Thursday, December 29, 2022

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant, Book 46 of 2022

 


I read this book after listening to an interview with the author.  He is writing about the rise of the "Nones" in America:  the people who check None when asked about their religious affiliation.  After listening to the podcast, I disagreed with him about the cause of the rise of the Nones.  

Now I think he is right.  

Bullivant says the rise of the Nones was caused by the end of the Cold War. I thought it was caused much earlier and only became evident at the end of the Cold War.  

Bullivant and a team of researchers interviewed people across America about their religious affiliation or not.  When they talked about when and why they believed, and when they changed their mind, Bullivant's thesis made more and more sense.  

The national survey data certainly  support the end of the Cold War as the point that the rise of the Nones began. From the 1960s through the 90s a steady six to nine percent of Americans identified as Nones. In the 1950s it dipped down to two percent. Any survey data before that was at five percent or below.  

Since the late 90s, identification as None has risen to twenty percent in the most conservative polls, near thirty percent since the beginning of the pandemic in some estimates.  That is a big change.

The trend in America from a culture of belonging to individualism has been documented in many places--think of Bowling Alone. Bullivant shows that America standing against the world of Godless Communism after World War II had a real effect on religious identification. 

Bullivant carefully shows that the demise of religious affiliation varies greatly among different churches. Mainline protestant churches have lost the most members by every measure, but Catholic churches have also declined rapidly in some areas in this century. Evangelicals seemed immune for a while but are also losing members in recent decades.  Even Mormons are becoming Nones at a rising rate.

The stories of individual Nones and Believers illustrate the trends Bullivant points to. It's a well written entertaining look at a major cultural shift in America. 

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America by Stephen Bullivant


First 45 Books of 2022:

Poems in English by Samuel Beckett

Epigenetics: A Graphic Guide by Cath Ennis and Oliver Pugh

Life's Edge by Carl Zimmer

The Genius of Judaism by Bernard-Henri Levy

C.S.Lewis: A Very Short Introduction by James Como

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding drama by C.S. Lewis

Le veritable histoire des petits cochons by Erik Belgard

The Iliad or the Poem of Force by Simone Weil

Game of Thrones, Book 5 by George R.R. Martin

Irony and Sarcasm by Roger Kreutz

Essential Elements by Matt Tweed

Les horloges marines de M. Berthoud 

The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough


The Life of the Mind
 by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

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