The unaffiliated, also termed Nones, are those who when asked about their religious identity or institutional affiliation check the box “none of the above.” This session will explore the spiritualities of those who can be classified as Nones into conversation with Kierkegaard’s writings on themes related to Christendom, the institutional church, the role of doctrine and tradition, the significance of the subjectivity of the single individual, and Religiousness A and Religiousness B.
The most recent survey by the PEW Research Center (2024) on religion found that for the first time the “religiously unaffiliated” or “religious nones” constituted the largest cohort (28%) of American adults, edging out Catholics (23%) and Evangelical Protestants (23%). Although it may appear as if this group shares some sympathies with certain Kierkegaardian attitudes in regard to Christendom, the institutional church, and normative culture in general, a closer look reveals that these Religious Nones, particularly the ones who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” (63%), are animated not so much by “inwardness” but by the evasion of commitments, either to the divine or to one’s community. Unable to articulate the conditions of belief or even a rich picture of human fullness, the lived spiritualities of Religious Nones reflects a detached perspective within an immanent frame that is closer to Kierkegaardian despair than to a genuine life of spirit.
This paper explores how those who no longer identify with a religious tradition or community may encounter the paradox of the eternal in time in edifying ways that foster the development of authentic selfhood. For one could easily argue along with Kierkegaard that becoming a self before God is certainly not guaranteed simply because a person might belong to a religious community, etc. In light of this assertion, it is argued that the individual may encounter the paradox of the eternal outside of any formal religious community and come to receive oneself as a single individual in relation to the eternal through the existence-communication of Christianity as communicated through the inverse witness and how this encounter with the inverse witness may lead an individual into the ongoing reception of one’s concrete particular self via the inward self-reflexive relational dynamics of coming to exist as a self before God.
This paper analyzes the congruity between Kierkegaard’s late polemical writings against the state church and his earlier writings critiquing “the public” or “the crowd.” Just as the public is everyone and no one at the same time, so blurred lines between church and state in Danish Christendom mean that the church is also made up of everyone and no one, for “we are all Christians” (*The Moment*). In both the church and the public, there is a temptation to lose oneself in the universal instead of stepping into the particularity of a relationship with God. Kierkegaard’s argument holds particular relevance for Christians who have chosen to leave their faith communities due to moral injury or spiritual danger.