The Seculosity Impulse

There are the religious. There are the secular. And there are the religious secular or the secular religious. This latter group are novitiates of what some are calling seculosity.

Seems like everywhere Christians turn these days, there’s another article or survey about the decline of faith and the rise of secularism in Western culture. We had a good run in the days of Christendom, when most people had at least some affinity for religion, even if they weren’t particularly religious themselves.

The Christendom ship has sailed, however, and the number of people who declare themselves to be religious “nones” (people who claim no religious faith) is on the rise. “Nones” represent 23.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2019, up from 21.6 percent in 2016. That means that “nones” are statistically tied with Roman Catholics as the largest religious — or non-religious — groups in the country.

We generally think of this shift as a rise in secularism, with people of faith increasingly feeling like they’re on a culturally endangered species list. But is this trend really a jettisoning of religion, or is it...