Wearing her pajamas, senior Alia Robinson starts her Sunday by going downstairs to eat an English muffin. After she finishes, she watches “Star Trek,” reads a book or checks Facebook and Twitter. What Robinson does not do these mornings is attend church.

Robinson said she is not religious and would classify herself as somewhere in between agnostic and atheist. She is not religious, she said, but in this she is not alone.

According to an Oct. 9, 2012 Pew Research Center poll, the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has grown over the last five years from just over 15 percent to almost 20 percent, which is the highest percentage ever in its polling. This trend is largely induced by generational replacement. One-third of Millennials—people between ages 18 and 29—have no religious affiliation, compared to only one-tenth of adults 65 and older. In addition, the poll showed that young adults today are less likely to be religiously affiliated than those of the same age in previous generations.

According to Robinson, she hesitates to classify herself as either agnostic or atheist because she identifies with some ideas in both major nonreligious groups.

“I feel like agnostics are generally willing to accept the idea of a higher power, whereas I’m a bit more skeptical of the idea and more inclined to think there is no higher power,” Robinson said. “I hesitate to call myself an atheist because I don’t necessarily have a concrete belief that there is no higher power.”

Most unaffiliated Americans have left a religious group at some point in their lives,  but Robinson has been unaffiliated her whole life. Her family, including her parents and two younger siblings, are not affiliated with a religion either.

“I really admire my parents because they never told me what to believe. They left me at my devices to explore,” Robinson said.

However, junior Meghan Duffy is among the majority of young, unaffiliated Americans whose parents are religious. She is a self-proclaimed agnostic who left Catholicism, her family’s religion, in eighth grade.

“My parents respect my choice (to be agnostic), but my dad still makes me go to church whenever my family goes, which is typically on holidays,” Duffy said. “I don’t feel any different than I ever have (at home). But whenever we go to church or pray during the holiday dinners, I feel a little awkward.”

Losing Our Religion

Perry Kea, chairperson of the Philosophy and Religion Department at the University of Indianapolis, said one reason young people are turning away from religion is their liberal stance on social issues.

“You’ve got a demographic group that is socially liberal on some of these hot button issues (like same-sex marriage and abortion), but the churches are perceived to be socially conservative on the same issues. You can understand why there might be a disconnect and why younger people—mainly 18 to 29-year-olds—are moving away from organized religion,” Kea said.

For Robinson, her main reason for not following a religion is that she doesn’t believe in the idea of a God.

“I’m not entirely opposed to the idea (of the existence of a god). I’m more inclined to believe in things when I have a reason to and they can be backed up by scientific evidence. The foundation of a lot of religions is faith, and I disagree with that,” Robinson said.

However, according to Robinson, one reason she does not like religion is because of the religious institutions’ involvement in social issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, because they are personal decisions. Religious institutions should not impose their beliefs on others and overtake public opinion, she said.

Alia’s father Ted Robinson is also non-religious. He said he grew up in a cultural Christian household and went to Sunday school as a kid. However, his parents let him and his siblings stop attending around eighth or ninth grade, which is when he became an atheist. Even when he did go to Sunday school, Mr. Robinson said he was not truly a Christian.

“I remember one time in Sunday when we were having a discussion, I told the other kids that I didn’t believe in God, and they were all flabbergasted,” Mr. Robinson said.

According to Mr. Robinson, he does not personally see more unaffiliated young people in Alia’s generation than in his own at that age. However, he said he thinks it is a little bit more socially acceptable to be a nonbeliever now than it was when he was a teen because society is more accepting towards differences.

“We were a little bit more homogenous back (when I was a teenager),” Mr. Robinson said. “Diversity as an ethic is something we have come to aspire over the last 30 or 40 years. People now are a little bit more accepting of others who have different beliefs, whether it is a different religion, different racial backgrounds or sexual orientation.”

Kurt Brodbeck, student ministry pastor at Northview Church, said that although he has not seen a growing trend of students leaving religious affiliations at Northview Church in particular, he is aware of the growing trend in the nation. He said he believes this is occurring mainly because religious institutions have not done a good job at making religion relevant to young people.

“Part of the job of the church is to equip people to understand God’s words and how it applies directly to them, and it doesn’t always do a good job of that,” Brodbeck said.

Although religious institutions were not the primary reason Duffy became agnostic, she said questioning them led her to question God. One aspect she didn’t like about her experience with religious institutions was how they made religion seem irrelevant.

“Sometimes the church can be distant when there is a guy preaching words from a 1,000-year-old book without relating it to your life. Like on Christmas mass, they just listed all the descendants of Jesus, so it is becoming kind of irrelevant,” Duffy said.

In addition, Duffy also said she does not like how religious institutions have many rules, such as going to church every Sunday and listening to certain Catholic services in Latin.

“If I wanted to pray to God and believe in him, I don’t think he would have cared if I didn’t go to church. You are able to believe in something without being in this building (church) and getting the Kool-Aid shoved down your throat,” Duffy said.

According to Kea, as well as Mr. Robinson, the flight of many Millenials from religion is a part of a larger trend by which young people also are not joining as many community clubs and institutions as previous generations were part of, including religious groups.

“(Millennials have) other ways that they feel connected. There’s a lot more social participation online (to meet new people).  That’s why people used to join organizations like the Rotary Club and Lions Club. It was a way to connect with people and network with people with similar interests and goals. You can do more of that online now than you could once upon a time,” Kea said.

Impact on Society and Religion

Brodbeck said he thinks the departure of young people from religion has resulted in the decline of moral standards on a national scale.

“The new moral standard of the United States is that if it’s illegal, it’s wrong. But as long as it’s not illegal, then it’s not wrong. But I could point to many things that are wrong morally without being illegal,” Brodbeck said.

However, according to Kea, the increased number of people leaving religion has not caused a more unethical society. He said that while there are many examples of people behaving badly today, there are similar examples of immoral behavior in previous eras as well. Many non-religious people today, he said, adhere to similar moral and ethical standards.

Like Kea, Alia and Duffy both said that being unaffiliated has not affected their morals in a negative way.

“I don’t think (leaving religion) has added or taken anything away from my morals,” Duffy said. “Having the religious upbringing I had, I guess I got a few morals, but it’s not like I suddenly want to pillage villages and kill people. I’m the same person as I was before, I just don’t believe in God.”

Still, Robinson said she thinks being unaffiliated has changed the source of her morals. Instead of having morals based on a set of teachings, she said she has morals based on reasoning and the effects that her actions have on others.

The Future for the Unaffiliated

According to Kea, religious institutions will now have to reflect on ways to attract younger communities as a result of their departure from religion. In addition, some  now-unaffiliated Americans may gravitate towards more liberal churches.

“There are some religious communities that may describe themselves as liberal or progressive. Some of them may feel like they need to get their story out there. We might imagine a pick-up in the growth of the socially progressive churches, but that will require churches to find ways to connect with this somewhat disconnected and unaffiliated group of young people,” Kea said.

Despite the growing number of young people who leave religion, Brodbeck said he thinks many of them will return to religion when they are older and have their own kids.

“The biggest growth in our church is people with young kids. They get to a point in life when they go, ‘Okay, I need to make a change and raise my kids in the way that I was raised, which was knowing the Lord,’ ” Brodbeck said.

Kea said he agrees with Brodbeck and thinks many unaffiliated Millennials will return to religion in their early thirties.

“It’s not unusual for people in their late teens and early twenties to drift away from the religious faith of their parents to take a holiday from it or to experiment with new things,” Kea said.

Despite these trends, Mr. Robinson did not go back to church when he had kids and did not expose Alia to any religions when she was younger.

“I let her choose what she wanted to believe in. It seems pretty obvious to let her choose her religion. It’s very personal, and I don’t think someone can tell you what to believe,” Mr. Robinson said.

According to Kea, there will always be a certain number of people who do not return to religion. However, he said, with the increase of unaffiliated Millennials, the number of people in their early thirties who do not revert will be larger than in the past.

Alia said she will do the same as her father did when she is older and has kids of her own. She said the only way for her to reexamine her beliefs is for her to see some physical evidence that God exists. Even then, she would not necessarily become religious but simply be more open to the idea of the existence of God.

As for her children, Alia said she wants to teach her future kids about different ideologies without telling them to follow in any specific belief.

“My hope is that when I have children, I will educate them on different beliefs, not just being agnostic or atheist versus Christian,” Alia said. “I want to teach them about Judaism and the Church of Latter Day Saints and Hinduism and Islam and all these other religions. I think the first step to acceptance of people who are different from you is overcoming ignorance and achieving understanding of their beliefs.”