As a self-declared religiously unaffiliated libertarian, I am frustrated by the lack of options available to me in the political arena.

I don’t fit neatly in the lines of either the Democratic or Republican party, so I usually research candidates individually without consideration for their party affiliation. Over the past few years, however, I have felt increasingly isolated from the Republican party as their positions have become entrenched along religious lines.

Where do we turn when political conservatism becomes mired in religious motivations? When the Republican party’s platform is no longer hospitable to the religiously unaffiliated?

To verify some of my suspicions about the increasing religious polarization of the Republican party, I turned to the Pew Research Center for data on religious tendencies in the United States.

Data from an October 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that there has been a steady rise in religiously unaffiliated Americans over the past decade (“‘Nones’ on the Rise”). I found several sets of religious affiliation data particularly insightful, including the rising percentage of Americans who seldom or never attend religious services – now 29 percent – and the stark differences in the unaffiliated are marked by generational divisions. A surprising 32 percent of emerging adults are self-declared unaffiliated, which is in sharp contrast to older age groups. Even our parents’ generation came in at 21 percent unaffiliated, and the numbers decline rapidly from there.

So what could this mean for the future of religious participation and affiliation?

There are several existing theories that attempt to explain the rise in unaffiliated Americans – particularly in youth – including broad social disengagement on a more general level as well as political backlash.

Robert Putnam of Harvard University is well known for his book, Bowling Alone, which focuses on the increasing disengagement of emerging adults in society and an increasing decline in social capital. Putnam focuses on disengagement from core community activities that a generation ago would have defined an engaged citizen. Other political and social scientists disagree, however, believing this is an antiquated definition of civic engagement.

Either way, I don’t see social disengagement as the source of increasing religious unaffiliation in the United States. On the other hand, I believe that secularization is increasingly affecting the political sphere and the shift is in favor of progressive ideology and the Democratic party.

According to the authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, emerging adults associate religious affiliation with political conservatism and thus characterize religion as “judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political.”

The religiously unaffiliated are instead drawn to the Democratic party, as shown by the 2008 election, where 75 percent of the religiously unaffiliated voted for Barack Obama over John McCain. This tendency is also supported by the fact that the religiously unaffiliated are twice as likely to describe themselves as politically liberal rather than conservative.

I am disappointed that religion has permeated politics so completely that the Republican party no longer presents a viable option to those who are not religiously motivated in their political decisionmaking.

I find it appalling that the political arena has become polarized by religious conviction to such an extent that what was once merely considered political conservativism is now synonymous with religious conservativism.

Political issues revolving around questions of morality need not be solely the domain of conservative religious talking heads. There is room for religiously unaffiliated moral dialogue in both of our major political parties and I think we need more of this in order to build parties of diverse members to cultivate evolving party platforms.