Baptist filmmakers examine the phenomenon of ‘Nones’
Houston theology professors document the rising number of religiously unaffiliated young Americans
Religion was in the humid air at the 2016 Reason Rally, but the tens of thousands gathered at Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial had not come to pray. The June event, the Woodstock of nonbelievers, was a raucous celebration of secularism and a chilling portent to America’s religious leaders.
Attendees waved signs reading “I think, therefore I’m atheist,” and cheered on speakers like Bill “Science Guy” Nye and comedian Lewis Black as they dissected the perceived folly of belief.
Out in the sweating throng, Houston Baptists Jerome and Cristie Jo Johnston calmly jotted notes.
They had come not to dispute, but to listen and learn.
Houston Baptist University theology profes- sors, the husband-wife team is nearing completion of a film documenting the growth of socalled “Nones,” youthful atheists, agnostics and religiously unaffiliated who comprise 23 percent of the nation’s population.
In two years, the pair has filmed interviews with scores of world religious and nonreligious thinkers to better understand the phenomenon, which they believe imperils American Christianity. The film, tentatively titled “And Then There Were Nones,” the couple’s 18th and most ambitious, is to be released at Easter.
They hope it will spur new thinking on how to effectively preach.
“We need to put a mirror up to American Christianity,” Jerome Johnston said, “and ask if what we’re doing is working.”
Much of the film, Johnston said, focuses on Great Britain, where religious statistician Peter Brierley told the filmmakers that Sunday church attendance has dropped to 5 percent of the population.
“The wave has come and gone,” Johnston said of Britain’s decline in organized religiosity. “Churches are for sale,” he said. “They’re being turned into dance halls, restaurants and private
residences. With a population of 53 million, only 2.9 million attend church. … America is two or three decades behind them.”
A 2014 Pew Research Center study found that the percentage of American nonreligious — and the intensity of their indifference — grew significantly since 2007.
Among American adults, 23 percent identified themselves as atheists, agnostics or “not much of anythings” — up from 16 percent in 2007. Sixty-five percent of Nones said religion is not very important in their lives; 62 percent seldom or never pray; 91 percent rarely go to church; a third do not acknowledge a higher power.
Among those born between 1981-89, 34 percent identified as Nones; among those born 1990-96, 36 percent.
Declines across board
While 28 percent of baby boomers identified as evangelical Christians, a group that includes Southern Baptists, only 19 percent of the youngest millennial group did so. Association with mainstream Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic church reflected similar declines.
English journalist Peter Hitchens, the Christian brother of the famed, late atheist Christopher Hitchens, told the filmmakers “the church is impotent because it’s standing against the power of what I call ‘selfism,’ the belief that your fundamental duty is to yourself, that nobody should have any control over your own body or your own actions except yourself.”
The church, he argued, has “lost any kind of real power to say that there is an eternity, that death is not the end and that what we do here matters somewhere else.”
“If what we do here doesn’t matter anywhere else,” he said, “then why shouldn’t we all be ‘selfists?’ … It’s a very powerful argument, particularly since it suits us all so very well.”
In an interview with the Johnstons, Alister McGrath, an Oxford professor of science and religion, worried that the younger age groups inclined to shun religion, “disengage into a privatized world, which is largely constructed through social media, like Facebook.”
“One of the things I’m worried about,” he said, “is whether a younger generation is emerging which is disengaged intellectually, politically and socially. Where will that take us in the future?”
13 percent ‘athiests’
While perhaps religiously unaffiliated, Cristie Johnston said, young Nones are not necessarily indifferent to religion. Pew reports only 13 percent of Nones identified as “atheists.”
“The atheist movement would like to claim more of the Nones than those who really are atheists or agnostics,” she said. “Many may feel they’re not really Baptist or Presbyterian or Catholic. … They’re not much of anythings right now.”
Christians, she argued, should not regard Nones as a lost cause.
McGrath concurred, noting that young people flock to his lectures on science and faith.
“They are questing,” he said. “They are restless. They are not settled in a sort of ‘religion none’ position. They are still thinking, they’re still open, and that seems to me to suggest that we’re not talking about a well-defined category that’s permanently embedded but rather a present trend in which people are still open to thinking about these questions.”
Still, he expressed “a real concern … about the quality of sermons” that can both reach out to young seekers and spiritually and intellectually gratify established church members.
“To my own experience, they rarely have the intellectual depth, the quality of vision that will sustain congregations,” he said.
Hitchens sounded a similar theme, attributing the falling away of British church members, in part, to the lack of pulpit fervor.
“Religion in this country when I was growing up was a shell,” he said. “There were practices still followed, things still continued as if it mattered, but, in fact, it was empty and lifeless and had no real force and really didn’t believe in itself.”
The Johnstons’ research has pointed to strategies that may fuel a “renaissance in preaching.” And Jerome Johnston expressed optimism that the couple’s documentary, which likely will be shown through secular cable television channels, will lead the way.
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking with atheists in the past 18 months,” he said, adding that the couple gleaned insights “you’ll never find in seminary.” The biggest takeaway from nonbelievers’ critiques, he said, was the assertion that Christians are incapable of “critical thought.”
Bible literacy is low
The criticism resonated with the documentarians.
Biblical literacy, even among regular church attendees, Johnston conceded, is distressingly low.
Today, he said, many church attendees lack the knowledge to successfully argue that Jesus existed.
Cristie Johnston said she has spoken with religiously anchorless students at her university who underscored the observations of McGrath and Hitchens, complaining that the messages heard from the pulpit lacked substance.
“The church,” Jerome Johnston said, “thinks about 60 minutes on Sunday morning — a message delivered with sincere intent to bring people in.”
But, he added, often the biblical, intellectual content is “not too deep.”
“If you’re really a Christian,” he said, “you go to a small group meeting during the week. Those sessions usually are led by a church-appointed layman with limited biblical knowledge. They’re more about fellowship, friendship and being there when a crisis comes along. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not enough.”
Johnston suggested churches need to meet Nones on their own turf.
Sunday morning services can be nonstarters for young adults who “barely can get their eyes open.”
“They need religion on Friday nights when everyone is getting high, or when they’re making decisions,” he said.
An answer, he suggested, could be to use the very digital media that arguably contributes to social isolation.
Need effective teachers
“There are some very effective Bible teachers in North America,” he said. “Why not do church on demand? Why not do church 24/7?”
The documentary and its media offshoots — a youth version and possibly a book — will buttress the case of creating a perpetually accessible data base of “substantive, meaty” Christian teachings, the Johnstons said.
“We can reach 200,000, 500,000 people if we harness digital technology,” Jerome Johnston said. “We just need to think like Apple and Google.”