Gen Z women leading exodus from churches

We keep learning more about the declining number of people in pews. This months news, which cant be good for churches, is that younger women now seem to be leading the exodus.

The Survey Center of American Life reports that, after two decades of finding that men led the way out of pews, younger women now lead the way to the exits.

Gen Z is flipping the script. The center found that with the Baby Boom generation, born 1946-1964, 57% of people who disaffiliated were men, while only 43% were women. However, 54% of Gen Z adults, born 1997-2012, who left their religion are women while 46% are men. That’s a big swing in who some researchers call Nones,” meaning no religion or none in particular.

Many separate factors

The American Survey Center cites several reasons for rising departures of women from organized religion:

  • Younger women are more educated than men their age. This implies higher professional ambition and goals for women.
  • Young men now show more interest in becoming parents than young women do.
  • Abortion, of greater import to women, has driven more of them to be liberal.
  • Young women today are more likely to identify as LGBTQ+ than men are. This is another indicator that churches might not be for them.

And one big change
Todays young women are fare more concerned than earlier generations — and today’s men — about gender inequality. The center says they are also less tolerant of institutions that support the status quo. About two-thirds of young women in a center poll said they don’t believe churches treat men and women equally.


What does the future hold?

The Survey Center on American Life called this flip a red alert. It noted that people who leave religions seldom come back. A statistic from the Pew Research Center offers another warning.

Gender of religiously unaffiliated parents with children under 18. 31% for women and 22% for men.

Courtesy Pew Research Center

Pew found that 31% of U.S. mothers with children under 18 are religiously unaffiliated, while 22% of U.S. fathers are unaffiliated. This, taken with the fact that people tend to maintain their parents religion, indicates the exodus of Gen Z women could be compounded in the next generation.

We invite you to explore the issues further in two of our Bias Busters guides:

100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated and our double edition: 100 Questions About and Gen X and 100 (more) About Gen Z. Find these and about 20 more concise Bias Busters guides  in print and digital formats on Amazon.

Posted in Generation Z, Generations, Nonreligious Americans | Leave a comment

U.S. people agree: Discrimination against Jews and Muslims is up

The Israel-Hamas war has polarized people in the U.S. and pushed those who feel it is unsafe to state their position to the sidelines of silence.

However, a Pew Research Center study on free seech and discrimination against Jews and Muslims released April 2 shows that we agree on a lot of things when it comes to free speech and discrimination. While people have been criticized, fired or demonized for expressing opinions about the war, most of the 12,693 U.S. adults Pew surveyed said some expressions should be allowed:

    • 70% said expressing support for “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state” should be allowed.
    • 58% said expressing opposition to Israel’s right to exist should be allowed.
    • 66% said speech supporting “Palestinians having their own state” should be allowed.
    • 61% said speech opposing a Palestinian state should be allowed.

    Many people drew the line at calls for violence. About three-quarters of respondents said speech supporting violence against either Muslims or Jews should not be allowed.

    Pew chart shows feelings about rising discrimination against Jews and Muslims.

    U.S. people see rising discrimination against Jews and Muslims.

    Pew found other points of accord. Respondents agreed discrimination against Jews and Muslims has been rising, especially since the war began in October.

    Some 89% of Jewish respondents said they have seen a rise in discrimination against Jews since the start of the war. About 70% of Muslim respondents said discrimination against Muslims has risen since the start of the war.

    As for breaks in communication, 26% of Jews and 27% of Muslims surveyed say they have stopped talking to someone in person – or unfollowed or blocked someone – because of something that person said about the war.

  • The Pew report goes deeper on several related aspects of discriminati0n and free speech.
  • Bias Busters guides available on Amazon answer questions about American Jews and Muslims and addressed some stereotypes.“100 Questions and Answers About American Jews”“100 Questions and Answers About Muslim Americans”
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What does MENA mean? The U.S. Census’ new category

The federal government announced big changes in the way the Census Bureau counts the country. The formal March 29 announcement said the Census is combining race and ethnicity into one section and adding a new category.

The categories will be White, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and the new one: Middle Eastern or North African.

Hispanic and Latino had been different choices in separate sections. People will now find them together under “What is your race and/or ethnicity?”

Middle Eastern/North African is shorthanded as MENA. Although the term is not new, it has not been widely used. MENA people had been checking Census forms as White, “other,” not answering or trying to write something in.

To some people, the new category, is as fundamental as their identity. Getting the checkbox some had asked for tells them they count and can now be counted.

Here are answers to questions, in the style of the Michigan State University School of Journalism’s Bias Busters series, which answers basic questions about racial, cultural, ethnic, occupational and religious groups. MENA has come up in that series in these guides:

Bias Busters guides that have included MENA people are:

100 Questions and Answers About Arab Americans

100 Questions and Answers About Chaldean Americans

Why have MENA people been considered White?
For decades, the U.S. government has defined White people as those with “origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.” There has been a history of the White label has been applied to people and it has affected important considerations, such as immigration. Today, many U.S. people, both those with and without Middle East origins, have said the definition does not fit. Some MENA people say they do not have the same rights and privileges as White people and do not feel the identity fits them.

Will a MENA category mean fewer White people?
No, but it will mean fewer people are counted as White. According to NBC News, 7 million to 8 million people will have a more accurate choice on the Census form than “White” or other. While a slightly lower count of White people will not change their actual numbers, more accurate counting will give MENA people higher visibility in Census and federal programs.

The next census is not until 2030. Do these changes mean anything now?
Yes. The Census process is long and affects many federal, state and local programs. The new standards took effect March 28, and were announced in the Federal Register on March 29. Record keeping and reporting requirements are to change now. Federal agencies that release data about race and ethnicity are required to turn in a public action plan by late September 2025. Surveys and statistics are to be in line with the new requirements by late March 2029. Writing on March 18, before the change was announced, Simon Marshall-Shah, a senior policy analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy wrote the previous system, “has had significant impacts on many aspects of the lives of MENA Americans and masked many pressing social concerns, like barriers to quality healthcare, limited opportunities for success among MENA small business owners and entrepreneurs, and a lack of understanding by federal agencies regarding health disparities, child well-being, and other social and economic disparities …”

Nederlandse Leeuw, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

This is how the International Monetary Fund defines the MENA region. Nederlandse Leeuw, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Do MENA people have a common race, culture, language, nationality or religion?
No, and the category is not meant to imply that. Like other broad umbrella terms, such as Hispanic, this is a diverse group with important differences. People practice many beliefs, they speak many different languages and this is not a race. Its roots are geographic. The widespread MENA region includes North Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Members are on the same side of some issues and are polar opposites on others. The Arab American Institute, which called for a MENA category for years, was positive but muted. It posted, “the new Standards deny the racial diversity of the Arab American community by excluding Black Arabs and defining MENA without one of its largest populations, Armenian Americans.”

What ethnicities does MENA include?
Most, but not all members, are of Arab origin or heritage. Arab countries, which are identified by their language, include countries in northern Africa. Some MENA countries the bureau also mentioned, such as Israel and Iraq, are not Arab countries.

Does MENA include Palestinians?
Yes, MENA includes Palestinians as well as Israelis. For example, the United Nation’s Field Operations and Technical Cooperation Division covers 19 MENA places. It lists them as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The Federal Register that reported the change on March 29 does not list all the countries for either the MENA or Hispanic/Latina categories.

Wasn’t MENA already added in 2020?
No. Research into this has been going on since 2014. Changes like these had been approved during the Obama administration but were shelved by the Trump administration. Almost 10 years ago, National Public Radio reported that adding MENA to the Census “would carry wide implications for legislative redistricting, civil rights laws and health statistics.” In a 2022 research report on MENA people’s self-perception, the authors wrote the classification would allow “researchers to examine the social, economic, and health status of this growing population” and allow for changes to reduce unequal treatment.

How often does the Census change its counting?
This is a big change in the one-every-10-years, or decennial tally of people in the United States. While the Census has been tweaked pretty much every time it has been conducted, government officials and the news media are referring to these changes in terms of decades.

Posted in Arab Americans, Chaldeans, Ethnicity & Race | Leave a comment

Are pagans ‘nones’? No, but one pagan sees connections

The national discussion over whether unaffiliated religious “nones” are growing or shrinking has a new perspective from a pagan writer.

100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated book cover

100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated

The Pew Research Center sparked the discussion with its finding that the United States now has more religiously unaffiliated people than either Catholics or evangelical Protestants.

In the paganism blog The Wild Hunt, Manny Moreno, who identifies there as a witch, digs into Pew’s description of spirituality. There, he finds a nexus between the religiously unaffiliated and pagans, who are never mentioned in the Pew report. They do not have a category to check, which would make them “none of the above,” but pagans are not without religion.

“Nones,” refers to people who self-identify as agnostic, atheist or nothing in particular in response to a list of religions. Many of these individuals believe in God, but they do not join religions. For many of them, God is not the problem. It is the religions.

The unafilliated include not just atheists and agnostics but humanists, secularists, freethinkers and more.

Does this mean pagans are nones? Not really. Although pagans did not have a box to check on the survey instrument, pagans are also not nones. According to the new guide “100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated,” Pagan Federation International describes paganism as a “nondogmatic ancestral polytheistic or pantheistic religion that finds divinity in nature.” This new Bias Busters guide was published March 5.

As a pagan, Moreno connects with Pew’s finding that about half of religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. “say spirituality is very important in their lives or say they think of themselves as spiritual.” Most so-called nones “believe animals other than humans can have spirits or spiritual energies – and many say this is true of parts of nature, such as mountains, rivers or trees.”

Another connection, Moreno writes, are unaffiliated people who told Pew they “believe that entities other than humans, including animals, can possess spirits or spiritual energies. This belief extends to various aspects such as cemeteries, memorial sites, elements of nature like mountains and rivers, and specific objects like jewels or stones.”

Some pagans and religiously unaffiliated people share interests in jewelry, crystals, body markings or piercings,  for spiritual purposes.

Order a copy of the new “100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated” to see what so many people are talking about.

 

 

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And then there will be none

Krysten Sinema of Arizona announced this week that she will not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Photo of Sen. Sinema

U.S. Sen. Krysten Sinema, I-Arizona

The move has stirred election year speculation about what this will mean for the balance of power in Washington, D.C. Sinema announced in late 2022 that she was quitting the Democratic party and would be more centrist as an independent senator unaffiliated with either major party.

Some of her votes displease people on both sides of the aisle, of course, and she has been referred to as “a party of one.”

Politics is not the only area where Sinema is unaffiliated. She is also religiously unaffiliated, someone who does not subscribe to a formal religion, a person some researchers categorize as a “none,” as in “none of the above.”

The Pew Research Center says 28% of the country is that way. So, it is unusual that only  one person in the U.S. Senate  claims no religious affiliation. Some just won’t say, but most declare one religion or another. Religion is not the issue as political pundits try to forecast what Arizona voters will do with her seat. However, the religious issue is noteworthy.

That the U.S. Senate will soon have zero people who claim no religious affiliation in a country where 28% of the citizens say that means something. In the U.S. House, Rep.  Jared Huffman, D-California, has identified himself as a humanist who is non-religious.

Chart shows religious makeup of 118th Congress

Religious makeup of 118th Congress does not reflect makeup of the country. Source: Pew Research Center

Also this week, the Michigan State University School of Journalism published the latest guide in its Bias Busters series: “100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated: Nones, Agnostics, Atheists, Humanists, Freethinkers, Secularists and Skeptics.”The scarcity of nonreligious people in Congress seems to be in step with reports of discrimination against unaffiliated people.

In a January article published by Cambridge University Press’ “Politics and Religion,” Wayne State University professor Ewa Golebiowska wrote, “nonreligious candidates are generally disadvantaged compared to religious candidates.” She found that this is worse for people who describe themselves as atheists or nonbelievers than for secularists.

In some states, people are still required to take of belief in God to vote or hold office. These are not enforced, but remain on the books and are raised. They can make people feel unwelcome in a country that values freedom of religion. They might be looking for an ally in the Senate.

Nonreligious people report discrimination beyond the civic arena. People have reported rejection by family, community, in education and the workplace.

As a consequence, they try to hide their beliefs, avoiding awkward conversations and situations and, in some cases, faking religiousness.

Will this change? Frank Newport, writing for the Gallup News, thinks it is. He postulates that it may be “more culturally acceptable now to state publicly that one does not have a religious identity than it was decades ago.”

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Which is preferred, Black or African American?

Book cover for 100 Questions & Answers About African Americans
Either can be correct. Gallup polling since 1991 has shown that half to two-thirds of African American and Black respondents did not have a preference. Although the terms are not necessarily synonymous, it can come down to individual preferences about how people wish to identify themselves. Black and African American have replaced older terms such as Colored and Negro that were imposed by others. Self-identification might be influenced by a long history of colonialism, enslavement, imposed racial categories and cultural dispossession.

Why do some people prefer to identify as Black?
The reasons vary. Some people may identify as Black because they do not feel connected to the American state. Others may identify as Black because they do not identify with the African continent. There are various historical, social, and political reasons why one might identify as Black rather than African American. Also, the term Black has historically connected people of African descent around the world.

Why do some people prefer African American?
The term arose as an alternative to Black for its similarity to hyphenated names for other American groups. Some people may identify themselves as African-American to resist Black as a socially constructed category. Others, however, may identify as African-American to assert their American identity. There are a multitude of reasons one might identify as African American.

These answers and 97 others are in “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans,” a Bias Buster guide created in a journalism class at Michigan State University. We’ll share some more from that guide and “100 Questions and Answers About the Black Church” during Black History Month.

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2024 Black History Month’s sad irony

Book cover for 100 Questions & Answers About African Americans
In a disappointing three-way mixup of Civil Rights figures, Target has pulled its Black History Month book off the shelves.

The book scrambled identifications for images of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. Washington was an author and educator; Du Bois was a sociologist/historian; and Woodson, a historian and journalist, is known as the father of Black History Month. To be misidentified in a book created to mark his month …

U.S. history teacher Issa Tete bought the book for her students, and noticed the goof. She did not take it back; she took to TikTok. The rest, we’ll say, is history. The book came down and Woodson received more attention than he has had in years — for the very circumstances he was working against.

Here’s how the Bias Busters series of guides explains the reason for the month in “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans:”

What is Black History Month?
The idea had its origins in 1915. Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard PhD, and friends established the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The Journal of Negro History began a year later. In 1926, Woodson created Negro History Week to bring attention to history that was not in school curricula. Starting with Gerald R. Ford in 1976, U.S. presidents have annually recognized February as Black History Month. The United Kingdom and Canada observe it, as well. Some say Black history should be taught all year and that designating a month for it confines and diminishes Black history.

This answer and 99 others are in “100 Questions and Answers About African Americans,” a Bias Buster guide created in a journalism class at Michigan State University. We’ll share a couple more from that guide and “100 Questions and Answers About the Black Church” during Black History Month.

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Sikhs in U.S. vote on independent Khalistan

This might be flying under your news radar, but there are significant developments happening in the United State involving Sikh people.

Sikh Book cover

100 Questions and Answers About Sikhs

If you’ve missed it, it’s probably not negligence. While Sikhi is the fifth largest religion in the world with 25-30 million adherents, the faith represents a small minority in the United States. U.S. estimates are 300,000-500,000, about 1 percent of the global Sikh population.

NBC News reported last year that schools in 18 states and the District of Columbia are adding Sikh content. This is to address bullying of Sikh children, whose turbans, hair and names make them easy targets. Teaching can also elevate understanding of some major world  events that resonate here. And, Sikh leaders in the U.S. are making string cases for visibility.

Right now, in early 2024, U.S. Sikhs are voting on a non-binding global resolution to have an independent Sikh state created in Punjab, India. As of today, 127,000 U.S. Sikhs voted on the Khalistan issue. Interest is also strong in Canada, which has a larger Sikh population than the United States. If you thought politics were complicated in U.S. presidential election year, and they are, try to wrap your head around a transnational democratic election. That is worth notice.

Interest in Sikhs and Khalistan has been piqued over the past few months with reports by the Reuters and other news services about disclosures and denials of a plot to kill Sikh separatists in the United States and Canada.

If you’d like a quick catch-up on Sikhi, why its children are bullied and ther rich religious practices, here is a starting point: “100 Questions and Answers About Sikh Americans” on Amazon. This Bias Busters guide was written to concisely answer the basic questions that Sikh people say they wish people would ask. The guide will position you to catch up with Sikhs you might happen to know or on a story that is certain to grow.

 

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Yes, Amish people do shop at Walmart — at their peril

Amish horse and buggy

Amish horse and buggy. Picture licensed under Creative Commons 2.0

We are working to publish “100 Questions and Answers About Mennonites and the Amish” and were asked this question:

“Do the Amish go to stores like Walmart and eat at fast-food places?”

We saw proof this month that our answer is correct.

Police in southwest Michigan, near an Amish community, say that a family reported someone had boosted their horse and buggy — while they were shopping inside Walmart.

A woman was arrested, the horse was returned unharmed and there is your answer. Yes, the Amish to go to Walmart.

But we wonder: Will they be there to buy an alarm or a lock?

Get to know your neighbors with the growing Bias Buster series of cultural competence DEI guides. The Mennonites guide will get there.

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For religiously unaffiliated, numbers and acceptance are related

100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated book cover

100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated

The part of the U.S. population that does not belong to a formal religion has been growing — or is not. Researchers seem to be in a wait-and-see mode.

This group is the subject of a new Bias Busters guide to be published in early March.

A Pew Research Center update on the religiously unaffiliated this week ended with a question mark.

“In Pew Research Center’s 2023 polling,” the article said, “28 percent of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated, describing themselves as atheists, agnostics or simply ‘nothing in particular’ when asked about their religion.

“That’s marginally lower than our surveys indicated in 2022 and 2021, and identical to what we found in 2020 and 2019, which raises a question: After decades of sharp growth, has the rise of these religious ‘nones’ ended?

“At the risk of sounding wishy-washy, we think it’s too early to tell.”

Our Michigan State Bias Busters guide, which favors the term “religiously unaffiliated” to “nones,” reports that a Gallup researcher was also on the fence. Here’s a question and answer from the upcoming Bias Busters guide:

What explains the rapid growth of this group?
… “In 2022, Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport offered another explanation. He noted that Gallup’s percentages of religiously unaffiliated people had stabilized around 20 percent between 2017 and 2022.He hypothesized that the numbers reflect rising cultural acceptance of being nonreligious. This increased people’s comfort levels in telling this to researchers. He foresees growth in nonaffiliation.”

Growing or shrinking or more willing to admit what has been, for some, an unpopular choice, the religiously unaffiliated remain a significant group of the U.S. population.

Look for “100 Questions and Answers About the Religiously Unaffiliated” and 20 more Bias Busters guides to help you know your neighbors in our Amazon bookstore.

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