Today’s episode is the audio of Juhem’s talk at the American Humanist Association (Washington, DC) on October 12, 2017.
Links:
Key facts about unauthorized immigrants enrolled in DACA (Pew Research Center)
The Dream Act, DACA, and Other Policies Designed to Protect Dreamers (American Immigration Council)
Public Support for Basic Policies of DACA Program Edges Up (PRRI)
En el tercer episodio de La Experiencia de Benito Juárez Juhem y Luciano hablan sobre el secularismo y laicismo hispanos en el mes de la herencia hispana. El primer segmento se trata de una discusión del crecimiento del secularismo entre las comunidades Latinas en los Estados Unidos y el por qué a pesar de ser una quinta parte de la población, no escuchamos más en los medios. El segundo segmento se enfoca en el crecimineto de las comunidades digitales de latinos y latinas sin religión y el crecimiento del secularismo en América Latina. Finalmente cerramos con una discusión de la historia laica y secular en las Américas, España y los Estados Unidos con la politóloga Dra. Yazmín Trejo.
On an episode recorded on International Blasphemy Day Juhem and Luciano talk with Dr. Yazmin Trejo about her project on secular Latinx history and stories. Dr. Trejo talks about the motivations for the project, some of her findings so far, and how to help her document laicismo and secularism in the Greater Latinx community in the U.S. and Latin America. Luciano delves into the history of International Blasphemy Day to start the episode.
Links:
Latin American History And International Blasphemy Day (Luciano GonzalezSin/God)
To share secular Latinx stories with Dr. Trejo please email: secularlaico AT gmail DOT com
Luciano and Juhem continue their discussion of Latinx secularism as part of Hispanic Heritage Month. They mention the importance of online communities in creating a safe space for Latinx people who doubt religion and to meet others with similar doubts. They also discuss how irreligion is spreading in Latin America and why religious identification varies so much across the region.
Links:
Luciano and Juhem kick off Hispanic Heritage Month with a discussion about Latinx secularism. Who are we? How many of us out there? Why don’t hear more about this growing segment of the Latinx population?
Links:
Media Stereotypes and the Invisible Latino “Nones” (Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Free Inquiry)
Reports:
Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (Pew Research Center 2007)
U.S. Latino Religious Identification 1990-2008: Change, Diversity & Transformation (Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Barry A. Kosmin & Ariela Keysar, ISSSC 2010)
How Shifting Religious Identities and Experiences are Influencing Hispanic Approaches to Politics (Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox & Juhem Navarro-Rivera, PRRI 2013)
The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States (Pew Research Center 2014)
La Experiencia de Benito Juárez #2(22): Demócratas, valores familiares, y Charlottesville. In our second Spanish-language episode we discuss the Democrats’ “Better Deal,” a progressive call to appropriate the phrase “family values,” we close with a discussion of confederate monuments after Charlottesville.
In The Thick #78: It’s not Activism, it’s Journalism. María Hinojosa and Julio Ricardo Varela talk with MSNBC’s Joy Reid and she has the best advice for dealing with Trump supporters in the media.
Code Switch: It’s Getting (Dangerously) Hot in Herre. An amazing episode about the inequality of climate change through the lens of a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles.
En nuestro segundo episodio Juhem y Luciano discuten varios temas. El primer segmento se enfoca en la estrategia de los líderes del partido Demócrata para ganar las elecciones del 2018. El segundo segmento trata de apropiación del término “valores familiares” para el uso de la población no religiosa. El programa cierra con una discusión de los eventos en Charlottesville el mes pasado.
Among the many findings of the latest PRRI report on religion in America, my favorite is the growing number of women with no religious affiliation. In their new report, PRRI reports that 45 percent of women are nones. This is up 4 percentage points from what the Pew Religious Landscape Survey found a decade ago. An increase of 4 percentage points may not sound like much. But if we look at it in terms of real population numbers the impact of this increase becomes apparent.
The nones growing faster than the general population.
Between 2007 and 2016 the adult population in the USA went from 227.2 million to 249.5 million, a 10 percent overall growth in a little less than a decade. However, the secular population increased from 16 percent of the adult population (or roughly 36.4 million people) to 24 percent (or 59.9 million). In other words, the nones increased by 64 percent (basically, 6.5 times faster than the adult population).
More than half of “new nones” are women.
There is still a gender imbalance in the none population, but in the last decade women left religion at similar rates. In 2007 14.9 million women identified as nones (41 percent of all nones). If we extrapolate the PRRI numbers, a total of nearly 27 million women have now no religious affiliation. That indicates a growth of 81 percent in the number of women with no religious affiliation. The 12.1 million women who have joined the ranks of the nones represent 51 percent of the 23.5 million new nones in the last decade.
Making the world safer for secular women
The Pew and PRRI data don’t have much to say about why people, and especially women, are leaving religion. But those of us who have done so and who know many people who have abandoned the religion they were raised in and became atheists, agnostics and other types of nones have an idea of what’s going on. In a world where women are a major part of the labor force, where there’s a political party dedicated full-time to send women back to the home…and that said party is controlled by the most reactionary religious elements of the country, it should not be surprising that women have decided that religion isn’t for them. That doesn’t mean that secularism is more welcoming. Despite of their love for pointing out religious misogyny, many so-called atheist and secular leaders are very good at dissing the views of secular women. The data may show that religion is losing its grip on many in the United States, but unless we have institutions that are truly inclusive, organized secularism will continue to be a boys club.
Sources:
Note: edited to fix typo “adulation” meant “adult population” (thanks autocorrect)
A Requiem for Florida, the Paradise That Should Never Have Been (Michael Grunwald, Politico.com) Interesting story of urban development, water management, and human hubris in the creation of modern Florida.
Can You Be Good Without God? (Brandon Withrow, TheDailyBeast.com) An article about negative stereotypes about atheists that goes beyond the usual Angry White Dudes (you know who they are) and interviews some fresh and reasonable atheist voices.
The First White President (Ta-Nehisi Coates, TheAtlantic.com) Long-ish read about white rage and the rise of Trump.
PRRI released yesterday a new ginormous poll of religious identification in the United States. At 101,000-ish cases the largest this century and its scope is so large that it is really unprecedented. Of course, I am interested in what it says about the religious nones. And I may say, many things are good news.
Take, for example, this pretty line chart tracing the growth of the nones back 40 years. Up to the 1990s, roughly 1-in-10 Americans were non religious. Then, by the 2000s the population started growing and was famously captured and highlighted by the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey nearly a decade ago. Back then people considered that 15 percent of Americans being non religious was a pretty big deal. In the crazy days following the release of the 2008 ARIS those of us in that team did a lot of media. My friend Ryan Cragun did an interview (I can’t recall where) predicting that the nones soon will be 25 percent of the country. I thought that was optimistic, time has proved me wrong.
Today, about one-quarter of Americans are religious nones. What does that mean for the country and its future? I don’t really know, but I will explore several questions regarding the growth of the nones in the next few posts using the PRRI report. I will explore the demographics of the nones, the politics of the nones, and likely engage with some of the pieces that have been, are being, and will be written about this report.
The LatiNone 