Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.

“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Mr. Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited the many sex abuse scandals in churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.

As Mr. Dulak rejects being part of a religious flock, he has plenty of company. He is a “none,” meaning he checks “none” when pollsters ask, “What’s your religion?”

The decades-long rise of the nones—a diverse, hard-to-summarize group—is one of the most talked about phenomena in U.S. religion. They are reshaping America’s religious landscape.

In U.S. religion today, “the most important story without a shadow of a doubt is the unbelievable rise in the share of Americans who are nonreligious,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University and author of “The Nones,” a book on the phenomenon.

The nones account for a large portion of Americans, as shown by the 30 percent of U.S. adults who claim no religious affiliation in a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Other major surveys say the nones have been steadily increasing for as long as three decades.

They are the atheists, the agnostics, the “nothing in particular.” Many are “spiritual but not religious,” and some are neither or both. They span class, gender, age, race and ethnicity.

The one thing that binds this diverse group: They really do not like organized religion.

In a way, can you blame them? In May of 2023, the Illinois attorney general revealed that more than 450 Catholic clergy abused nearly 2,000 children from 1950 to 2019. Add this to the many thousands more boys and girls that have been abused around the globe. In 2019, a 288-page report detailed how the Southern Baptist Convention systematically hid sexual abuse allegations among its leaders.

Then there are the rampant financial schemes. One minister took some $16 million from members of church flocks in 43 states in the name of the so-called “prosperity gospel,” CNBC reported. One family gave the man their entire life savings of $1.3 million, believing it would further God’s kingdom—but it all turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. The man is now serving a 19-year federal prison sentence for fraud.

The men and women who claim to be selected by God to lead churches keep failing parishioners. Over and over.

Such actions by church leaders fly in the face of what the Bible clearly says—driving away adherents even more.

Take the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 23:27-28: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Despite this clear condemnation of hypocrisy, think of all the scandals that fly in the face of that.

Beyond bad examples of individual ministers and church leaders, religion in general has a sordid track record throughout history. The sheer number of negative things done in the name of God fills history books. Muslim extremists attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and, more recently, Hamas’ attack on Israel sparked the ensuing gruesome war.

Historical religious wars carry hefty body counts. The Reconquista conflicts between Muslim and Christian states led to some 7 million deaths. The Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants killed at least 8 million people. The Taiping Rebellion, led by a Christian sect in China, killed more than 20 million.

This is where many of the “nones” may be on to something. They look at all the evils and ills that come from organized religion and decide to look elsewhere.

The nonreligious, agnostics and even atheists have legitimate questions that deserve answers. One of the biggest is this: Does the world really need God in the 21st century?

The Trend

In 2018, U.S. News & World Report found that a majority of people identify religion as the “primary source of most global conflict today.”

Read this another way. Most people believe that things done in the name of God are the root of the world’s problems.

The article noted that spiritual beliefs create “us vs. them” scenarios. This grows worse during times of conflict.

“When societies shatter, they generally shatter along tribal lines. People are seeing themselves as irretrievably different from their neighbors,” Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher who has published books on the conflict between religion and science, told the news outlet.

The article continued: “The divisions created by religion are deeper and potentially more harmful than those formed through other aspects of identity such as race, nationality or political affiliations because they confront individuals with differing opinions on the ultimate purpose of life, experts say. And more than 80 percent of those surveyed said that religious beliefs guide a person’s behavior.”

While the U.S. is trending away from religion, this is not the case globally. Amid all the religious conflicts throughout Earth today, the problem is poised to grow worse.

In 2022, Pew Research Center reported that from 2010 to 2050, Muslim adherents are projected to grow faster than any other religion—and will rival or surpass “Christians as the world’s largest religious group before the end of this century.”

Religious unaffiliated will go from 16 percent in 2010 down to 13 percent in 2050, Pew stated. During that time, Muslims will increase from 23 percent to 30 percent of the world population. In addition, by 2060, over 40 percent of the world’s Christians are predicted to live in sub-Saharan Africa.

As the religious unaffiliated shrink and religions grow larger, does anyone think that violent conflicts will not result? The clash of Muslim-based Hamas with majority Jewish Israel is just one example. The coming decades are slated to have so many more such bloody conflicts.

Is this all worth it? In the name of God, many individuals and organizations want to do the right things. They want to help. Yes, they do some good, but it always seems to come with sordid scandals and violence.

God and Morality

Does the world really need God to be ethical and moral? Many say no.

Pew asked 38,426 people in 34 countries a question along these lines in 2019. A median of 51 percent reported that belief in God is not needed to be moral and have good values.

However, the study revealed many regional differences.

Pew’s report stated: “People in the emerging economies included in this survey tend to be more religious and more likely to consider religion to be important in their lives, and they are also more likely than people in this survey who live in advanced economies to say that belief in God is necessary to be moral.”

Wealthier nations show an opposite trend: “In the eight Western European publics surveyed, a median of just 22% say belief in God is necessary to be moral, while in the six Eastern European nations studied, a median of 33% share the same view. Prior research establishes the European continent as increasingly secular on the whole, though among Europeans, there are notable differences between Eastern and Western countries in attitudes toward religion and religious minorities.”

In America, 44 percent said belief in God is necessary to be moral.

The U.S. is a great case study of religion versus the secular. Other Western nations have long subscribed to a more secular approach—Canada and the United Kingdom answered the question with 26 percent and 20 percent respectively.

In America, the clashes between religious and secular groups can be seen daily in its political discourse. Abortion, gender issues, and what is taught in schools are all polarizing topics that lead to heated debate. For the religious right in the U.S., they have taken it upon themselves to push for “godly” laws.

The problem with this? It goes against what Jesus clearly taught.

While on trial before His crucifixion, Jesus addressed whether His followers should fight, protest or campaign in His name: “My Kingdom is not of this world: if My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is My Kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36).

Some believe God’s Kingdom arrived after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, so they think this instruction does not apply today. However, did the 12 apostles ever fight the powers that be? Is there any evidence that they campaigned to enact change in their governments?

Nope. So trying to make the U.S. more Christian now is against what Christ taught—and will only cause more bitter division.

But this does not let secularists off the hook. Canada, the UK and much of Europe all have their own problems, despite being less religious as a whole.

Divine Indifference?

One of the most pointed questions from agnostics and atheists is this: If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why does He not intervene? Why does He look down on all the war, abuse, corruption and awfulness and then seem to do nothing?

The typical reaction to this question is that, because God does not intervene, He either does not exist or is not worthy of devotion.

Why does God seem to be indifferent to the overall affairs of man?

Perhaps surprisingly, this question has been asked by believers themselves—and it is recorded in the Bible. Psalm 10:1 starts this way: “Why stand You afar off, O Lord? Why hide You Yourself in times of trouble?”

Religionists cannot answer this towering question.

Yet the Bible does answer it! God gave human beings free will. He is giving human beings a portion of time to try out their own ways and governments to see that they do not work. Justly, God is allowing people space to see that only by following His ways is true peace and prosperity possible.

So, today’s awful world is the result of thousands of years of man doing his own thing. The decisions and systems of human beings have contributed to all the evils and ills in this world.

But this has a purpose. God wants everyone to finally recognize a powerful truth: “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walks to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). God wants everyone to see we cannot do this alone.

Ultimately, God will intervene by establishing His Kingdom on Earth. This is the same message that Jesus preached: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18).

When the Kingdom arrives, God will work with everyone who has ever lived. They will be able to remember the awful ills that come from following man’s ways and compare them to the conditions that come from society following God’s Law.

One of the first orders of business will be to address religious leaders.

In Jeremiah 50:6, God states, “My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds”—their ministers!—“have caused them to go astray…”

Ezekiel 34:2-3 reveals God’s immense displeasure with hypocritical religious leaders: “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks? You eat the fat, and you clothe you with the wool, you kill them that are fed: but you feed not the flock.”

Verse 10 says God is “against the shepherds,” and the whole chapter shows how He will deal with them.

“The Unknown God”

So does the world need God? Yes, and desperately so. Yet God clearly believes it is not quite time for Him to bring the Kingdom and utterly change the world.

An account in Acts 17 describes how God feels about the current age. The apostle Paul was preaching to the people of Athens.

Paul said: “I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God. Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you” (vs. 22-23).

The true God of the Bible is that same unknown God. Most have no idea He exists, trapped by false religious ideas.

Paul continued, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, seeing He gives to all life, and breath, and all things; and has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (vs. 24-26).

The apostle was introducing the true God to these pagan Athenians. Yet Paul’s words also introduce the true God to anyone who will listen.

Notice verse 27: “That they”—everyone who has ever lived—“should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us.”

God wants everyone to seek Him. He wants them to “feel after Him, and find Him.” Yet, sadly, as Romans 3:11 states, “…there is none that seeks after God.”

But this does not mean God is not working with individuals today. At the end of the story in Acts 17, “some mocked” what Paul had to say, while others had the right attitude: “We will hear you again of this matter” (vs. 32).

God does “draw” individuals to Him (John 6:44) by opening their minds to His truths, similar to how the Athenians were ready to hear more of what Paul had to say.

The same goes for you. You may have been asking the same questions posed in this article: Why are so many religions so hypocritical? Why does God not intervene in world affairs?

Or even bigger questions: Can I prove God exists? What role does Satan play? Is the Bible God’s Word? Does He have a true Church?

You deserve answers to these questions! To help you on your way, visit rcg.org and read {%523} and {%513} These are both produced by the publisher of The Real Truth: The Restored Church of God.

Do not just take my word for it. Also, do not just take the Church’s word for it. Prove these things for yourself from your Bible.

The world does need God, and He will soon intervene, bringing the Kingdom of God. Do you need God? Yes. But it is up to you to answer His calling.

This article contains information from The Associated Press.