Pew reported yesterday that the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation continues to rise to over 19%. However, there is a complex story taking place with this group: many are still religious or spiritual, this may be more about generational change, and it could be that those who rarely go to church are now more willing to say so.

However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics…

The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives…

In addition to religious behavior, the way that Americans talk about their connection to religion seems to be changing. Increasingly, Americans describe their religious affiliation in terms that more closely match their level of involvement in churches and other religious organizations. In 2007, 60% of those who said they seldom or never attend religious services nevertheless described themselves as belonging to a particular religious tradition. In 2012, just 50% of those who say they seldom or never attend religious services still retain a religious affiliation – a 10-point drop in five years. These trends suggest that the ranks of the unaffiliated are swelling in surveys partly because Americans who rarely go to services are more willing than in the past to drop their religious attachments altogether.

So while the number of atheists and agnostics has risen in the last few years, the number of non-affiliated Americans has risen even more as more people are less interested in identifying with religious institutions.

I wonder if there is another explanation at work here: in general, Americans now have less trust in all institutions. Here is where things stood in October 2011:

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed barely 10 percent of the public trusts the government. But it doesn’t stop there: Trust in public institutions like corporations, banks, courts, the media and universities is at an all-time low; the military is one of the few exceptions.

Perhaps this is a package deal. And perhaps this was part of the oddness of the 1950s; the prosperous era suggested Americans could trust institutions (and church attendance and membership went up) but the zeitgeist started going the other way in the 1960s.