Magazine correspondent Jonathan Rauch gives religious tolerance a new name: "apatheism." It came to him recently that he is an apatheist. That coinage emerged when someone asked him about his religion. "Atheist" came to mind; he used to call himself an atheist, but the larger truth is that it has been years since he cared one way or another. Apatheism is a disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s.

Apatheism concerns not what you believe, but how. In that respect it differs from the standard concepts used to describe religious views and people. Atheism, for instance, is not at all like apatheism; the hot-blooded atheist cares as much about religion as does the evangelical Christian, but in the opposite direction. Most agnostics are apatheists, but most apatheists are not agnostics. Because—and this is an essential point—many apatheists are believers.

In America, the proportion of people who say they never go to church or synagogue has tripled since 1972, to 33 percent in 2000. Most of these people believe in God; they just don’t care much about God.

[paraphrased from Martin Marty's newsletter "Context" (May, 2003)]