Church of Nones

MJ. Smith

I was reading this article Christians Worry as Church for ‘Nones’ Emerge Across the US (msn.com) which led to Church for ‘nones’: Meet the anti-dogma spiritual collectives emerging across the US - The Presbyterian Outlook (pres-outlook.org) I am curious as to how this "group" compares to Unitarian Universalists. Does anyone know of any literature on this group? or additional names of possible authors to research?

Rosie Perera

I don't know much about these groups meeting together with pastors and services which some are calling "Church for Nones". But you might start with the Pew Research Center's 2012 report “Nones" on the Rise. I also just discovered that a couple of Harvard Divinity School students did a survey called How We Gather that looks at how religiously disaffiliated Millennials are finding spiritual community elsewhere than in church. Heidi A. Campbell has written on how the digital era (online religious communities) has intersected with the rise of the "nones". Her chapter "The Dynamic Future of Digital Religion Studies" in a Brill book that is available as open source has some of this in it. Ryan P. Burge's The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going (2nd ed., 2023) might be of interest. There are a few other books in the Logos catalog about the "nones" but they mostly seem to be evangelistic in nature -- how to reach the "nones" (e.g., You Found Me: New Research on How Unchurched Nones, Millennials, and Irreligious Are Surprisingly Open to Christian Faith). Another one not in Logos (though I've requested it) is Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America's Nones.

How these communities of "nones" relate to UUs is an interesting question. They are probably quite similar and would get along with each other very well, but it seems the UUs are still institutional, with seminaries (e.g., Harvard Divinity School) and clergy credentials and such. While they have eschewed all dogma and welcome people wherever they are on their spiritual path, whether they believe in anything or not, they still do value their historic heritage, coming from two branches of liberal Christianity. The church my sister attends near Boston, Theodore Parker Church, is named after one of the founders of Unitarian Universalism. They meet in a beautiful historic building with stained glass windows with images of angels, etc. I visited her church for their Christmas Eve service. They read the Nativity story from the Gospel of Luke on Christmas Eve (along with something by Madeleine l'Engle; and reading Scripture is by far the exception in their services, but they still value the Christmas story), and sang several traditional Christmas carols, including one with Christian words intact, though they changed the words of the others to make them less objectionable to anyone who doesn't believe the biblical story.