The Bennington Banner, May 2, 2009 

 

MARK E. RONDEAU

Staff Writer

Editor's note:This is the first of a two-part series
about Vermonters and their religious identifications, or lack of
them.

 

BENNINGTON — The American Religious Identification Survey
(ARIS), released in March, showed that Vermont has the highest
percentage of people not identifying with any religion of any state
in the U.S.

In Vermont, those identifying no religious affiliation rose from 13
to 34 percent between 1990 and 2008.

The survey was sponsored by Trinity College, in Hartford, Conn., and
included interviews of more than 54,000 people across the U.S.

Americans who state no religious preference, or identify themselves
as atheist or agnostic, have grown from 8.2 percent of the population
in 1990 to 14.1 percent in 2001 to 15 percent in 2008.

According to the ARIS, the percentage of self-identified Catholics in
the Green Mountain State decreased from 37 percent in 1990 to 26
percent in 2008; other Christians decreased from 47 percent to 39
percent.

All 50 states showed an increase of those expressing no religious
identification; the smallest increase was in Mississippi, which
increased from 3 percent of adults with no religious identification
in 1990 to 5 percent in 2008.

"I could write, talk for hours on this topic," said the Rev. Anita
Schell-Lambert, Rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Bennington.
"I think there's been a dramatic shift."

In addition to the rejection of traditional institutions in the
1960s, New England has the added political/cultural aspect typified
by New Hampshire's motto — "Live Free or Die" — "don't tell me what
to believe," she said.

More things are competing for people's time now. When she was growing
up, there wasn't much to do on a Sunday morning. Now everything is
open and even youth sports are scheduled for Sunday mornings,
including in Bennington, Schell-Lambert said.

In addition, in the words of Princeton University sociologist Robert
Wuthnow, "we've become a nation of spiritual seekers rather than
religious habitaters," she said. "We don't join religions, we look
for spiritual practices."

That's not necessarily bad, she added, but "it explains, though, why
people to call themselves spiritual go to yoga, go to meditation but
don't have interest in going to church on Sunday."

Bruce Lierman, a member of the Unitarian Unversalist Meetinghouse in
Bennington, agreed with the suggestion that society has become more
compartmentalized. "I really do agree with the idea that what's
happened is we've become more atomized and fragmented ... even
perhaps more than we've become spiritual," he said.

"I think (people) don't realize that a spirituality that you practice
only in your own living room may not be very robust when you
encounter the challenges of life," he said. "If you don't have some
sort of spiritual community around you, the opportunity to share
other's ideas and test yours, you miss an important part of what
spirituality really is."

Betsey Belvin, a member of the local Baha'i community, said that many
people seem to want spirituality but are opposed to organized
religion.

For instance, though the Baha'i faith has no clergy, it does have a
structure and prayers.

"And it's very interesting because there are frequently people from a
non-religious background ... who will want to find out more about the
Baha'i faith because they think it's not organized," she said, adding
that they soon learn differently. "And then that person says, 'Oh,
I'm not into any organized religion.' Organized religion is such a
buzzword."

Rabbi Joshua Boettiger, of Congregation Beth El in Bennington, said
that in the past people were "commanded by an outside force telling
us to do these things, and I think a lot of people have just rejected
that model, it just doesn't work for them," he said. "I have a
teacher who says, 'It's shifted, and now the commandment has comes
from within.'

"And...the faith communities have to nurture the capacity of the
people in their congregation to hear that internal commandment,"
Boettiger said. "And maybe that's to the heart of this in a way."

The Rev. Jerrod Hugenot, coordinating minister at First Baptist
Church in Bennington, said that in his experience secularism seems to
be increasing. He moved to Vermont three years ago from his home
state of Kansas, where he served a parish.

"In the political landscape you can't get any redder than Kansas," he
said. "You can't get any bluer than Vermont."

Before ministering in Kansas, Hugenot received some of his seminary
education in England. The Church of England and other high-profile
denominations had "hit rock bottom" in the late 1980s. By the time
Hugenot studied there in 2001, these had gone through a period of
confusion, acknowledging that things had changed and resolving to
rebuild.

"I came back to Kansas for the rest of my seminary studies, and it
struck me that I may have been given a gift — I may have seen the
future. And then when I moved to Vermont three years ago, that came
back to me — that what's happening here on the East Coast and West
Coast will eventually happen, mark my words, in the next 12 to 15
years in the Midwest, where that spiritual indifference or the
distaste for a particular tradition will become more prevalent."

The ARIS survey showed that the percentage of adults with no
religious identification in Kansas increased from 6 percent in 1990
to 11 percent in 2008.

Bain Davis, a member of the Bennington Friends Meeting, better known
as Quakers, noted Vermont's changing demographics as a factor in its
increasing secularization.

"There's been a migration to Vermont of educators, social service
workers and people who came here once to ski and vacation and now
live here permanently," he said. "Those three, and I may be leaving
out a community or two."

The ARIS survey did not include reasons for the trends it found. But
in interviews with the Banner, those who led the survey did offer
analysis of the results.

Ariela Keysar, a demographer and a professor at Trinity College, and
one of the two authors of the survey, said that the increasing
numbers and influence of those who identify with no religious
tradition could be seen in President Obama's inaugural address, in
which he not only acknowledged Americans of various faiths but also
those with none. The increasing secularization of the U.S. also has
political implications, such as in the passage of the marriage
equality bill in Vermont, she said.

Barry A. Kosmin, a sociologist at Trinity College and the other
author of the study, gave three reasons for the rise of those listing
"none" for their religious identification: Young people without
religious identification replacing old people with such, those
leaving the Roman Catholic Church and reaction to the Religious Right.

In Vermont, new "nones" seemed "to be newcomers/migrants and former Protestants as well as large numbers of ex-Catholics," Kosmin said.

As for their politics, "nones" in the U.S. tend to be independents — "so skeptical of clergy and politicians, it seems," he said.

 

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