… To live in a country as pluralistic as the United States is inevitably to be influenced by a grab bag of beliefs. “Thou shalt reconsider assumptions you held as a child and remain open to new ideas” might as well be the first commandment of our national faith.
Yet according to a major study on “America’s Changing Religious Landscape” released last week by the Pew Research Center, my eclectic spiritual formation has also made me an unwitting member of the “nones.” In this and other recent surveys, we who check no single box when it comes to religion are considered part of an “unaffiliated” population whose resistance to such classification has become a tidy category all its own. CONT.
Peter Manseau, New York Times