The Tipping Point Generation: America’s Nonreligious Youth
The U.S. Secular Survey was the largest and most comprehensive data collection project about atheists and nonreligious people ever conducted. Now, the Secular Student Alliance and American Atheists release The Tipping Point Generation: America’s Nonreligious Youth, focusing on a group of nonreligious people who are too often overlooked - nonreligious youth.
It is true that America is becoming more secular. But this is a process marked by pockets of intolerance and reactionism, a growing skepticism of basic civil rights protections, and a national discourse that favors the religious interests of a few powerful groups over the lives and well-being of everyone else. This is the America that nonreligious young people are growing up in, that they will one day inherit.
Although nonreligious young people are the most rapidly growing segment of the nonreligious community, we know remarkably little about this population, until now.
The Tipping Point Generation: America’s Nonreligious Youth draws on survey responses from nearly 34,000 nonreligious participants, including 3,421 nonreligious 18-25-year-olds. We hope that this brief will shine a light on how America’s religious culture has shaped these youth and how, in turn, they will shape its future.
“This generation could be the tipping point for the United States - where we move from the majority of the population being religious to the majority of the population being nonreligious,” said Kevin Bolling, Executive Director of the Secular Student Alliance, "It is important that we know about this generation and their experiences."
“With nearly half of young people now identifying as nonreligious, we are at a tipping point in America’s religious history. Over the last decade religion has faded faster in the U.S. than in any other nation, and that’s in large part because of America's youth,” said Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists.
