Seculars means what? No religious identification?
I think calculating religiosity is very tricky. Religious identification or even participation in religious activities doesn't necessarily correlate with even moderately serious religious belief. How do you treat Unitarians or Quakers? Atheistic Jews like me?
Or what about the woman I knew from the antinuclear movement in the 1980s (a direct descendant of Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin Stanton), a seminary student with career plans for a mainstream Christian ministry, with whom I had a lot of opportunity to discuss things while in jail for civil disobedience. She didn't believe in supernatural beings, though the Resurrection was superstitious and the Virgin Birth absurd, and rejected as ludicrous idea that someone could die to redeem the sins of others. She thought God was what was "highest in each of us." I told her I thought she was an atheist. She said she thought I was a theist.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> By the way, let's not forget that the proportion of
> seculars in the
> U.S. pop has doubled over the last decade, from a
> rather slight 7% to
> a not risible 14%, according to the National Survey
> of Religious
> Identification.
>
> Doug
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