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Article: Proportion of those preferring no religion doubled in 1990s. (Nation).(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- June 7, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The proportion of Americans who say they have no religious preference doubled in the 1990s, but most of them maintained their belief in God while avoiding organized religion, two sociologists have found.
The percentage of adults who preferred no religion in 1991 was 7 percent, and that figure doubled to 14 percent in 1998, said Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer, professors of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, in an article in the April 2002 edition of the American Sociological Review.
"The key fact ... about people who express no religious preference is that most are believers of some sort, and many are quite conventional," the ...