“Nones—Americans who profess no religious affiliation—now make up 15 percent of the population. Given their rapid growth, their numbers might soon surpass the nation’s largest denominations. But get this: Twenty-four percent [of Nones] say they believe in ‘a higher power but no personal God,’ the belief system that used to be described as Deism. They don’t believe in Scripture, or cotton to organized religion. But in the privacy of their home, they think that the distant, aloof God occasionally checks in to listen to their prayers.”
Beliefnet founder Steven Waldman, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
How will Wall Street react to the Trump-Powell showdown?Today's Big Question 'Market turmoil' seems likely
-
Google ruled a monopoly over ad tech dominanceSpeed Read Attorney General Pam Bondi hailed the ruling as a 'landmark victory in the ongoing fight to stop Google from monopolizing the digital public square'
-
El Salvador's CECOT prison becomes Washington's go-to destinationIN THE SPOTLIGHT Republicans and Democrats alike are clamoring for access to the Trump administration's extrajudicial deportation camp — for very different reasons
-
Viewpoint: Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winterfeature From The New York Times: “Nearly half of all people now live in countries where women, on average, give birth to fewer than 2.1 babies...
-
Snowden’s silence on Putin
feature If Edward Snowden truly is a moral paragon, then he should announce that he can no longer stomach Vladimir Putin’s oppressive behavior.
-
The irrelevance of the United Nations
feature Once again, the United Nations has been “rendered impotent by a small group of thugs.”
-
Millions of closeted gay men
feature “What percent of American men are gay?”
-
The smug confidence of libertarians
feature Why are most libertarians white dudes?
-
Seeing racism for what it is
feature Riley Cooper’s case shows just how poorly he and most other Americans understand “what a racist is.”
-
Searching for a libertarian paradise
feature Not one of the world’s 193 sovereign states—not even a tiny one—has adopted a full-on libertarian system.
-
Viewpoint: Juliette Kayyem
feature From The Boston Globe: “It is now clear that the Tsarnaev brothers had no strategic plan but to kill in a very public fashion....