Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
As Dulak rejects being part of a religious flock, he has plenty of company. He is a “none” — no, not that kind of nun. The kind that checks “none” when pollsters ask “What’s your religion?”
The decades-long rise of the nones — a diverse, hard-to-summarize group — is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America’s religious landscape as we know it.
In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.
Most of my friends who come from religious families rejected their family religion but 85% have adopted astrology or crystals to fill the vacuum. Strikes me as odd.
Never had an astrologist knock on my door or tell my wife she can’t get an abortion.
Unfortunately I have read about the results of parents that give their children homeopathic remedies to cure the flu and heavy metal chelation therapy to cure autism caused by nonexistent thermoseral mercury in MMR vaccines. That result is dead kids or sick kids that still have autism.
Being turned off religion by the endless hypocrisy (I recall reading some time ago that that was the leading factor in kids leaving their parents faith) doesn’t actually teach skepticism or critical thought.
It’s like chewing gum instead of smoking. Scratches the itch harmlessly.