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Becoming a Religious None: Irreligious Socialization and Disaffiliation
Author(s) -
Thiessen Joel,
WilkinsLaflamme Sarah
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12319
Subject(s) - socialization , sociology , phenomenon , population , qualitative analysis , social psychology , qualitative research , psychology , social science , demography , epistemology , philosophy
The rise in the numbers of religious “nones” is an almost universal phenomenon across the Western world. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which religious nones are socialized to adopt a “no religion” position as children, as compared with disaffiliating during their teen or adult years. Related, among those religious nones who come from a religious background, we examine the timing and depth of a person's disaffiliation. This study sheds light on these issues by combining a quantitative analysis of religious nones samples in Alberta, Canada, America, and other international contexts with a qualitative analysis of 30 semistructured interviews with religious nones. Building on a stage of decline framework, we argue that while disaffiliation has been a lead catalyst for the growth among the religious none population—and we offer several observations of what fuels disaffiliation—moving forward we can and should expect irreligious socialization to gradually take the lead in explaining rising religious none figures.