Commentary
Have Americans truly turned away from religion? Or have they merely found a new faith?
A 2016 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 25 percent of all Americans described their religion as “none.” That description was particularly prominent among elite urban, affluent, credentialed, professional, and young Americans. Do those respondents really not belong to a religion? Or are they kidding themselves?
After all, they ask the same questions that people have asked for millennia: Where was I before I was born? What makes me me? Where will I go when I die? Why is the world imperfect? Why do bad people seem to win so often? The only thing that makes them special is that they think their answers constitute something other than a religion.
