The number of religious ‘nones’ has soared, but not the number of atheists – and as social scientists, we wanted to know why

Fewer people are affiliated with religion in the United States, but that hardly means that they’re all atheists. Anthony Bradshaw/Photographer’s Choice RF via Getty Images by Christopher P. Scheitle, West Virginia University and Katie Corcoran, West Virginia University The number of individuals in the United States who do not identify as being part of any religion has grown dramatically in recent years, and “the nones” are now larger than any single religious group. According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated people represented only about 5% of the U.S. population in the 1970s. This percentage began to increase in the 1990s and is around 30% today. At first glance, some might assume this means nearly 1 in 3 Americans are atheists, but that’s far from true. Indeed, only about 4% of U.S. adults identify as an atheist. As sociologists who study religion in the U.S., we wanted to find out more about the gap between these percentages and why some individuals identify as an atheist while other unaffiliated individuals do not. Many shades of ‘none’ The religiously unaffiliated are a diverse group. Some still attend services, say that they are at least somewhat religious, and express some level of belief...