ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter I defined a main unreligious group for later analyses and discussed the religiosities of the individuals so categorized. To this point, however, we know very little about these people other than their religious attitudes and behaviors. In this chapter and the next I will present a great deal of information which simply describes the unreligious in sociological terms. In all of the sociology of religion literature the American unreligious have not been extensively described, and the actual population under analysis here has never been studied. Description in itself is therefore a worthwhile task. The only theoretical aspects of the chapter will be contained in predictions and explanations of the existence of empirical relationships, and in speculation as to their consequences. Although I am restricting consideration to traditionally sociological variables, many findings in this chapter have implications for topics covered in later chapters, e.g., the psychological well-being of the unreligious and their meaning and purpose orientations. Variables will also appear here which are of importance in determining whether an individual becomes or remains unreligious, and as such will be treated in detail in Chapter 6, which deals with causal approaches to unreligiousness.
