Manu Joseph: Why faith losing its hold won’t really change the world

I suspect this news was received by atheists and their spiritual cousins who say stuff like, “I believe in a force" and other kinds of Nones as a reaffirmation of their superior inner lives. They may have felt the world is finally becoming safer. More sensible. More like them. They might be wrong.

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This report on the ‘global religious landscape’ was published by Pew Research Centre, a US-based think-tank that is deemed particularly reputable when its findings align with one’s own work,ld view. It is one of the world’s most cited sources when it comes to global statistics, chiefly for the rigour of its process. This report, for instance, compiled data from dozens of countries, using national census data, demographic studies and other large-scale surveys.

According to the report, Islam is the fastest growing faith. Between 2010 and 2020, the Muslim population of the world grew by about 347 million, almost entirely through births. Most major religions grew in absolute numbers in that decade, but Islam alone increased its share of the world population, from 23.9% to 25.6%. The Hindu share remained stable at around 15% of the world, while that of Christians reduced by nearly 2%. 

Apart from Muslims, the only other major group that increased its share of the world population was the Nones. This is the only group that has grown by conscious decision, as Pew notes that religious conversion did not contribute significantly to the population growth of any religion. Nones do reproduce, but their children are not guaranteed to be Nones. Hundreds of millions gave up religious affiliation. Not just that, Nones are almost always adults, presumably because only then can they find the freedom to extricate themselves from religion. Otherwise, in matters of faith, parents usually act as prison guards. So, even without children in their count, Nones grew over the 2010s.

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All this data may have brought satisfaction not only to Nones, but also to many religious people after they ascertained that it is not their faith that’s leaking followers. Take away their own gods, and nearly everyone is a None. As a piece of internet folk wisdom goes—often mis-attributed to famous atheists but likely coined by a software engineer named Stephen F. Roberts—“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. " 

But the joy curdles when you look closer. The rise of the unaffiliated is not a global wave of reason sweeping across the world. It’s mostly a continuation of old patterns in  predictable places: China, where religion has long been shunned by the state; Western Christian nations, where belief had already aged into tradition; Japan, where Buddhism became more of a general philosophy. In such places, people stopped believing in divinity long ago—they just didn’t get around to changing their religious status on census forms.

China alone accounts for 67% of all Nones. Among the rest are 101 million Americans and 73 million Japanese (about 57% of Japanese adults identify as Nones) and West Europeans. Asian Buddhist regions and affluent Christian nations have traditionally been places where Nones hailed from. 

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The report does have minor surprises in the form of Namibia where the share of Nones grew from 0.2% to 5.6%, and Brazil where the share of Nones rose to 13.5%, up 5.4 percentage points. But generally, what is clear in the Pew report is that major religions that hold sway in some of the most volatile regions of the world are not in a decline. Faiths that play a significant role in shaping the identity of people, like Islam and Hinduism, are not in a decline. 

In fact, even though Christianity registered a decline, it has resurged as a political identity in the most powerful nation on Earth—the US. I do not believe that this resurgence is driven by a rise in faith in God. 

That brings us to the core of why it would be naive to see the rise of Nones as a hint of a better world to come. Just because a person does not believe in magic, it does not mean he is not given to magical thinking.

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The age of belief may be ending, but the age of identity is only beginning. We see this all the time. Rich kids from poor countries go West, say posh things, but their concerns, though couched as humane, are usually about their own community or religious group. The atheist Islamist exists. The religionless Hindu nationalist exists. The religiously unaffiliated are often over-affiliated with a group.

In fact, an underrated quality of those who believe in God is that they, ironically, understand the emotions of others who believe in a different supernatural. For instance, when the Sabarimala temple controversy broke out among Hindu conservatives, some devout Malayalee Christians too were enraged. They were sympathetic to ancient tenets of faith that are hard to defend against rationality. 

So yes, the Nones are growing. But let us not confuse that with the rise of reason. Divinity may be departing in some places, but the flags remain. And the chants and the wounds. Always, the wounds, they remain.

The author is a journalist, novelist, and the creator of the Netflix series, ‘Decoupled’