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When researchers study people’s relationship with religion and faith, they cast a wide net of questions that get at both inner beliefs and outward practices.
Some questions focus on attitudes and identity: Do people see religion or spirituality as important? Do they identify as Christian? Do they believe animals have spirits — or do they believe in God? Other questions explore lived practices: How often do they pray, attend church, meditate, light candles or read scripture?
Together, these answers sketch the contours of how individuals, and entire nations, experience religion and spirituality.
Pew Research Center asked some of these questions in a recent study about the religiously unaffiliated, or “nones,” held across 22 countries. The findings show that many people who don’t identify as religious still hold different beliefs or engage in spiritual practices, but the strength of those ties varies widely.
In Brazil, for example, 92% of the unaffiliated say they believe in God, compared to just 10% in Sweden. Similar divides are seen between Latin America and South Africa on one end of the spectrum and much of Europe and Australia on the other.
It’s because some countries are in a different secularization stage than others, researchers note.
Religion decline happens in three stages, according to a paper in Nature Communications academic journal highlighted by the Pew Research Center. Researchers call this trajectory: Participation-Importance-Belonging.
First, religious practices like service attendance decline, often among younger generations. In Senegal, for instance, 78% of older adults still attend services, but participation among younger people is 14 percentage points lower. Other countries in this first stage include Guatemala, India, Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa.
In the second stage, people are questioning religion’s personal importance and weakening their sense of belonging. The United States fits this pattern today: younger adults attend services less often and are 45% less likely than older generations to claim a religious affiliation, although a recent report from Barna Group challenged this pattern with its finding that Gen Z and millennials now go to church more often than older adults. Mexico, Brazil, Thailand, Greece, Italy and Canada are also in this middle secularization stage.
The final stage marks the shedding of religious identity altogether for the younger generations. Many European countries fall here: In Denmark, 79% of the overall population is religiously affiliated, but only 53% of adults under 40 say the same. Researchers also place France, Sweden, Estonia, Australia and China in this group.
These religious transitions show that secularization isn’t a single story of religious decline. It also reveals the many ways faith lingers through belief, identity and practice. Tracing these patterns may help us understand how faith still influences broader values, culture and politics — even as religious affiliation fades.
For leaders of congregations, understanding how secularization works may point to a central challenge in halting it — how to create religious communities where more young people feel that they belong.
Fresh off the press
- On Sunday, the Vatican named Carlo Acutis, a 15-year-old computer whiz and devout believer, the first millennial saint. I asked Brett Robinson from the University of Notre Dame about the significance of this event. ”He’s very relatable and for a lot of young people today — given that he’s grown up in the same era of internet and video games, he played sports,” Robinson said. ”Sainthood and holiness — these aren’t just reserved for some austere select few. It’s actually all of us that are called to this.”
- What do the ‘nones’ actually believe? New report reveals spiritual diversity among religiously unaffiliated around the world
- A ‘generational reversal’ is underway: Gen Z and millennials are now the most church-going groups, a study from the Barna Group found.
Person of the week: Pier Giorgio Frassati
Alongside Carlo Acutis, Pope Leo also canonized Pier Giorgio Frassati, a Catholic Italian layman who lived a century earlier and died in 1925, at age 24, from polio while serving the sick.
Born in Turin, Italy, and raised in a family of agnostics, Frassati became an active member of Catholic Action, a lay Catholic organization, and is widely regarded as the patron of young Catholics, social activists and those devoted to charity and justice. His legacy is celebrated in numerous pilgrimage sites across Turin, including the Church of the Holy Trinity and his family home.
Frassati was known for his unwavering commitment to the poor and marginalized. Once, when a mother knocked on his door with her child, he took off his shoes and gave them to her. He often visited the sick, volunteered at hospitals and supported organizations that helped working-class families.
Frassati stood against the rise of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and was jailed in Rome after joining the protest of the Catholic Workers’ Association, according to EWTN.
Much of his personal wealth was quietly given away to help those in need.
Frassati also loved the outdoors. He was an avid mountain climber, skier and cyclist, often combining his adventures with prayer and acts of service.
What I’m reading— and listening to:
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett just released a new book titled “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.” And after years of media silence, she has given at least two major interviews – with CBS News and the Free Press.
I wrote a profile of Justice Barrett last year for Deseret Magazine, for which she declined an interview, and after talking to people who know her well and trying to understand what she believes, it’s fascinating to hear her thoughts on the role of the highest court today, the influence of President Donald Trump, and whether we’re in a constitutional crisis. — Extended Interview with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, CBS News.
President Russell M. Nelson, the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, penned a short, yet inspiring piece in Time magazine urging respect for human dignity and peaceful dialogue, despite disagreements.
These may have been my favorite few lines in the piece: “Life can be terrifying, and I have watched many — especially young people —struggle with anxiety about whether they belong or have value. But a heart that knows it is loved and remains focused on its purpose beats with steadiness, confidence and hope no matter what is happening — or not happening — in life.” – Russell M. Nelson: We All Deserve Dignity and Respect, Time
Religious studies programs are on the chopping block for some universities, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, partly as a shift toward a more career-centered education. Among casualties mentioned in the article are the religious studies faculty at the University of Oregon and Virginia Tech. Others are worried. “The challenge of religious studies, to me, is how to study material that still strikes faculty as interesting, but to do it in a way that students understand the wide application of what they learn,” said Russell T. McCutcheon, professor at University of Alabama. “It’s not difficult to find scholars who still talk about the life of the mind and about how we are the last bastion of it.” — Why Religious Studies Is in Trouble, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Odds and ends
There is a new book out that I’m excited about — “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination” by Mark Vernon, who is a British philosopher and psychotherapist. William Blake, a deeply spiritual poet, artist and mystic, may have some timely wisdom for us on how to keep our imagination alive when tech seems to be slowly chipping away at our ability to feel and think.