Over at The Immanent Frame, sociologists Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer discuss the results of their research on the growing number of Americans professing “no religion.” Hout and Fischer’s study suggests that while institutional affiliation and confessional identification are on the decline, traditional religious belief systems are not. They attribute this dynamic largely to the religious Right’s appropriation of religion as a signifier of identity, leaving centrist and liberal believers out in the cold:

We identified political tension and generational succession as the main sources of the trend away from religious affiliation. In the most recent data – collected in 2006 and 2008, and combined to improve statistical precision – 28 percent of political liberals answered “no religion” when asked what their religion was, compared with 15 percent of political moderates, and 5 percent of political conservatives – a gap of 23 percentage points from left to right on the political spectrum. From these contrasts and other supporting tabulations we concluded that the growing identification between organized religion and a conservative social policy agenda was pushing liberals and moderates with weak attachments away from organized religion.

Continue reading Hout and Fischer’s “Unchurched believers” at The Immanent Frame.