Barbara Hagerty
Award-winning journalist and author who spent nearly 20 years as an NPR correspondent, including as its religion correspondent, reporting on the intersection of faith, politics, law, science, and culture.
The “Nones” Category Obscures Americans’ Spiritual and Moral Lives
Harvard’s Richard Parker and USC’s Diane Winston argue that journalists should not treat the 29% of Americans labeled religious “nones” as people without belief, moral commitments or sources of meaning. In a Faith Angle Forum discussion, Winston contends that the secular-sacred divide obscures how religion, politics, markets, culture and technology shape one another, while Parker warns that survey categories and polling trends cannot provide a full account of a person’s life. Their shared prescription is to report beyond affiliation labels without collapsing every cultural or political commitment into religion.
Partisan Identity Is Reshaping Religious Belief and Political Mobilization
University of Notre Dame political scientist David Campbell argues that religion and politics shape each other: partisan identity can drive changes in religious affiliation, moral judgment, and the meaning Americans attach to labels such as Christian or secular. In a Faith Angle Forum discussion with New York Times *Believing* newsletter writer Lauren Jackson, he says Republican appeals to threatened Christian identity remain potent but limited, while Jackson hears from religiously and politically unsettled readers seeking belonging, hope, and a public language that does not reduce faith to a voting bloc.