly focus on the consequences of
[00:05:27.326]religious non-affiliation and disaffiliation.
[00:05:31.505]So to begin with, I want to address the broad question,
[00:05:36.120]is the United States a religious nation?
[00:05:38.850]It's a seemingly simplistic question.
[00:05:41.100]Are we religious, are we not religious?
[00:05:43.080]Now, to be clear,
[00:05:43.913]I don't mean are we a Christian nation,
[00:05:45.360]which I know is a popular topic of discourse.
[00:05:47.530]I mean, are we a religious nation in the sense that are we a
[00:05:49.903]religious people for the most part?
[00:05:52.779]Now, historically,
[00:05:54.180]religion has played a large role in the United States,
[00:05:56.488]beginning with the Great Awakening,
[00:05:58.590]which was a religious revival before we were the
[00:06:00.965]United States of America,
[00:06:02.610]when we were the original 13 colonies,
[00:06:04.710]a very emotionally charged religious revival which spread
[00:06:07.200]throughout the original colonies, with leaders like
[00:06:10.110]Jonathan Edwards who had a lasting impact
[00:06:11.910]on American religion.
[00:06:13.138]After the founding of the US in the 1790s,
[00:06:16.184]we had another religious revival,
[00:06:18.360]which we in retrospect referred
[00:06:20.130]to as a second great awakening.
[00:06:21.502]It was not as emotionally charged as a first religious
[00:06:24.420]revival, but it led to the founding of key institutions,
[00:06:28.260]religious institutions, which still exist today,
[00:06:30.750]many of them colleges and universities, seminaries,
[00:06:34.161]missionary societies.
[00:06:36.424]And so this is the early part of our history.
[00:06:39.599]Religion played a large role.
[00:06:42.233]For the next a hundred and change years,
[00:06:44.100]from the early 1800s into the middle of the 1900s,
[00:06:47.340]we experienced what some researchers refer to as the
[00:06:49.290]Third Great Awakening,
[00:06:50.921]a broad period of general religiosity in our nation.
[00:06:55.155]Now, our research suggests
[00:06:57.630]that in some ways religion undoubtedly
[00:06:59.130]declined over the course of US history, but in some ways,
[00:07:01.620]surprisingly, it actually increased.
[00:07:03.831]As work by Roger Finke, Rodney Stark,
[00:07:05.734]as you see on the left here of the slide,
[00:07:07.860]shows, their work as well as other work in the early
[00:07:11.700]1990s when they first wrote The Church in America.
[00:07:14.255]This, by the way, is a second edition,
[00:07:16.110]which came out in the 2000s.
[00:07:17.733]They and other researchers were working to debunk what they
[00:07:21.960]referred to as the myth of past piety.
[00:07:24.210]This idea that we were always historically more religious
[00:07:26.251]than we are today.
[00:07:27.929]And their research shows that at least in terms of some
[00:07:30.391]measures of religion, institutional measures of religion,
[00:07:33.630]things like, are you a member of a church, mosque,
[00:07:35.460]synagogue, or temple,
[00:07:36.293]as you can see on the figure there,
[00:07:39.150]we became more religious in those ways over the course of
[00:07:42.120]much of US history, not in every way, but in some ways.
[00:07:45.265]Indeed religion has often played
[00:07:48.367]a prominent role in our country.
[00:07:50.610]In the middle of the 20th century in particular,
[00:07:53.460]we saw ourselves as a highly religious nation.
[00:07:57.104]In the 1940s and 1950s,
[00:07:59.520]we had key religious leaders like Billy Graham who traveled
[00:08:02.186]around the country, known as America's pastor,
[00:08:05.303]preaching about religion, Christianity,
[00:08:10.530]his specific brand of Protestantism.
[00:08:12.720]And not only that, but the role of religion in our nation,
[00:08:15.990]the connection between religion and the United States.
[00:08:18.932]Around the same time in the 1950s
[00:08:21.957]we saw ourselves as a religious nation in a cold war with
[00:08:27.870]the atheistic and communistic USSR
[00:08:30.468]Religion played such a prominent role at that time
[00:08:33.090]that President Eisenhower joined a church and became the
[00:08:36.600]first president to ever be baptized while in office.
[00:08:41.244]Reflecting the prominent role of religion in the fifties,
[00:08:45.510]we saw the phrase Under God was added to the
[00:08:49.140]Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.
[00:08:52.075]Now things began to change a little bit in 1960s,
[00:08:56.250]in the 1960s,
[00:08:58.170]we had a civil rights movement and a women's rights
[00:09:00.750]movement, an anti-war movement.
[00:09:02.971]Not all these things necessarily began in the sixties,
[00:09:05.370]but they were particularly prominent in the sixties.
[00:09:07.650]There was the hippie movement or flower child movement.
[00:09:10.410]There were new religious movement, some Christian,
[00:09:12.600]some non-Christian, leading a lot of people to question
[00:09:16.155]whether religion was declining in our society,
[00:09:18.540]going away, disappearing.
[00:09:20.370]This is reflected by the Time Magazine cover,
[00:09:22.915]the very famous Time magazine cover for 1966 that
[00:09:25.300]questioned Is God Dead?
[00:09:28.551]Nonetheless, despite these concerns just 10 years later,
[00:09:31.808]time magazine's cover story, pardon me,
[00:09:34.377]the New Empire of Faith,
[00:09:35.953]all about the rise of evangelical Protestantism
[00:09:38.640]in the United States.
[00:09:40.194]Not just the growing number of evangelical Protestants at
[00:09:43.890]the time, but the increasing public presence
[00:09:46.250]of evangelical Protestantism.
[00:09:48.164]And so that's where we were at the end of the 20th century.
[00:09:51.519]According to the International Social Survey Program in
[00:09:54.720]1998, 15% of us in the United States
[00:09:57.990]said we had no religion.
[00:09:59.145]Compare this, and I'll talk more about
[00:10:02.131]what no religion means in just a little bit,
[00:10:04.110]compare this to 27% of Australians,
[00:10:06.480]32% of Canadians, more than 40% of Germans,
[00:10:09.990]almost half of all British or French citizens
[00:10:12.450]said they had no religion.
[00:10:14.520]We were a considerable outlier.
[00:10:17.040]At the end of the 20th century,
[00:10:18.690]we are more religious than most of our peer nations.
[00:10:21.030]Not all, I don't wanna suggest that we were
[00:10:23.777]by far the most religious nation.
[00:10:26.225]As you can see, Italy also an outlier.
[00:10:30.060]Spain, which is not up on here in figure, also an outlier.
[00:10:32.878]Parts of Ireland, also an outlier.
[00:10:35.940]Nonetheless, for the most part,
[00:10:37.262]we were one of the most religious nations of all the
[00:10:40.805]advanced industrialized nations at the time.
[00:10:44.379]Then things began to change.
[00:10:46.907]Now it really didn't just change exactly in 2001,
[00:10:51.561]it started to change near the end of the 20th century,
[00:10:54.450]as we'll see in just a little bit in the
[00:10:55.770]1990s in particular.
[00:10:57.090]But for the most part,
[00:10:58.290]we saw religion really decline
[00:10:59.670]in the United States in the 21st century.
[00:11:02.169]For example, the general social survey,
[00:11:05.610]which is the gold standard in the field,
[00:11:07.110]it's a repeated cross-sectional survey.
[00:11:08.970]It's been done since 1972.
[00:11:10.890]We'll look more about numbers
[00:11:12.480]from the general social survey in just a moment.
[00:11:14.531]But the general social survey, a highly reputable survey,
[00:11:17.149]shows that in 1998,
[00:11:18.654]15% of us said that we'd be a better nation
[00:11:21.187]if religion had less influence.
[00:11:23.399]Just 23 years later,
[00:11:25.914]across the first two decades of the 21st century,
[00:11:29.460]this doubled, three in 10 of us now say we'd be a better
[00:11:33.030]nation if religion had less influence.
[00:11:36.034]Tremendous change.
[00:11:37.400]Most importantly,
[00:11:38.880]and what I'm gonna focus on for the remainder of this talk,
[00:11:41.190]is the change in a number of Americans
[00:11:42.690]reporting no religion.
[00:11:44.486]By no religion, we mean when we ask someone on a survey,
[00:11:48.360]what is your religion?
[00:11:49.271]Is it Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist?
[00:11:54.330]So on.
[00:11:55.549]The last option is none.
[00:11:57.840]None of the above or nothing.
[00:12:00.870]Sociologists of religion tend to refer to these people as
[00:12:03.180]nones, N O N E S, as contrasted with N U N S.
[00:12:06.567]And unfortunately that is the best joke sociologists of
[00:12:08.742]religion have, I'm sorry to say,
[00:12:12.120]according to the general social survey in 1972,
[00:12:15.383]5% of us said we had no religion.
[00:12:18.037]Fast forward to 1980, 7% of us have no religion.
[00:12:22.575]10 years, 1990,
[00:12:24.443]8% of us, still pretty rare to report having no religion.
[00:12:28.590]Most Americans still have a religion.
[00:12:31.088]Then things begin to change.
[00:12:34.433]This almost doubles in the 1990s.
[00:12:37.200]By the year 2000,
[00:12:38.250]14% of us reported having no religion, and this
[00:12:41.130]skyrocketed in the 21st century.
[00:12:44.160]28% of us, according to general social survey,
[00:12:46.920]had no religion by 2021.
[00:12:48.848]This is a monumental change,
[00:12:51.270]a fundamental change in American religion and American
[00:12:53.610]culture more broadly.
[00:12:55.245]Now, given how monumental this change is,
[00:12:58.500]how fundamental it is to American society,
[00:13:01.170]it's important that we confirm the results,
[00:13:02.910]that we make sure that the general social survey is
[00:13:04.705]correct, even though it's a highly reputable source of data.
[00:13:08.272]So one of the other most highly reputable sources of data on
[00:13:11.042]American religion comes from Pew Research Center,
[00:13:13.605]and we could see that their numbers matched a general social
[00:13:16.860]survey almost exactly.
[00:13:18.675]According to Pew, in 2007 when they started
[00:13:22.410]collecting reliable data on this,
[00:13:24.746]16% of Americans said they had no religion.
[00:13:27.930]By 2021, 29%, almost identical numbers
[00:13:30.780]to the general social survey.
[00:13:32.797]In contrast, 78% of us were Christian in 2007,
[00:13:37.788]down to 63% in 2021, tremendous changes,
[00:13:41.621]tremendous growth of non-religion,
[00:13:43.590]and decline of Christianity.
[00:13:45.379]Further confirming these results, Gallup,
[00:13:48.258]one of the other most reputable sources of data on religion,
[00:13:55.485]Gallup's data shows the same thing.
[00:13:59.130]A rise in the proportion of Americans,
[00:14:01.020]percentage of Americans, pardon me, who have no religion.
[00:14:03.306]Gallup was nice enough to also break it up by generation.
[00:14:06.960]The top line here, the red line, is Gen Z.
[00:14:10.470]As you could see,
[00:14:11.303]generation Z increased by far the most and is the most
[00:14:13.727]likely to report having no religion.
[00:14:16.190]And as the small print at the bottom of the figure
[00:14:19.735]says, later generations in particular are even more likely
[00:14:24.148]than Gen Z to report having no religion.
[00:14:28.499]They just didn't have enough for them in the first two
[00:14:30.330]periods to put them up here.
[00:14:32.250]In other words,
[00:14:33.210]non-religion is increasing dramatically and it's
[00:14:35.760]disproportionately being driven by young Americans.
[00:14:38.181]And so that's what we're talking about for much of today.
[00:14:43.401]This is where we are now.
[00:14:44.730]The United States is now a relatively
[00:14:46.219]non-religious nation, or I think a better way to frame it,
[00:14:49.650]is to say a large minority of us are not religious.
[00:14:52.410]In 2020, according to the World Religion database,
[00:14:56.748]we ranked 20th of all nations around the world in terms of
[00:15:00.750]the percent with no religion.
[00:15:02.550]We're still more religious than some of our peer nations,
[00:15:05.100]Great Britain and France and so forth.
[00:15:06.734]But we're not as much of an outlier as we used to be.
[00:15:09.634]We're now a relatively non-religious nation,
[00:15:13.500]and this is disproportionately, like I said,
[00:15:15.544]driven by young people.
[00:15:17.602]And so that's what I'll be talking
[00:15:18.948]about for the rest of today.
[00:15:20.271]How youth and young adults are not religious,
[00:15:23.760]what this means for their lives and what this means for the
[00:15:25.164]wellbeing of our nation.
[00:15:28.260]Now, as I said at the start,
[00:15:30.030]my goal was to talk about the causes and consequences of
[00:15:32.997]religious non affiliation or religious disaffiliation.
[00:15:36.420]I realized as I worked on this
[00:15:38.040]that this was a little overly ambitious.
[00:15:39.637]Summarizing 20 or more years of research
[00:15:42.900]into an hour is hard to do.
[00:15:45.180]And so I'm gonna briefly summarize the what I'm talking
[00:15:47.288]about as causes part of religious non-affiliation.
[00:15:50.877]In other words,
[00:15:52.050]the demographic differences between those who are, and are
[00:15:54.810]not religious among young adults in the United States.
[00:15:57.063]Before I do that, I wanna talk about the data.
[00:15:59.047]The data for the rest of this project come from the National
[00:16:02.466]Study of Youth and Religion.
[00:16:03.890]Like I said,
[00:16:04.958]I worked for the National Study of Youth and Religion for
[00:16:06.630]two years when I was a postdoc before I came to
[00:16:09.017]University of Nebraska.
[00:16:10.633]The National Study of Youth and Religion
[00:16:12.810]began in 2002 and 2003.
[00:16:14.749]It's the first longitudinal study of adolescent religion in
[00:16:19.466]the United States.
[00:16:20.400]It's the first survey to focus on adolescents and follow
[00:16:23.204]them over time and to be specifically
[00:16:27.017]focused on their religion.
[00:16:28.568]It began, like I said,
[00:16:30.900]in 2002 and 2003, with a national representative sample,
[00:16:34.268]3,370 adolescents.
[00:16:36.720]And we also surveyed one of each of their parents in order
[00:16:39.060]to learn a little more about their background,
[00:16:40.711]their family life and so on.
[00:16:42.493]We followed these young people over time.
[00:16:45.636]The final wave was 10 to 11 years later when they were
[00:16:48.160]23 to 28 years old.
[00:16:51.690]And so we could see changes in religion from adolescents to
[00:16:53.916]young adulthood.
[00:16:56.760]You could see that the National Study of Youth and Religion
[00:16:59.430]data has produced many books and reports about adolescent
[00:17:02.220]and young adult religion over the last 20 years.
[00:17:04.142]In fact, most of the really reliable
[00:17:07.414]research on changes in religion
[00:17:09.480]among youth in the United States comes from these data.
[00:17:12.947]And like I said,
[00:17:15.090]I was a postdoctoral researcher with the National Study of
[00:17:16.980]Youth and Religion.
[00:17:17.813]I largely helped them to do face-to-face interviews and to
[00:17:20.880]design a second wave of the survey.
[00:17:23.280]So let's start with the first and most basic question.
[00:17:26.820]How many adolescents and young adults are not religious?
[00:17:29.581]When we surveyed them the first time,
[00:17:32.100]when they were 13 to 17 years old,
[00:17:33.729]17% said they had no religion,
[00:17:36.840]far higher than the historical average.
[00:17:38.841]Historically, adolescents and children
[00:17:41.405]are less likely than the adults in
[00:17:43.838]the United States to report having no religion.
[00:17:46.288]We know that parents tend to be religious and
[00:17:48.408]they tend to raise their children as religious, when people
[00:17:50.397]are not religious, usually they leave after adolescence.
[00:17:54.263]So this is a very high proportion already reporting no
[00:17:56.683]religion in adolescences.
[00:17:59.040]We could think of these people as
[00:18:00.810]basically being raised with no religion.
[00:18:03.573]When we survey them 10 to 11 years later,
[00:18:07.346]35% said they had no religion.
[00:18:10.110]By the time they're young adults,
[00:18:11.280]more than a third of them have no religion.
[00:18:14.505]Tremendous change.
[00:18:16.105]This one third of young adults, more than one third,
[00:18:18.630]who have no religion, is composed of about one third
[00:18:20.788]who are consistently non-religious.
[00:18:23.777]In other words,
[00:18:24.762]they had no religion in adolescence, and they continue to
[00:18:27.780]have no religion in young adulthood.
[00:18:31.050]The other two thirds of young adults who have no religion,
[00:18:33.698]24% of all young adults, are those who disaffiliated.
[00:18:37.537]In other words, they had a religion in adolescence,
[00:18:40.325]and they left by young adulthood.
[00:18:42.718]Historically, this is the way
[00:18:44.670]almost everyone who was non-religious became non-religious.
[00:18:47.730]They left, but increasingly
[00:18:49.470]we're seeing people being raised with no religion.
[00:18:51.690]Indeed, one third of these
[00:18:52.860]young adults who have no religion,
[00:18:54.330]had no religion since adolescence,
[00:18:55.984]possibly ever in their lives.
[00:18:58.087]So we have an idea of what the number of young Americans,
[00:19:04.309]percentage is who have no religion,
[00:19:08.610]who are these young adults and adolescents
[00:19:11.280]who have no religion?
[00:19:12.540]Like I said, I'm gonna talk about the causes of non-religion
[00:19:15.300]demographically speaking.
[00:19:17.220]And I'm gonna summarize this research relatively briefly
[00:19:19.380]'cause I wanna focus on the second part of the question.
[00:19:21.836]The second question here, the consequences of non-religion.
[00:19:26.880]So which young adults are non-religious, demographically
[00:19:29.160]who's more likely to have no religion?
[00:19:31.590]Let's start by talking about gender.
[00:19:33.858]There's a large body of research on religion and gender.
[00:19:37.230]Women tend to be more religious than men,
[00:19:39.390]especially in Christian nations.
[00:19:41.175]Research points to various reasons for this.
[00:19:44.520]Women are more risk averse than men.
[00:19:46.238]Women are socialized to focus more on religion than men,
[00:19:49.384]women are are expected to be the caretakers
[00:19:51.882]disproportionately,
[00:19:53.040]which which leads them to focus more on religion, and so on.
[00:19:56.741]And indeed, this is what we see
[00:19:58.680]among these young adults and adolescents
[00:20:00.420]in adolescence,
[00:20:01.440]boys are considerably more likely than girls to already
[00:20:03.294]report having no religion.
[00:20:06.092]Among those who had a religion in adolescence,
[00:20:09.270]boys are much more likely to leave as well, to disaffiliate.
[00:20:12.467]So consequently, by the time they're 23 to 28 years old,
[00:20:16.350]by the time they're young adults,
[00:20:17.538]about 41% of young men have no religion compared to only 30%
[00:20:22.637]of young women.
[00:20:24.900]Big gender difference.
[00:20:27.570]Race and ethnicity plays a role as well.
[00:20:30.150]Again, there's a large body of research on how religion
[00:20:32.575]is related to race and ethnicity in the United States,
[00:20:35.514]in particular, we know that on average,
[00:20:37.350]African Americans tend to be more
[00:20:38.730]religious than other Americans.
[00:20:41.400]Researchers sometimes refer to the church as a quote,
[00:20:43.927]"Semi-involuntary institution" in the black community,
[00:20:47.571]because it plays such a prominent role in that community.
[00:20:50.220]Everyone has some sort of connection to it.
[00:20:52.080]It's semi-involuntary.
[00:20:53.679]And that's what we're seeing among these young adults.
[00:20:56.683]We don't really see it in adolescence.
[00:20:58.469]There's no racial differences in who reports having no
[00:21:01.560]religion in adolescences.
[00:21:02.850]However, in terms of who disaffiliates
[00:21:04.290]and then has no religion by young adulthood,
[00:21:06.268]we see big racial differences.
[00:21:08.350]By the time they're young adults,
[00:21:12.650]White, Latino, and other race
[00:21:14.939]young adults are more than twice as
[00:21:17.070]likely as young African American men and women
[00:21:20.640]to report having no religion.
[00:21:22.860]Large racial and ethnic differences.
[00:21:26.280]Region also plays a role.
[00:21:28.740]We often think of the Southeast
[00:21:29.989]as a relatively religious part of the country,
[00:21:33.690]or at least conservatively religious part of the country.
[00:21:35.790]We call it the Bible Belt, colloquially speaking.
[00:21:38.176]Historically, the west has always
[00:21:40.173]been the least religious part of our country.
[00:21:42.317]Even before the west was not actually on the Pacific
[00:21:45.952]coast, the frontier, wherever it was,
[00:21:47.940]as our country expanded was always the least religious part.
[00:21:53.280]And that's what we see with
[00:21:54.300]these young adults and adolescents.
[00:21:55.800]And adolescents, those in the south are less likely
[00:21:57.660]to be raised without a religion.
[00:21:59.280]And those in the west are more likely to be raised
[00:22:01.498]with no religion.
[00:22:03.390]And as they grow older into young adulthood,
[00:22:05.490]these differences grow, by the time they're young adults,
[00:22:07.900]those in the west are far more likely than those in the rest
[00:22:10.500]of the country to report no religion, and those in the south
[00:22:13.559]are at least moderately less likely than those
[00:22:15.720]in the rest of the country.
[00:22:18.600]The next area of research that we know influences religion
[00:22:23.040]is household structure.
[00:22:25.470]Whether a parent is married or not,
[00:22:26.694]whether they're co-habitating or not,
[00:22:28.310]or whether they're a single parent, influences
[00:22:30.360]their child's religion.
[00:22:31.740]We know from a large body of research,
[00:22:33.536]and we see this with these adolescents and young adults too.
[00:22:38.670]in adolescents,
[00:22:39.510]those who live in single parent households are far more
[00:22:41.700]likely to say they have no religion.
[00:22:44.010]And this difference only grows over time.
[00:22:46.282]In other words, growing up in a
[00:22:48.420]single parent household has a lasting impact.
[00:22:50.364]Even those who had a religion in adolescence are more
[00:22:52.898]likely to leave religion by the time they're young adults,
[00:22:56.520]if they grew up in a single parent household.
[00:22:58.710]So consequently, by the time they're young adults,
[00:23:00.333]those who grew up in a single parent households are far more
[00:23:02.422]likely to have no religion.
[00:23:04.463]Now the final area I wanna talk about is education.
[00:23:07.857]There's a popular notion in our society that education is
[00:23:12.030]what we call a faith killer, is detrimental to religion.
[00:23:16.410]Politicians, religious leaders,
[00:23:18.690]cultural leaders of all sorts,
[00:23:20.460]refer to the ways that higher education,
[00:23:23.730]particularly secular higher education,
[00:23:25.260]such as we're doing here at the university,
[00:23:26.825]leads to religious decline.
[00:23:30.330]From a large body of research,
[00:23:31.710]starting with my dissertation,
[00:23:32.820]which focused on the effects of education on religion,
[00:23:35.610]we know this isn't necessarily true.
[00:23:37.943]Highly educated people tend to be religious in some ways,
[00:23:40.950]but they tend to be more religious in other ways,
[00:23:42.750]particularly in terms of institutional forms of religion.
[00:23:45.420]Highly educated Americans are more likely to be a member of
[00:23:47.403]a church, mosque, synagogue or temple,
[00:23:49.347]than less educated Americans.
[00:23:51.360]They're more likely to attend religious services,
[00:23:53.760]they're more likely to volunteer for a religious cause.
[00:23:57.062]And indeed we see that plays out with these young adults.
[00:24:00.750]So firstly,
[00:24:01.583]the expectation that those who grew up in a home with a
[00:24:04.156]parent with a college education would be different,
[00:24:06.120]does not pan out.
[00:24:07.872]Whether parents have a college education or not
[00:24:10.260]plays no role in whether an adolescent reports having no
[00:24:12.628]religious affiliation.
[00:24:14.700]However, a young adult's education themselves does matter.
[00:24:18.923]Whether someone earns a bachelor's degree
[00:24:20.820]between adolescence and young adulthood
[00:24:22.470]affects whether they leave religion or not,
[00:24:24.630]but in the opposite direction as we normally talk about,
[00:24:28.504]young adults who earned a bachelor's degree are less likely
[00:24:32.307]to drop out of religion than young adults who did not earn a
[00:24:35.855]bachelor's degree.
[00:24:37.465]So to summarize, demographically, non-religious
[00:24:44.086]young adults tend to be male, white, Latino, or other race,
[00:24:50.640]not African American.
[00:24:52.740]Those without a college education,
[00:24:54.393]those who grew up in a single parent home, and those in the
[00:24:58.218]western part of this country.
[00:24:59.937]Why does that matter?
[00:25:01.496]It matters because as we're about to see, the non-religious
[00:25:05.146]differ from religious in important ways, and these
[00:25:07.528]demographic differences are part of that.
[00:25:09.754]And it's also important that as we discuss
[00:25:12.373]the issues around non-religion,
[00:25:14.640]we know who these non-religious young adults are.
[00:25:17.467]Now, for the remainder of the talk,
[00:25:19.650]I wanna focus on how non-religious young adults differ from
[00:25:22.290]religious young adults,
[00:25:23.580]what I refer to as the consequences of non-religion.
[00:25:26.022]I'm gonna address this in several ways.
[00:25:28.032]I'm gonna talk about things like
[00:25:29.711]marriage, children, and sex,
[00:25:33.296]health and wellbeing, friendships,
[00:25:35.360]morals, values, and politics.
[00:25:38.960]And throughout it all I'm gonna emphasize how non-religion
[00:25:42.551]young adults differ from religious young adults.
[00:25:45.081]And not just why this is important for them,
[00:25:47.580]but why it matters for our nation.
[00:25:50.610]So to begin with, health and wellbeing,
[00:25:54.510]there's a large body of research showing that religion is
[00:25:56.369]strongly related to health and wellbeing.
[00:25:58.869]I've done some of this work with Professor Christina Falci
[00:26:01.977]in the sociology department here at the
[00:26:03.630]University of Nebraska.
[00:26:04.533]When we look at the kinds of churches Nebraskans attend and
[00:26:07.530]how often they attend, and how this is related to different
[00:26:10.050]mental health outcomes.
[00:26:11.375]Other work I've done with Pew Research Center looks at how
[00:26:14.690]religion is related to happiness and health
[00:26:17.220]around the world.
[00:26:18.780]Broadly speaking, our research shows that
[00:26:20.640]religious people tend to be happier, tend to be healthier,
[00:26:23.640]they have better mental health outcomes,
[00:26:25.350]better physical health outcomes.
[00:26:26.935]They're less likely to participate in detrimental health
[00:26:31.140]behaviors, behaviors that are problematic
[00:26:32.670]for people's health.
[00:26:35.010]And we see the same thing among these young adults.
[00:26:40.172]So starting off with mental health,
[00:26:41.910]we ask them a series of questions,
[00:26:43.087]"Have you been bothered by
[00:26:44.190]these two things in the last week?"
[00:26:46.380]As you could see,
[00:26:47.550]non-religious young adults are more likely to say they felt
[00:26:49.650]down, depressed, hopeless.
[00:26:52.080]They considerably more likely to say
[00:26:54.098]they felt little interest or pleasure in doing things.
[00:26:56.592]They're moderately more likely,
[00:26:59.250]but significantly to say they felt bad about themselves or
[00:27:01.087]that they were a failure.
[00:27:02.986]And this applies to other measures of mental health as well.
[00:27:05.557]Looking at a broad measure of overall health.
[00:27:10.500]We also see that non-religious young Americans are less
[00:27:13.590]likely to say that their overall health
[00:27:15.840]is excellent or very good.
[00:27:18.060]They're more likely to say their overall health
[00:27:19.680]is poor or not very good.
[00:27:21.720]Now this might seem like a broad measure.
[00:27:23.340]What does this tell us?
[00:27:24.210]That my overall health is very good or excellent.
[00:27:26.910]You may see excellent differently than I see excellent.
[00:27:29.891]Nonetheless, our research shows
[00:27:32.433]that this measure is highly correlated
[00:27:34.689]with objective measures of health.
[00:27:36.761]People who say that they're overall health is very good or
[00:27:40.740]excellent, are less likely to have heart disease,
[00:27:45.001]high blood pressure, all kinds of objective health problems,
[00:27:51.900]diabetes, and so on.
[00:27:53.820]So this is actually a pretty good measure.
[00:27:55.214]And as you can see, non-religious young adults,
[00:27:58.650]relatively young people,
[00:27:59.483]23 to 28 years old, are already reporting considerably worse
[00:28:02.954]health than religious young adults.
[00:28:05.479]So why does this matter?
[00:28:07.706]Well, this of course matters to them.
[00:28:09.480]We all wanna be happy, we all wanna be healthy.
[00:28:11.467]I'm pushing the big Five Oh,
[00:28:13.890]I think about health a lot every day.
[00:28:15.322]We all want to feel good,
[00:28:17.768]but it's also important for our society.
[00:28:20.125]We've seen an increase in depression in the United States.
[00:28:24.409]In the years leading up to the Covid 19 pandemic,
[00:28:27.484]according to the US White House,
[00:28:29.254]the number of adolescents who experienced at least one major
[00:28:34.740]depressive symptom in the last year increased by 90%.
[00:28:37.585]The number of young adults who experienced
[00:28:40.099]a depressive symptom in the last year increased by 80%.
[00:28:45.000]That was before the pandemic.
[00:28:47.472]Our anecdotal evidence suggested these problems have become
[00:28:51.390]worse since the pandemic.
[00:28:53.220]At the same time,
[00:28:54.064]suicide rates among young adults and youth increased by 47%.
[00:29:00.238]We have what our federal government refers to as a mental
[00:29:03.120]health crisis in this country.
[00:29:05.220]We're less happy than we used to be.
[00:29:06.694]We're experiencing more depressive symptoms
[00:29:08.730]than we used to be.
[00:29:10.470]And these findings indicate that this is particularly a
[00:29:12.510]problem for non-religious young adults.
[00:29:15.591]So in other words,
[00:29:16.860]non-religious young adults
[00:29:17.820]may be contributing to this broader problem we're having.
[00:29:20.310]We see more non-religious people,
[00:29:22.140]more non-religious young adults in particular.
[00:29:24.300]And we're having increasing problems
[00:29:26.340]with depression, and non-religious
[00:29:28.020]young adults are particularly likely
[00:29:29.632]to have mental health problems.
[00:29:32.238]Now, to be clear, I'm not blaming
[00:29:33.599]non-religious young adults.
[00:29:35.370]In fact, the rest of the country has some of the blame.
[00:29:40.176]When you look at the mental health of non-religious
[00:29:42.435]Americans, we note that part of the reason
[00:29:44.889]they have worse mental
[00:29:46.350]health is because they're stigmatized.
[00:29:48.721]Because we as a nation tend to look down on them,
[00:29:51.632]we tend to see them as different, lesser than.
[00:29:55.098]There's a large body of research about how Americans look
[00:29:57.704]down on people they consider to be non-religious.
[00:30:00.864]I've done some of this research myself,
[00:30:03.810]looking at what we call political tolerance.
[00:30:06.574]Do you think various kinds of people should be able to have
[00:30:09.360]the same rights, political rights to other people?
[00:30:12.000]And our research shows that Americans are,
[00:30:13.600]many of them, likely to say that non-religious people don't
[00:30:17.481]deserve the same rights, serious problem.
[00:30:22.500]And as this research shows,
[00:30:23.864]this stigmatization of non-religious Americans has negative
[00:30:28.243]repercussions for their mental health.
[00:30:30.468]A good part of the reason why non-religious Americans,
[00:30:34.306]particularly non-religious young adults,
[00:30:36.150]I'm emphasizing here, have worse mental health
[00:30:38.670]is because we treat them differently.
[00:30:40.500]Because we portray them differently,
[00:30:41.760]because we talk about them differently.
[00:30:43.611]Now, it isn't just their physical health
[00:30:46.590]and their mental health, it's also their health behaviors.
[00:30:50.130]Alcohol, for example,
[00:30:51.150]which is particularly problematic for physical health
[00:30:52.980]and mental health.
[00:30:54.870]Non-religious young adults are more
[00:30:56.160]likely to consume alcohol.
[00:30:57.600]They're more likely to consume alcohol weekly.
[00:30:59.310]More than half of them say they drink alcohol every week,
[00:31:01.170]compared to 40% of religious young adults.
[00:31:03.780]I didn't put the binge drinking numbers up here,
[00:31:05.610]but they follow the same trend.
[00:31:07.830]Non-religious young adults are more likely,
[00:31:09.706]than religious young adults to binge drink,
[00:31:12.690]often defined as four or more drinks in a single sitting for
[00:31:15.090]a woman, five or more drinks in a single sitting for a man.
[00:31:18.783]It's not just alcohol,
[00:31:20.940]it's also other problematic health behaviors.
[00:31:23.760]Other drugs, illicit and legal,
[00:31:26.847]non-religious young adults are more likely to use
[00:31:29.100]prescription medications for non-medical uses.
[00:31:31.590]They're twice as likely as religious young adults to say
[00:31:33.750]they've used hard drugs, cocaine, crack, heroin, LSD,
[00:31:37.800]PCP and ecstasy.
[00:31:39.015]They're far more likely to say
[00:31:40.590]they've used marijuana or pot,
[00:31:42.117]and far more likely to have smoked cigarettes.
[00:31:47.400]This affects the wellbeing of these
[00:31:49.950]non-religious young adults.
[00:31:51.660]They're more likely to be unhealthy,
[00:31:53.340]at least partially because they do all of these things.
[00:31:56.100]But it also affects our society.
[00:31:57.878]Alcohol use is a problem in our country.
[00:32:01.380]Excessive alcohol use is responsible for
[00:32:02.970]more than 140 thousand deaths per year,
[00:32:06.577]in the years leading up to the pandemic,
[00:32:07.968]costing our country more than 250 billion per year.
[00:32:15.430]And our anecdotal evidence suggests that
[00:32:17.822]alcohol problems became worse during the pandemic,
[00:32:20.130]at least during the first year and a half of the pandemic.
[00:32:22.443]We also see that leading up to the pandemic, overdose deaths
[00:32:25.723]were increased in the United States for drugs.
[00:32:28.293]And again, anecdotal evidence
[00:32:32.340]suggested this has gotten worse during the pandemic.
[00:32:36.480]At the same time,
[00:32:37.350]we've seen life expectancy decrease
[00:32:38.877]in the United States.
[00:32:40.921]From 2019 to 2021, the average life expectancy
[00:32:44.692]declined from 79 years to 76 years.
[00:32:47.968]Now of course, COVID 19,
[00:32:49.363]the pandemic had something to do with this.
[00:32:51.565]But as researchers from Harvard conclude, to quote them,
[00:32:54.037]"That's the largest decrease over a
[00:32:55.530]two year span since the 1920s."
[00:32:57.639]COVID 19, drug overdoses and accidental injury,
[00:33:00.227]account for about two thirds of decline of life expectancy.
[00:33:05.220]In other words, it's not just COVID,
[00:33:07.380]it's also drugs and it's also alcohol.
[00:33:11.910]So what do we see so far?
[00:33:13.410]Non-religious young adults are not as healthy.
[00:33:15.990]They have worse mental health outcomes,
[00:33:17.402]worse physical health outcomes.
[00:33:18.994]They're also more likely to participate in unhealthy
[00:33:22.495]lifestyle behaviors, which is problematic,
[00:33:25.440]not only for them before our nation.
[00:33:28.796]The next area I wanna talk about is children,
[00:33:32.550]marriage, and sexual behaviors.
[00:33:35.580]There's a large body of research on this as well.
[00:33:37.740]We know that religious and non-religious Americans approach
[00:33:40.216]family formation, marriage, children, differently.
[00:33:44.183]Religious Americans tend to focus more
[00:33:46.114]on marriage and especially children.
[00:33:47.992]They're more likely to get married and they're more likely
[00:33:51.409]to have children.
[00:33:52.242]And when they have children,
[00:33:53.100]they have more children on average.
[00:33:55.290]We also know that religion is related to sexual behaviors.
[00:33:57.743]Religious people and particularly conservative religious
[00:34:00.600]people tend to view sex differently and sometimes behave
[00:34:03.547]differently sexually speaking.
[00:34:05.880]However, I do want to emphasize that the sexual behaviors of
[00:34:08.740]conservative religious Americans aren't necessarily as
[00:34:11.089]different from the rest of us as we might think.
[00:34:14.640]As the work of Kelsey Burke in the sociology
[00:34:17.160]department shows, in many ways conservative religious
[00:34:19.950]Americans have sexual behaviors that
[00:34:21.870]aren't that different from Americans.
[00:34:23.768]Nonetheless, we know that marriage,
[00:34:26.070]children, and sex are related to religion.
[00:34:28.849]And indeed we see this among these young adults,
[00:34:32.010]by the time they're 23 to 28 years old already,
[00:34:34.275]almost three in 10 religious young adults are married,
[00:34:38.550]compared to less than two in 10 non-religious young adults.
[00:34:41.282]A large difference in marital rates at this stage of
[00:34:45.630]life course already,
[00:34:46.560]which is likely to continue as they grow older.
[00:34:50.940]This is a concern not only for them,
[00:34:52.680]if marriage matters for their lives.
[00:34:54.660]For many people it's an important life goal.
[00:34:56.490]It's a stage of life they look forward to.
[00:34:58.440]It's perhaps the start of adulthood in some people's views.
[00:35:02.815]But it also reflects a broader trend in our society.
[00:35:07.830]Marriage rates have declined considerably,
[00:35:10.073]particularly from the 1950s and 1980s.
[00:35:13.800]We often saw this as the result of higher divorce rates,
[00:35:16.470]but that's not the case anymore.
[00:35:18.300]Divorces actually stabilized or declined after 1980s.
[00:35:21.240]Instead, we're now choosing to not get married.
[00:35:23.830]We're living in un-partnered relationships or
[00:35:25.230]cohabiting relationships.
[00:35:27.240]We're living by ourselves, or we're living with someone who
[00:35:29.627]we're not married to.
[00:35:32.910]And this has affected our society.
[00:35:34.375]This means we have more single parent households.
[00:35:36.918]This has led to some family instability more broadly.
[00:35:39.622]And so the higher rates of non-marital relationships among
[00:35:44.629]non-religious young adults may be a concern more broadly
[00:35:48.390]speaking, not just for them, but also for our country.
[00:35:52.876]We also see they differ in terms of their
[00:35:54.922]likelihood of having children.
[00:35:58.080]Already at this young age, of course,
[00:35:59.400]many of them will have children later on.
[00:36:01.434]They're only 23 to 28 years old right now.
[00:36:03.360]But already we see that 77% of non-religious
[00:36:06.810]young adults say they have
[00:36:08.070]no children compared to 67% of religious young adults.
[00:36:11.389]And when religious young adults have children,
[00:36:14.010]they have more children than non-religious
[00:36:15.330]young adults as well.
[00:36:16.882]Large differences in not only the prevalence of children,
[00:36:20.100]but the number of children.
[00:36:22.410]Why is this important?
[00:36:23.730]'Cause this also reflects a broader trend in our society.
[00:36:27.330]We've had a tremendous decline in birth rates in the
[00:36:29.190]United States.
[00:36:30.102]Holding migration steady,
[00:36:33.450]we are now well below replacement level as demographers
[00:36:36.270]refer to it as, in other words,
[00:36:37.290]we are not having nearly enough children
[00:36:39.900]to replace our population.
[00:36:41.338]This is a concern, our economy relies on
[00:36:44.422]the expansion of our population,
[00:36:47.880]our ability to compete in the international marketplace
[00:36:49.918]requires our population to at least maintain
[00:36:53.247]a certain level, if not to grow.
[00:36:56.430]And instead, we see that our population is declining.
[00:36:59.490]We're now well below replacement level.
[00:37:01.280]And as we have more and more non-religious people who are
[00:37:04.306]less likely to have children, this is a serious concern.
[00:37:07.601]We're heading towards the kind of situation
[00:37:10.080]we see in Japan, where they don't have anywhere
[00:37:11.866]near enough working age people for a retired person.
[00:37:14.515]And in fact, we're already seeing
[00:37:16.489]those issues here in the United States
[00:37:18.150]with not enough people to staff our jobs.
[00:37:22.440]Another area where they differ here is in sexual behaviors.
[00:37:25.651]So we've talked about marriage, we talked about children.
[00:37:28.080]Now I wanna talk about sex.
[00:37:31.320]At young adulthood, 23, 28 years old.
[00:37:33.600]We see already that there are large differences
[00:37:36.570]in sexual behaviors.
[00:37:39.330]Non-religious young adults on average have sexual
[00:37:41.032]intercourse for the first time at 17.0 years of age,
[00:37:44.910]compared to 17.5 for religious young adults.
[00:37:47.736]This may not seem like a big difference, half a year,
[00:37:51.750]but half a year is a huge difference
[00:37:54.180]at this stage of the life course.
[00:37:55.649]And it has important implications for risky sexual behaviors
[00:37:59.760]later in the life course.
[00:38:01.950]We also see that non-religious young adults have on average
[00:38:05.074]one and a half more sexual partners than religious young
[00:38:08.640]adults in their lifetime.
[00:38:11.042]Another problem.
[00:38:12.265]Why is this concern that non-religious young adults have sex
[00:38:15.480]at a younger age, have more sexual partners?
[00:38:17.874]It's a concern because these are risk factors.
[00:38:20.893]Our research clearly shows that people who have sex at a
[00:38:24.210]younger age, on average,
[00:38:25.680]are more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases,
[00:38:28.198]sexually transmitted infections,
[00:38:29.977]to experience unwanted pregnancy, and to have other negative
[00:38:33.840]outcomes associated with health.
[00:38:35.638]Those who have sex at earlier age are also more likely to
[00:38:39.060]have more partners.
[00:38:39.930]And both sex at early age and more partners are both
[00:38:42.298]positively associated with risk factors.
[00:38:46.290]The same risk factors, STDs, STIs, unwanted pregnancy,
[00:38:51.852]other negative outcomes associated with sexual behaviors.
[00:38:55.248]So this is a concern that non-religious
[00:38:58.950]young Americans have more sexual partners,
[00:39:00.690]have sex at a younger age.
[00:39:01.560]Of course, it doesn't mean that
[00:39:02.393]everyone who has sex at a younger age
[00:39:03.833]who has more sexual partners contracts an STD or
[00:39:06.720]experiences unwanted pregnancy,
[00:39:08.850]but it increases the risk and non-religious
[00:39:12.210]young Americans are at greater risk.
[00:39:14.963]So summarizing, so far,
[00:39:17.560]we've seen non-religious young Americans are less healthy.
[00:39:21.346]They're more likely to report worse mental health outcomes
[00:39:24.030]and to take part in risky health behaviors.
[00:39:26.370]They're less likely to be married,
[00:39:27.360]less likely to have children,
[00:39:28.770]have sex at a younger age, and have more sexual partners.
[00:39:32.321]We also see they differ in terms of their friendships.
[00:39:35.847]I've done some work on religion and adolescent friendships,
[00:39:40.620]in part particular with Professor Jacob Cheadle,
[00:39:42.300]former member of the sociology department here at UNL,
[00:39:45.000]who's now at University of Texas at Austin.
[00:39:47.315]In our work, we look at students in schools
[00:39:52.031]we use these data,
[00:39:53.610]that's where we survey everyone in the school.
[00:39:55.528]And so we know the religious leanings, religious interests,
[00:39:58.822]religious backgrounds of all the students in the school.
[00:40:01.588]And we follow them over time.
[00:40:03.930]And what we found is that adolescents,
[00:40:05.027]when they're choosing new friends in school,
[00:40:07.740]tend to choose students who are relatively
[00:40:09.406]religiously similar to them,
[00:40:11.970]at least compared to the average student in their school.
[00:40:14.660]Moreover, over time, they tend to become more religiously
[00:40:17.963]similar to their friends.
[00:40:20.125]Consequently, their social networks,
[00:40:22.692]their friendship networks become more religiously
[00:40:24.900]homogeneous over time.
[00:40:26.311]As time moves on, they're interacting with
[00:40:28.740]more and more people who tend to be
[00:40:30.180]like them religiously speaking.
[00:40:32.880]And this is what we see with the young adults
[00:40:34.127]in the National study of Youth of Religion,
[00:40:36.710]we asked them a series of questions about their
[00:40:39.630]five closest friends.
[00:40:40.722]We asked them about each of these closest friends,
[00:40:42.810]are they this way or are they that way?
[00:40:44.100]Are they this way or that way?
[00:40:45.060]So forth.
[00:40:46.522]For five different friends.
[00:40:49.534]43% of non-religious young adults
[00:40:51.900]report that none of their five
[00:40:54.360]closest friends are religious.
[00:40:57.180]The exact same percentage,
[00:40:58.860]43% of religious young adults report that three or more of
[00:41:03.145]their five closest friends are religious.
[00:41:05.610]They're interacting with very different social groups,
[00:41:08.885]and not interacting with each other.
[00:41:11.019]And this applies to other attributes of their social
[00:41:13.542]networks, of their friendship networks as well.
[00:41:16.980]Attributes that are associated with religion
[00:41:18.717]and non-religion that we've already talked about today.
[00:41:22.642]So for example,
[00:41:23.475]we talked about how non-religious young adults are more
[00:41:26.057]likely to drink alcohol, non-religious
[00:41:28.918]young adults also considerably more likely to report that at
[00:41:31.920]least some of their closest friends
[00:41:33.360]excessively drink alcohol.
[00:41:35.100]Most religious young adults tell us that none of their close
[00:41:36.901]friends drink alcohol.
[00:41:38.781]We also saw that non-religious young adults are considerably
[00:41:41.640]less likely be married.
[00:41:43.020]We saw the same thing with the friendship networks.
[00:41:46.872]The majority of non-religious young adults tell us none of
[00:41:50.526]their five closest friends are married.
[00:41:52.980]The majority of religious young adults tell us that at least
[00:41:55.599]some of their five closest friends are married.
[00:41:58.560]They're interacting with tremendously different people,
[00:42:01.778]and not interacting with each other.
[00:42:05.412]This reflects a broader trend we've seen in our society.
[00:42:08.820]Non-religious and religious young adults have very different
[00:42:10.920]friendship networks, but so do we more broadly
[00:42:12.312]in our country.
[00:42:14.501]We refer to this as homophily, sociologists.
[00:42:17.563]This literally means the love of sameness, work by
[00:42:20.895]Miller McPherson and Lynn Smith Loven and our colleagues
[00:42:25.260]over the last few decades have shown that over the last few
[00:42:28.680]decades, the United States,
[00:42:29.875]our social networks have become more homogeneous.
[00:42:32.670]In other words, we're less likely to interact,
[00:42:34.470]have friends with people who are different from us.
[00:42:37.950]We're the green people, we're the yellow people,
[00:42:39.940]we're the red people.
[00:42:41.850]And we don't interact across
[00:42:43.290]these social networks very much.
[00:42:45.238]This is important because our research shows that this kind
[00:42:48.186]of social isolation, only interacting
[00:42:51.030]with people who are like you, is problematic.
[00:42:53.190]It's bad for our society, and it's bad for individuals.
[00:42:56.910]Having connections across segmented or segregated social
[00:43:01.249]networks is beneficial.
[00:43:03.660]Researchers refer to this as weak ties or bridging ties,
[00:43:07.800]connections across tight-knit social groups.
[00:43:11.100]These kinds of connections are pivotal.
[00:43:13.710]They provide information, resources,
[00:43:15.533]access to knowledge people wouldn't otherwise have.
[00:43:18.556]And we're increasingly lacking this in our country.
[00:43:21.751]And the growth of non-religion appears to be contributing to
[00:43:24.390]it, as non-religious young adults interact primarily with
[00:43:26.907]other non-religious young adults, and religious young adults
[00:43:29.968]interact primarily with other religious young adults,
[00:43:32.847]who also share their other attributes with them.
[00:43:37.170]So to summarize,
[00:43:38.400]so far we've seen that non-religion is strongly related to
[00:43:41.160]health and wellbeing, marriage, children, sexual behaviors,
[00:43:44.049]and who someone interacts with, who their friends are.
[00:43:46.942]The next area I wanna talk about is values and morals.
[00:43:51.531]Over the last few years I've been doing research with an
[00:43:54.630]interdisciplinary team of psychologists and sociologists.
[00:43:57.223]We've been looking at how religion is related
[00:43:59.099]to morals and values.
[00:44:00.600]Values, what do people value in their lives?
[00:44:02.640]What do they think is important?
[00:44:04.170]Morals are a related, but not identical concept.
[00:44:07.176]It's more about what do you think is good or bad,
[00:44:08.370]right and wrong, in our society.
[00:44:10.485]Now, we've been doing research
[00:44:12.656]on how religious and non-religious
[00:44:14.619]Americans, youth and adults,
[00:44:17.085]differ in their morals and values,
[00:44:19.440]and especially how leaving religion influences people's
[00:44:21.805]morals and values.
[00:44:23.220]Indeed, we find that religious
[00:44:25.190]and non-religious Americans differ
[00:44:26.958]considerably in their morals and values.
[00:44:29.486]Now, I wanna be clear,
[00:44:30.480]I'm not arguing that one group is moral,
[00:44:32.670]and the other is not.
[00:44:33.720]It's that they base their morals on different attributes,
[00:44:36.870]on different things that they think are important, in
[00:44:39.180]defining what is right and what is wrong, what is good,
[00:44:41.876]what is bad, what we should value in our lives.
[00:44:45.960]And we see this with these young adults.
[00:44:47.435]So to start with the values, we ask them,
[00:44:49.692]do you strongly or moderately agree with these things?
[00:44:52.120]Non-religious young adults are far less likely to say,
[00:44:54.270]"I'm proud of my country's history.
[00:44:55.989]All children need to respect authority.
[00:44:58.493]People should not do disgusting things,
[00:45:00.840]even when no one's harmed.
[00:45:02.189]People should be loyal to family
[00:45:04.020]even when they've done wrong.
[00:45:05.482]And men and women have different roles in society."
[00:45:08.605]Now, to be clear, there are no differences in other values.
[00:45:12.000]We asked them when the government makes law,
[00:45:13.770]as a number one principle should be ensuring
[00:45:15.780]that everyone is treated fairly.
[00:45:18.086]No difference between a religious and non-religious.
[00:45:19.440]We ask them one of the worst things a person can do is
[00:45:23.190]hurt a defenseless animal.
[00:45:24.168]No difference between a religious and non-religious,
[00:45:26.970]but it's these things where they differ.
[00:45:28.486]Nationalism, respect for authority,
[00:45:32.898]disgust and purity play a key role, family and tradition,
[00:45:38.280]and especially tradition around gender roles and marriage.
[00:45:40.939]This is what the broader body of research and a lot of the
[00:45:43.680]research I've been doing with this
[00:45:44.640]interdisciplinary team shows.
[00:45:46.860]We see the same kinds of things with their morals.
[00:45:49.440]We ask them when deciding what is right and wrong,
[00:45:51.540]is the following at least somewhat important,
[00:45:53.726]nonreligious which young adults are far less likely to say,
[00:45:56.347]"Showing love of country,
[00:45:57.750]showing lack of respect for authority,
[00:45:59.730]violating standards of purity and decency,
[00:46:01.978]conforming to traditions of society, and did something
[00:46:04.369]disgusting," are important when deciding
[00:46:06.930]what's right and wrong.
[00:46:08.430]Again, it's a lot of these same things.
[00:46:09.766]Nationalism, authority, purity, decency,
[00:46:12.483]disgust, traditions and so on.
[00:46:17.520]I want to make clear there are other morals
[00:46:20.370]where they don't differ.
[00:46:21.690]We asked, when deciding what's right or wrong.
[00:46:23.875]Does it matter if someone suffered emotionally?
[00:46:27.900]The religious and non-religious are equally
[00:46:29.460]likely to say that matters.
[00:46:30.840]When someone treated people differently than others.
[00:46:32.458]The religious and non-religious
[00:46:34.770]are equally likely to say that.
[00:46:36.168]Whether someone acted unfairly.
[00:46:37.920]The religious and non-religious are equally likely
[00:46:39.334]to say that.
[00:46:40.890]But it's these issues where they differ.
[00:46:43.470]So broadly speaking,
[00:46:45.360]we see that the non-religious and the religious
[00:46:47.100]differ in their morals and values.
[00:46:48.930]This is of course, important to their lives.
[00:46:50.495]It's important that it affects what
[00:46:52.212]they think is important, what they value,
[00:46:54.687]what they see as right and wrong in our country.
[00:46:57.480]But it also reflects a broader trend
[00:46:58.893]we've seen in our country.
[00:47:00.362]Increasing culture wars.
[00:47:02.456]Culture wars are often seen as beginning around the issue of
[00:47:06.972]abortion, but growing to include other issues,
[00:47:10.185]transgender rights, LGBTQ rights, more broadly, gun rights,
[00:47:16.200]the role of religion in the public square in general.
[00:47:19.200]And this has become a particularly problematic issue.
[00:47:21.810]In the United States,
[00:47:22.648]we've seen a lot of conflict around these culture wars, as
[00:47:24.902]the figure here suggests,
[00:47:26.638]we are one of the culture war capitals of the the world.
[00:47:29.272]And religion is key to culture wars, not only religion,
[00:47:34.530]but the morals and values that differ between religious and
[00:47:36.924]non-religious people are core to our culture wars.
[00:47:41.747]So broadly speaking,
[00:47:44.160]we've seen that non-religion among young adults relate
[00:47:47.040]to health and wellbeing, marriage, children,
[00:47:49.770]sexual behaviors, friendship networks,
[00:47:52.371]interact with very different people, and morals and values.
[00:47:56.730]And of course, these things aren't unrelated to one another,
[00:47:59.580]as I'll talk about in just a few moments.
[00:48:01.522]The final area I wanna talk about is politics.
[00:48:04.047]One that's related to the culture wars we just talked about.
[00:48:07.224]We see a large body of research on how religion is
[00:48:10.180]related to people's politics.
[00:48:13.710]Religious people, different religious
[00:48:15.720]groups behave differently, politically speaking.
[00:48:17.640]They view political issues differently.
[00:48:20.730]Moreover, religious and non-religious
[00:48:22.410]differ politically speaking.
[00:48:24.060]As you can see from some of the research I've done on the
[00:48:26.010]politics of religious nones, as we call them,
[00:48:29.220]and specifically on the politics of
[00:48:31.500]non-religious young Americans,
[00:48:33.240]we know that non-religious Americans tend to be less
[00:48:35.931]participatory.
[00:48:38.324]They tend to lean specific ways in terms of
[00:48:40.920]their political orientations,
[00:48:42.104]and they also tend to emphasize specific issues.
[00:48:45.158]Most prominently, we see that there are differences
[00:48:48.750]when comes to the environment.
[00:48:49.950]As some of my work has shown,
[00:48:51.330]and as some of my colleagues in the Department of Sociology
[00:48:53.760]here at the University of Nebraska's work has shown,
[00:48:55.680]in their views of LGBTQ laws.
[00:48:58.604]So how does this play out
[00:49:00.147]among non-religious young Americans?
[00:49:04.170]Well, firstly, there are big differences in voting.
[00:49:06.833]Among eligible voters in these young adults,
[00:49:09.878]the non-religious are considerably less likely to vote.
[00:49:15.120]And it isn't just that they're less likely to vote,
[00:49:16.804]they're less likely to participate in
[00:49:18.540]electoral politics more broadly.
[00:49:20.191]They're less likely to contact a
[00:49:21.564]campaign official to work for a campaign and so on.
[00:49:28.950]Why is this important?
[00:49:29.880]It's important because we have low levels of
[00:49:33.810]political participation in the United States, as political
[00:49:36.060]scientists and political research more broadly
[00:49:37.770]has shown, democracies function best
[00:49:39.775]when more people participate.
[00:49:41.192]We can go back to the work of Alex De Tocqueville,
[00:49:43.530]who, the better part of 200 years ago, was impressed by the
[00:49:46.473]participatory level of the American population.
[00:49:51.583]That's what he marveled at,
[00:49:53.070]how we all were participating locally, at the state level,
[00:49:56.430]and nationally in politics.
[00:49:58.770]But in the second half of the 20th century, this changed.
[00:50:01.530]Political participation declined tremendously.
[00:50:04.414]At the end of the 20th century,
[00:50:05.850]we had one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any
[00:50:08.310]advanced industrialized nation.
[00:50:10.200]Now, things changed a little bit in the 21st century.
[00:50:12.120]We've seen uptick in voting rates,
[00:50:14.220]but we still lag behind our peer nations, and the fact that
[00:50:17.386]non-religious Americans are more likely to not vote,
[00:50:20.085]to not take part in politics,
[00:50:22.014]their growing portion of our population is concerning for
[00:50:25.568]the health of of our democracy.
[00:50:29.790]We also see they're differ in their political
[00:50:31.410]orientation and parties.
[00:50:33.420]As I already mentioned.
[00:50:35.220]This comes from a question we ask them,
[00:50:36.547]"Are you extremely liberal to extremely conservative,
[00:50:38.436]one to seven?"
[00:50:39.651]Now, not many Americans put themselves at the ends,
[00:50:43.529]and so you might look at this gap and say,
[00:50:45.427]"That's not that large."
[00:50:46.602]But in fact, it is very large.
[00:50:48.854]This is larger than the gap between most demographic groups,
[00:50:53.250]compare any two given racial or ethnic groups.
[00:50:57.240]They don't differ this much.
[00:50:58.590]Men and women don't differ this much.
[00:51:00.341]This is a big difference.
[00:51:02.550]We often hear about how evangelical protestants are
[00:51:04.536]more conservative than other Americans
[00:51:08.460]politically speaking,
[00:51:11.018]this difference between religious Americans and
[00:51:13.136]non-religious young adults is larger than that difference.
[00:51:16.020]The point of here is that religious young adults tend to be
[00:51:18.729]relatively conservative, and non-religious
[00:51:21.000]young adults are moderate to just slightly left of center,
[00:51:24.202]and this is reflected in their party affiliation as well.
[00:51:27.610]Religious young adults are more than three times more likely
[00:51:30.936]to affiliate with the Republican party than
[00:51:33.510]non-religious young adults.
[00:51:34.836]Instead, non-religious young adults
[00:51:36.870]are moderately more likely to be democratic,
[00:51:38.584]and considerably more likely to be independent or affiliated
[00:51:41.910]with another party such as the green or libertarian parties.
[00:51:46.950]This applies to their policy preferences as well.
[00:51:49.247]We ask them the top
[00:51:50.601]two most important challenges for our country.
[00:51:53.131]As you can see here,
[00:51:55.170]religious young adults tend to say healthcare reform,
[00:51:57.780]abortion, unemployment, illegal immigration,
[00:52:00.240]more often than non-religious young adults.
[00:52:02.347]These are the policies that are important to them.
[00:52:04.740]These are the challenges they see facing our nation.
[00:52:07.719]Conversely, non-religious
[00:52:10.180]young adults are more likely to say the environment,
[00:52:12.720]income equality, access to education.
[00:52:15.268]These are the issues that non-religious young adults see as
[00:52:18.570]most important, and particularly big difference we see,
[00:52:23.400]as I already mentioned,
[00:52:24.270]when it comes to same sex marriage, laws around LGBTQ
[00:52:27.196]Americans more broadly,
[00:52:29.093]the vast majority of non-religious American
[00:52:31.283]young adults say same sex marriage should be legal.
[00:52:34.860]While only about half of religious young adults say so.
[00:52:39.840]So the non-religious and religious differ politically.
[00:52:43.710]This reflects a broader trend in our society.
[00:52:46.417]We've seen growing political polarization.
[00:52:48.759]Increasingly over the last few decades,
[00:52:50.970]more Americans, Democrats,
[00:52:53.130]and Republicans see conflict between the parties.
[00:52:55.760]More concerning, increasingly more likely
[00:52:58.620]to see the people from the other
[00:52:59.640]party as close-minded, dishonest, immoral, lazy,
[00:53:02.808]and unintelligent.
[00:53:04.957]This is a real concern.
[00:53:07.170]We're seeing considerable political polarization and
[00:53:09.780]conflict in our country.
[00:53:13.440]Now, I didn't want to talk about political
[00:53:15.283]polarization and conflict.
[00:53:17.310]This is not what I wanted to get up here
[00:53:18.562]in my one chance to talk to the entire university body and
[00:53:21.960]talk about, I wanted to talk about more positive things.
[00:53:24.739]But unfortunately,
[00:53:25.770]two decades of research on youth and young adult religion
[00:53:28.838]has led me to this point.
[00:53:31.050]This is where their differences are leading, and it's
[00:53:34.560]reflected in the results we've talked about today.
[00:53:37.340]They have different morals and values contributing to these
[00:53:40.278]broader differences in politics, religion, and culture wars.
[00:53:45.292]They have different political perspectives
[00:53:47.334]contributing to this as well.
[00:53:50.489]Moreover, this is reinforced
[00:53:52.723]by the fact that they interact with different people.
[00:53:55.470]They're not talking to each other,
[00:53:56.571]they're not interacting with each other.
[00:53:58.373]They're, we as a nation, are living in echo chambers.
[00:54:02.970]These young adults are either interacting with liberal,
[00:54:06.902]non-religious people who are just like them,
[00:54:09.803]who are not married, drink sometimes, things like that,
[00:54:12.840]or religious, married, conservative.
[00:54:16.169]We're separating.
[00:54:17.643]This is a problem.
[00:54:20.064]So I began to talk with asking, are we a religious nation?
[00:54:24.497]And as I work through this talk over the last couple months,
[00:54:27.182]few months I should say,
[00:54:29.520]as I synthesized all the research,
[00:54:31.073]I realized that's the wrong question.
[00:54:33.900]That's not what I should have been asking.
[00:54:35.375]I should have been asking, how can we accommodate both
[00:54:38.282]religion and non-religion?
[00:54:40.107]That's what we need to do.
[00:54:41.392]It isn't about whether we're a religious nation,
[00:54:43.912]three and 10 and growing of us say we're not religious.
[00:54:50.070]That's the reality.
[00:54:50.957]So instead of asking are we a religious nation,
[00:54:53.490]I want to ask,
[00:54:54.870]what can we do to help address these issues?
[00:54:57.685]What can we help do to help accommodate religion
[00:55:00.720]and non-religion,
[00:55:01.786]to help non-religious young adults
[00:55:03.974]be productive members of our society?
[00:55:07.560]And so I want to end by talking about that.
[00:55:09.450]What can we do to accommodate non-religion?
[00:55:13.020]What can we do to change things?
[00:55:14.970]I'm gonna focus on two things.
[00:55:16.080]Firstly, we could destigmatize non-religion.
[00:55:18.277]Some of these problems we've talked about have to come from
[00:55:20.526]the fact that we treat non-religious people differently.
[00:55:24.060]We depict them differently in our popular culture.
[00:55:26.400]Many Americans think of them as lesser than not worthy.
[00:55:30.180]They shouldn't have the same rights and so on.
[00:55:33.090]We need to promote greater connections across social
[00:55:35.490]divides, across divided groups.
[00:55:37.861]There's a model for this.
[00:55:39.947]There's a camp called Seeds of Peace.
[00:55:43.775]I wanted to wear my Seeds of Peace t-shirt,
[00:55:45.960]but I didn't think it was appropriate for this venue.
[00:55:47.757]Seeds of Peace is an an organization that brings together
[00:55:52.396]Muslim and Jewish youth from Israel and Palestine to go to a
[00:55:56.910]summer camp in the United States every summer.
[00:55:59.160]They interact with each other,
[00:55:59.993]they get to know each other and hopefully
[00:56:01.230]see each other as humans.
[00:56:02.640]And as they mature, as they get older,
[00:56:04.188]the hope is that it will help alleviate
[00:56:07.800]some of the conflict there.
[00:56:09.270]We can do the same thing here.
[00:56:11.130]We can be intentional.
[00:56:12.430]We can create programs to have religious and non-religious
[00:56:15.840]young Americans interact with each other to promote these
[00:56:18.019]kinds of connections.
[00:56:20.117]The other suggestion I wanna make is to create institutions
[00:56:23.549]to help non-religious Americans.
[00:56:26.193]I've talked a lot about the research about how
[00:56:29.520]religion is beneficial.
[00:56:30.750]Religious people tend to be happier,
[00:56:31.713]they tend to be healthier.
[00:56:32.850]They're less likely to participate
[00:56:33.870]in risky sexual behaviors.
[00:56:35.258]All of these kinds of pro-social outcomes
[00:56:38.280]associated with religion.
[00:56:40.086]But most of these positive effects of religion
[00:56:44.131]come from the religious community.
[00:56:46.020]They're not so much due to the fact that people have
[00:56:47.793]religious beliefs, a theology,
[00:56:49.661]a connection with the divine,
[00:56:51.510]or a feeling of closeness to God.
[00:56:53.790]Those things can play a role,
[00:56:54.947]but the research clearly shows that most of the beneficial
[00:56:58.131]effects of religion come from the community,
[00:57:02.327]not just the church, mosque, synagogue, temple community.
[00:57:05.310]Yes, that community is important,
[00:57:06.510]but also the broader community around it.
[00:57:08.970]It provides social support.
[00:57:10.620]It provides people to talk to, people
[00:57:12.120]to help with, people that babysit.
[00:57:13.508]Did you just give birth, people bring you food,
[00:57:18.352]Are you down your luck?
[00:57:19.800]People donate money.
[00:57:20.633]People donate clothing.
[00:57:23.125]Do you need a job?
[00:57:25.117]"Hey, this guy heard about a job."
[00:57:27.270]Do you need access to someplace
[00:57:29.207]to learn how to do a new job?
[00:57:31.357]"This guy could tell you about that."
[00:57:33.360]Communities are important, connections are important,
[00:57:36.830]and the religious benefits that we talk about here today,
[00:57:40.201]largely come from the community,
[00:57:42.030]from the social support, from the connections people have,
[00:57:44.190]they confer health benefits.
[00:57:45.720]They create systems of family support.
[00:57:48.427]What can we do about this for non-religious Americans?
[00:57:51.690]Actually, here there's a model too.
[00:57:54.540]Secular congregations.
[00:57:56.760]This is relatively popular in Western Europe.
[00:57:58.650]It's really rare here in the United States.
[00:58:01.080]The biggest organization is called Sunday Assemblies.
[00:58:04.049]Now remember, non-religion began
[00:58:06.262]in Western Europe sooner than it did here
[00:58:08.150]in the United States, and it increased a lot more rapidly.
[00:58:11.343]And so to replace the loss of community,
[00:58:14.699]they've started to build what they call
[00:58:16.590]secular congregations.
[00:58:17.639]They operate a lot like churches.
[00:58:19.564]They don't focus on divine, on the other world, on God.
[00:58:23.154]But they do a lot of the same things.
[00:58:25.650]They meet in a big gathering on Sunday.
[00:58:27.930]They meet in smaller face-to-face gatherings
[00:58:29.790]throughout the week.
[00:58:30.960]They provide the same kind of community support,
[00:58:32.905]systems support that churches provide for their members.
[00:58:35.621]They have clothing drives, food drives,
[00:58:38.700]all these kinds of things.
[00:58:41.850]Most importantly, our research shows that it works.
[00:58:44.542]Sunday people, Western Europeans who are non-religious,
[00:58:48.428]who participate in Sunday assembly congregations have
[00:58:51.857]better outcomes than non-religious Western Europeans who
[00:58:55.735]don't participate in them.
[00:58:58.800]Moreover, it benefits their communities as well.
[00:59:01.582]And this research shows it's not beneficial
[00:59:04.520]in the same way being in a book club or a soccer club or a
[00:59:08.520]knitting group is, it's beneficial
[00:59:11.598]in a lot of the same ways belonging to a church is.
[00:59:15.420]And so that's where I want to end.
[00:59:16.680]I want to end on this positive note
[00:59:18.450]that we can do something.
[00:59:20.340]It's been a lot of doom and gloom here today.
[00:59:22.320]How non-religious young adults differ from religious young
[00:59:24.643]adults and the kinds of ways this is
[00:59:26.323]causing problems for our country.
[00:59:27.922]But there are things we can do about it.
[00:59:30.810]We can help create greater connections between the
[00:59:32.463]religious and non-religious.
[00:59:34.530]We can help build institutions that help replace what
[00:59:36.954]non-religious Americans lost by not participating in
[00:59:40.189]churches, mosques, synagogues and temples.
[00:59:44.640]I'll end it there.
[00:59:45.473]Thank you very much.
[00:59:46.306]It's been my pleasure and my honor to deliver
[00:59:48.300]the Nebraska lecture.
[00:59:49.688](thoughtful music)
[00:59:53.279](music fades)
[00:59:55.638]Well, Phil, congratulations
[00:59:57.210]on a wonderful Nebraska lecture on a very timely topic-
[01:00:00.274]Thank you. for us, and
[01:00:01.582]summarizing your work in this area.
[01:00:04.440]It's an honor to be selected to give a Nebraska lecture for
[01:00:06.862]the university.
[01:00:08.460]And congratulations on a wonderful lecture.
[01:00:11.070]Yeah, we'll wanna talk a little bit.
[01:00:12.227]We had some questions come in during the
[01:00:14.973]live stream of the lecture that will provoke
[01:00:19.140]some more thanking maybe.
[01:00:20.280]And so we're looking forward to that conversation.
[01:00:23.130]You know what,
[01:00:24.005]just start kind of really pretty generally here.
[01:00:28.359]You probably can't do this and say there is this cause, or
[01:00:32.179]there is this specific thing that you
[01:00:34.440]can draw a cause and effect to.
[01:00:36.780]But, you know, how would you respond to what's
[01:00:38.862]you think the cause is of growing non-religion?
[01:00:43.229]That's a great question and it's one of,
[01:00:44.800]there's obviously a large body of research on.
[01:00:47.098]Most of the research sees it as sort of
[01:00:50.880]a continual action and backlash kind of process.
[01:00:54.780]So in the seventies and eighties,
[01:00:56.756]and in the nineties,
[01:00:58.650]we saw the politicization of religion in a lot of ways,
[01:01:02.778]especially the politicization of evangelical Protestantism.
[01:01:05.010]And the research suggested a lot of people who were sort of
[01:01:08.819]identified with religion, predominantly Christianity,
[01:01:12.893]but were tangentially religious, you know,
[01:01:15.630]they didn't really attend very often,
[01:01:17.250]it wasn't that important in their life.
[01:01:18.510]It wasn't something that really they thought about a lot.
[01:01:21.350]A lot of those people are the ones who left,
[01:01:24.900]they were turned off by the politicization of religion,
[01:01:28.230]by the connection between religion and certain cultural
[01:01:30.839]issues in our society,
[01:01:31.990]where religion used to be more
[01:01:33.450]of a private aspect of our lives.
[01:01:36.466]And so the research suggests that that led to a growth of
[01:01:38.671]non-religion in the nineties and early two thousands.
[01:01:42.000]And that as well had an impact, that led to some of the
[01:01:45.642]backlash among conservative Christians who then didn't like
[01:01:48.964]the growth of non-religion.
[01:01:50.730]So we see this sort of back and forth process.
[01:01:54.270]So I guess I'm trying to find the word cyclicity, right?
[01:01:59.322]There might be some cyclicity
[01:02:01.050]to retreats from religious affiliation or retreats from
[01:02:05.871]practice of religious affiliation.
[01:02:07.980]If you go back over longer periods of history,
[01:02:10.170]as you pointed out, we've long been seen as a country,
[01:02:12.996]a religious country in the world,
[01:02:15.741]but there have been ebbs and flows
[01:02:18.270]in that historically too, right?
[01:02:19.770]As you point out.
[01:02:21.833]So is there likelihood or do you see any
[01:02:25.810]likelihood that there would be a ebb and flow
[01:02:28.980]of a return to more religion or more religious affiliation?
[01:02:33.660]No, that's a very interesting question.
[01:02:34.607]It's a very timely one.
[01:02:36.360]So I just, actually,
[01:02:37.380]I was just asked this morning to review a Pew Research
[01:02:40.320]Center report modeling the future of religion in
[01:02:42.379]the United States.
[01:02:44.197]And that's a tough question.
[01:02:46.126]So broadly, the research suggests that
[01:02:51.481]this growth in non-religion we're seeing
[01:02:53.790]is likely to level off.
[01:02:55.085]It won't probably still continue at the same rate it has
[01:02:57.823]happened at over the last two decades,
[01:03:00.383]as I've shown in this talk,
[01:03:02.280]tremendous increase over the nineties
[01:03:04.410]and early two thousands.
[01:03:05.479]So odds ar it will level off, will return?
[01:03:10.260]Really, there's no suggestion
[01:03:11.604]that we'll see return to religion,
[01:03:14.115]but we don't expect these continual increase in
[01:03:16.890]non-religion, particularly there's various reasons
[01:03:19.740]we could point to, well firstly, like I said,
[01:03:23.250]as a lot of the people who are not very religious in the
[01:03:25.830]first place, who left,
[01:03:26.850]and many of those people have already left,
[01:03:28.835]they're gone in terms of being religious.
[01:03:31.770]Moreover, religious people on average
[01:03:34.055]have more children, and most
[01:03:35.820]people who migrate to the United States are religious.
[01:03:37.440]So odds are it will level off in the near future.
[01:03:41.100]But will it return?
[01:03:41.933]That's...
[01:03:43.303]Yeah, it's a new level.
[01:03:45.000]Yes, odds are it won't return, honestly.
[01:03:47.550]Yeah, and there's a, I want to phrase this the right way.
[01:03:53.520]There's, you know, religious affiliation and practice
[01:03:57.543]through religious affiliation
[01:03:59.940]in a whole variety of ways, right?
[01:04:01.526]Depending upon that religious affiliation,
[01:04:04.289]and there's spirituality, right?
[01:04:07.071]So is there any work that talks about that, you know,
[01:04:13.110]the difference between those that would identify as
[01:04:15.641]religious or affiliated religiously versus spirituality?
[01:04:21.483]That make sense?
[01:04:23.100]Absolutely.
[01:04:23.933]And that's a great question.
[01:04:24.870]Honestly, that's one that's behind
[01:04:26.310]a lot of this research, is that this
[01:04:28.532]is about institutional religion.
[01:04:30.120]This is about people, identifying, like you said,
[01:04:33.000]as Christian or Muslim or Jewish,
[01:04:35.250]affiliating and attending as well the
[01:04:37.890]churches or mosques, synagogue and temples.
[01:04:40.440]However, just 'cause people leave organized religion,
[01:04:44.043]just cause people no longer identify as Christian, Muslim,
[01:04:46.800]Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh,
[01:04:48.780]so on, doesn't mean they're not religious.
[01:04:51.240]And that's why I think that's such an important question.
[01:04:53.633]So, you know, it's hard to put
[01:04:56.820]an exact number on all these kinds of things.
[01:04:58.620]But on average in most of our surveys,
[01:05:01.057]these people who say they have no religion,
[01:05:03.073]about half of them or so say they have beliefs we would
[01:05:05.890]certainly see as religious.
[01:05:07.530]So they may not believe in the God of the Bible as
[01:05:11.979]Christians and Jews see that, but
[01:05:16.509]many of them believe in a higher power, for example.
[01:05:19.818]Many of them pray.
[01:05:23.057]So I think that's a great question.
[01:05:23.970]And a lot of them see themselves as spiritual.
[01:05:25.650]Really in this talk,
[01:05:27.090]in this research I was looking at institutional religion.
[01:05:29.607]And it doesn't mean that beliefs are going away.
[01:05:32.281]Right.
[01:05:36.156]So this one gets to more of,
[01:05:38.760]I guess institutional belonging, if I use that term there.
[01:05:45.090]I think most work would show that
[01:05:47.610]there is a decrease in desire to
[01:05:50.580]be part of institutions or institutional belonging in all
[01:05:53.770]kinds of forms of that.
[01:05:56.878]How much is that tied up with this disaffiliation,
[01:06:03.240]if you want to think about it that way?
[01:06:04.320]Or decrease in religious affiliation?
[01:06:06.420]Right, no, no, it is.
[01:06:08.423]So what, you know, you were talking about there,
[01:06:12.000]the decline in broader participation in our society has been
[01:06:14.790]well established,
[01:06:16.331]probably the most prominent researcher in that field
[01:06:19.110]to be Brower Putnam with his, you know,
[01:06:20.910]work on bowling alone and how we, you know,
[01:06:23.070]we used to bowl in bowling leagues
[01:06:24.720]and now when we bowl, it's just me.
[01:06:26.896]And you know, he gave a talk here, what, 10,
[01:06:30.465]12 years ago, it was really a great talk.
[01:06:32.840]And indeed the broader decline of religious,
[01:06:35.760]of participation in our society and institutions is
[01:06:38.250]reflected in this broader decline in religion.
[01:06:40.230]But the decline in religion,
[01:06:41.760]I think is qualitatively different in a sense that it isn't
[01:06:45.172]just that people don't want to participate in these
[01:06:48.274]institutions anymore.
[01:06:49.530]There's something that's driving at least
[01:06:51.168]a large minority of Americans away from it.
[01:06:54.791]So while yes,
[01:06:56.815]I do think it's part of this broader trend of us no longer
[01:06:59.376]being as participatory as we used to be,
[01:07:02.011]I do think it's also moderately different.
[01:07:04.860]It's not exactly the same, if that makes sense.
[01:07:07.470]Yeah, I think there's other processes
[01:07:09.682]that have been driving it besides the broader decline
[01:07:12.030]of participation.
[01:07:12.863]Right and you talked on your lecture about,
[01:07:14.563]a lot around the, the youth, you know,
[01:07:19.170]I'll use that term broadly, right?
[01:07:20.460]Younger generations disaffiliation or becoming
[01:07:24.818]non-religious in practice.
[01:07:28.293]So is it only an issue in the young or is it demographically
[01:07:35.124]across generations?
[01:07:38.190]You know, that that was certainly
[01:07:39.570]something that prompted my interest as well.
[01:07:41.490]Right.
[01:07:42.450]It's disproportionately among younger people,
[01:07:44.514]we have seen non-religion grow
[01:07:46.860]among middle-aged and older people too.
[01:07:48.559]The portion of people, of Americans, I should say,
[01:07:50.850]who are in their forties, fifties, sixties and seventies,
[01:07:53.640]who have no religion is
[01:07:54.816]solidly higher than it was 30 years ago.
[01:07:57.706]But much of this trend has been, you know,
[01:08:00.669]basically the result of younger people leaving religion.
[01:08:05.579]And really when most people, even historically,
[01:08:07.414]even before the current generation
[01:08:09.900]or two I've been focusing on in this
[01:08:11.310]talk, historically, when people left religion,
[01:08:13.670]it was usually in the earlier stages of life.
[01:08:16.050]Most people don't leave in their forties,
[01:08:17.820]fifties and sixties.
[01:08:18.720]Not that it never happens,
[01:08:20.040]but when people leave, they usually leave in
[01:08:21.905]their late teens, twenties or early thirties.
[01:08:24.397]That's generally the time of disaffiliation.
[01:08:28.920]This might be kind of a crazy question,
[01:08:30.510]but it came in, for some question about what has the
[01:08:33.711]advent of the internet and the digital age, right.
[01:08:39.960]Has that had an impact on disaffiliation from religion or
[01:08:44.820]becoming less religious?
[01:08:46.680]That's a really interesting question.
[01:08:47.730]It's not one I really thought about coming into this talk.
[01:08:50.005]You know, certainly the internet
[01:08:52.609]has changed our culture in ways that
[01:08:54.540]are beyond my expertise to talk about,
[01:08:57.164]but in ways that might be relevant
[01:08:59.190]to a broader decline in religion.
[01:09:01.024]But I don't think that the fact that people have access to
[01:09:04.949]the internet or can watch,
[01:09:06.480]say religious sermons on the internet,
[01:09:07.890]all those kinds of things,
[01:09:09.060]have really led to decline in religion.
[01:09:10.380]In fact, it's been a strength in some ways
[01:09:12.510]about keeping people
[01:09:13.350]connected in ways they couldn't have been otherwise.
[01:09:15.478]So while the cultural changes associated with the internet,
[01:09:20.580]and particularly I think political polarization
[01:09:23.160]and broader conflict associated with the internet,
[01:09:25.410]might play a role in our declining religion.
[01:09:27.474]The mechanics of people having access to the internet,
[01:09:30.660]I don't think really does.
[01:09:31.843]And you know, as I talked about in the lecture,
[01:09:34.704]it began before really the advent of the internet,
[01:09:37.844]not literally, but at least before
[01:09:39.660]most of us had easy access to it.
[01:09:41.700]It started in the 1990s.
[01:09:42.831]When at least I didn't have access (chuckles)
[01:09:46.020]till at least mid, late 1990s.
[01:09:48.210]Yeah, and then there's this getting,
[01:09:51.719]your head wrapped around too, of belief, right.
[01:09:58.590]Religious belief or belief in a higher power.
[01:10:01.710]So agnosticism versus, you know,
[01:10:05.829]being religious versus agnosticism
[01:10:09.240]is saying that you are non-religious mean that you don't
[01:10:14.310]necessarily believe in a...
[01:10:15.990]you understand my question?
[01:10:17.190]Absolutely.
[01:10:18.240]And that's related to one of the other questions,
[01:10:19.500]and not at all.
[01:10:21.090]Saying I have no religion does not mean
[01:10:22.890]I am an atheist.
[01:10:24.451]And in fact, the majority of people
[01:10:26.910]who say they have no religion,
[01:10:27.930]do not identify as atheist.
[01:10:30.498]And when we ask 'em, "Do you believe in God,"
[01:10:32.137]or at least if we define it as including something like a
[01:10:33.960]higher power, many of them do.
[01:10:36.735]So it's not equating,
[01:10:42.660]we shouldn't equate having no religion to being an atheist
[01:10:44.286]or even being agnostic.
[01:10:45.720]So, you know, as I mentioned,
[01:10:48.479]we're looking at three and 10 or so of Americans now say
[01:10:51.000]they have no religion,
[01:10:51.988]only about 5% of us identify as atheists.
[01:10:55.590]So that's clearly a large number of non-religious Americans
[01:10:59.190]who don't see themselves as atheists.
[01:11:01.170]Right, right.
[01:11:02.003]And then there's also the, and you brought this up
[01:11:03.450]in your lecture in a couple of different places.
[01:11:06.620]There also is the fragmentation,
[01:11:09.928]if you want to think of it that way, of
[01:11:11.981]the differentiation within religious, you know,
[01:11:17.326]whether it's forms of religion or belief systems or
[01:11:22.002]denominations within, you know, that kind of thing as well.
[01:11:26.486]Where, there's differentiation even
[01:11:28.789]across the political spectrum, right?
[01:11:31.419]And so you talked about the evangelical
[01:11:33.514]right in Christianity versus, you know,
[01:11:35.607]there's even wide differences there that have evolved
[01:11:40.547]over time as well.
[01:11:42.450]Would you say that's the case also?
[01:11:44.790]Absolutely.
[01:11:45.623]So, you know, if we look at
[01:11:46.860]the average church, say 40, 50 years ago,
[01:11:49.350]there was gonna be a lot more diversity in people's
[01:11:51.300]political positions and social positions,
[01:11:53.460]and cultural perspectives.
[01:11:54.930]Today we see that most churches are relatively homogeneous
[01:11:58.290]much more so than they used to be.
[01:12:00.235]There was always some aspect of homogeneity and depends on
[01:12:02.348]what factors we're talking about.
[01:12:04.650]You know, as I mentioned,
[01:12:06.106]our churches have always been,
[01:12:07.744]or at least for a long time have been
[01:12:09.502]racially largely homogeneous,
[01:12:11.540]but they become more ideologically homogeneous over time.
[01:12:16.260]Absolutely.
[01:12:17.093]Right, yeah I guess that's the indirect,
[01:12:20.700]that's kind of what I was getting at, I think.
[01:12:22.740]Yes, no they they absolutely have.
[01:12:24.232]And you know, but part of it is
[01:12:25.591]because many people who are ideologically different
[01:12:29.220]left the church.
[01:12:30.390]And so when you have a, you know,
[01:12:31.651]subtraction of the people who are different,
[01:12:34.160]then it makes the people who are
[01:12:35.880]still there more homogeneous.
[01:12:38.336]Right.
[01:12:39.462]So there's a couple of, these are more, I guess,
[01:12:42.604]practical questions that have come
[01:12:46.689]in that we will explore too.
[01:12:48.900]So within the realm of pastors, right?
[01:12:52.800]So this question is,
[01:12:54.150]what role do you see for pastors in this post-modern divide?
[01:12:58.830]And what does that mean?
[01:12:59.760]I guess I'll admit I have a
[01:13:01.710]personal interest in this because I have
[01:13:02.970]a child who is a pastor.
[01:13:04.833](Phil laughs)
[01:13:05.940]You know, so any comments there?
[01:13:08.683]Absolutely.
[01:13:09.720]So I mean, religious leaders have
[01:13:11.580]a large role here and
[01:13:12.413]it's a hard time to be religious leader, honestly.
[01:13:14.772]In fact, as we're really expanding
[01:13:17.610]our research on religious leaders as
[01:13:19.050]we're seeing that they have things like mental health
[01:13:21.150]problems due to a lot of our conflict we're seeing today,
[01:13:24.060]that a lot of the, you know,
[01:13:25.890]conflicts they see in their churches
[01:13:27.060]even are wearing on them.
[01:13:28.682]But absolutely religious leaders have a role here in helping
[01:13:30.912]to bridge some of these divides.
[01:13:33.138]And a lot of them are doing their best.
[01:13:36.372]But, you know, it's a tightrope,
[01:13:38.091]it's a hard line to walk where they have to make sure that
[01:13:41.194]they don't ostracize the people who are in a church, while
[01:13:44.370]they try to attract people who have left
[01:13:46.470]or have never been there.
[01:13:48.180]And this one is one that came in online that maybe is
[01:13:54.180]looking for a cause and effect.
[01:13:55.530]So just curious about your thoughts here.
[01:13:58.110]Do you think that there could be any connection between
[01:14:01.290]families who have kids in club sports,
[01:14:03.660]which have activities on weekends?
[01:14:05.340]So thinking about traditional
[01:14:06.692]religious practice in many respects,
[01:14:09.720]and thus don't attend church, to the kids then feeling
[01:14:12.293]disconnected from religion.
[01:14:14.340]That's kind of a down in the weeds
[01:14:16.080]practical kind of question.
[01:14:17.310]But curious of your thoughts there?
[01:14:18.984]Actually, I think it's a great question
[01:14:20.390]and actually there's a lot of research
[01:14:21.780]on time commitments going to church.
[01:14:23.190]There has been, for a long time,
[01:14:24.390]even before we saw this tremendous growth in the number of
[01:14:27.900]Americans who claim have no religion.
[01:14:29.910]This was often a concern,
[01:14:32.130]that people's other obligations activities would
[01:14:34.799]detract them, would conflict with their time,
[01:14:41.190]with their ability to go to church,
[01:14:42.210]especially people with children who have more commitments.
[01:14:44.838]And our research does suggest that that does cause a
[01:14:48.197]conflict that other time commitments do lead people to
[01:14:51.891]sometimes not attend.
[01:14:54.031]I haven't really seen anyone definitively show that these
[01:14:58.193]kinds of time commits lead people to leave religion.
[01:15:02.641]But the way the question was framed is really interesting,
[01:15:05.490]and I haven't really thought about that that way,
[01:15:06.840]is that as a lot of more parents have less time to go to
[01:15:09.648]church, their children are attending less.
[01:15:13.200]And maybe that sort of has a, you know, cumulative
[01:15:16.470]effect on them.
[01:15:17.303]And so I think I want to thank that
[01:15:19.000]questioner and I'm gonna look into that. (chuckles)
[01:15:21.600]Yeah, I mean it's kind of a logical,
[01:15:25.590]like I used the word practice, in practice question.
[01:15:28.508]That as society changes and societal norms change,
[01:15:32.790]because I can remember growing up in the 1970s
[01:15:35.219]in the rural south where, where it was taboo, right.
[01:15:42.240]Societally, it was taboo to have activities on Sundays.
[01:15:45.727]Right, include blue laws and the whole
[01:15:48.090]thing about, you know,
[01:15:48.923]whether you could even operate businesses on Sundays.
[01:15:51.468]And so that has changed tremendously, you know,
[01:15:55.650]in terms of social practice, right?
[01:15:58.919]And so it is kind of an interesting question,
[01:16:00.690]I think, too.
[01:16:01.523]No, Absolutely.
[01:16:02.837]The role of religion and our society is,
[01:16:05.130]I mean, even my time living here in Nebraska,
[01:16:07.590]I've lived here for less than two decades,
[01:16:08.850]and our laws around what we could do on Sunday have changed.
[01:16:10.800]Right, that's absolutely correct.
[01:16:15.900]Let's see, we have time for one more question,
[01:16:18.360]I think, Phil.
[01:16:19.210]Do you, there's a lot of discussion and you had
[01:16:25.248]in part of your lecture, you know,
[01:16:27.480]talk about the political polarization that is out there and
[01:16:30.750]how some of that may be around, you know,
[01:16:33.632]tendencies of religious affiliation or not.
[01:16:38.340]There certainly are
[01:16:39.348]camps of belief that religion plays no part in politics.
[01:16:42.915]Or that we operate in a freedom of church and state
[01:16:47.391]kind of culture and government environment.
[01:16:52.664]But you have any thoughts there around whether,
[01:16:56.977]you know, religion should be
[01:16:58.770]entering the political sphere or not?
[01:17:01.288]Well, I mean that's a controversial question.
[01:17:04.632](both laugh)
[01:17:06.629]And indeed I think think that genie's outta the bottle,
[01:17:11.395]if you wanna put it that way,
[01:17:12.960]that religion has entered the political sphere.
[01:17:17.100]There's no real taking that back as far as I would see it,
[01:17:21.289]sort of along the lines of where I ended my
[01:17:23.310]talk saying, you know, the best question I don't think was,
[01:17:26.370]are we a religious nation,
[01:17:27.390]it's how can we accommodate both religion and non-religion,
[01:17:29.520]because that's, that's the fact of our life.
[01:17:31.050]And I do think that religion playing a role in politics is
[01:17:34.980]at least for the foreseeable future, fact of our life.
[01:17:37.515]And so we have to find a way to alleviate
[01:17:39.906]the conflicts around that.
[01:17:42.630]And, you know, I tried to end on a positive note,
[01:17:44.670]talk about some of the ways we can help do that, but
[01:17:46.737]that's my real concern.
[01:17:48.923]Is that we're seeing a lot of conflict over these issues and
[01:17:51.177]we have to find ways to, you know,
[01:17:53.120]as a country see each other as
[01:17:55.385]Americans and as valued members of our society.
[01:17:59.190]Right.
[01:18:00.300]Well thank you again Dr. Schwadel
[01:18:02.100]for a great Nebraska lecture,
[01:18:03.960]and again on a very timely topic.
[01:18:06.282]And thanks for all of your work
[01:18:09.690]in this area and great work in this area,
[01:18:11.667]and for what you do at the University of Nebraska as well.
[01:18:14.370]Well, thank you for having me and it's been
[01:18:15.960]my honor to do this.
[01:18:17.293](thoughtful music)
[01:18:21.461](music fades)

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Nebraska Lecture with Philip Schwadel

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