NewsWire: 4/12/21
- Church membership among U.S. adults has fallen below 50% for the first time. It was 73% when Gallup first began measuring it during the Great Depression and remained there for decades before declining rapidly after the year 2000. (Gallup)
- NH: The extent of this drop is indeed stunning. When Gallup first asked the question back in 1937, in one of George Gallup's earliest polls, 73% of Americans said they were members of a church. Sixty-two years later, in 1999, the figure was 70%. Last year, in 2020, the figure was 47%.
- Gallup analyzes the decline by breaking it down into two components: the share of Americans who say they identify with any religion; and, of those, the share who say they are members of a church. Over the last 20 years, says Gallup, declines in each of these shares have contributed about equally to the total drop. Here are Gallup's numbers on the second component.
- The 20-year trend is downward in practically every demographic group. But the decline is steeper in some groups than in others. It is steeper among the unmarried (-22%) than the married (-13%); among liberals (-21%) than conservatives (-14%); among Democrats (-25%) than Republicans (-12%); and in the East (-25%) than in the South (-16%). All of these dyads of course are correlated with each other. The decline is also steeper among younger adults than older adults--and younger adults are certainly more likely to be unmarried, liberal, and Democrats.
- A couple of other divergences are uncorrelated with the rest. The decline is much steeper among Catholics (-18%) than Protestants (-9%) and among noncollege adults (-22%) than college graduates (-14%).
- We have covered these trends extensively in earlier NewsWires. See "Fewer than Half of Americans Go to Church Monthly or More," "Rise of the Religious 'Nones,'" and "'Nones' Rising." In those pieces we explain that the actual decline in Americans' religious engagement may be less dramatic--or at least a bit different in its significance--than the observed membership or affiliation numbers suggest.
- First, most experts agree that a significant share of this decline is due to fewer "shy" or "polite" respondents, that is, by fewer people reporting that they are, say, "Episcopalian" or "Lutheran" when in fact they never (either back then or today) went to church. In other words, their responses to surveys have changed even though their behavior hasn't.
- Believe it or not, there was a time not that long ago when many people did not want to tell anybody that they did not belong to a church. Today no one cares. In fact, the shyness may have actually reversed direction among Democrats, some of whom may hesitate to admit their religious affiliation.
- Another clue that the poll numbers may overstate behavior change is the fact that the biggest reported declines come from members of mainstream denominations (that demand less behavioral commitment). The smallest reported declines come from orthodox or "evangelical" denominations (that demand more). Indeed, some analysts claim (based on GSS and CCES surveys) that the share of Americans who identify as "evangelicals" has remained fairly constant in recent years at about 33-35%.
- Second, yes, there is no question that corruption and abuse scandals--to say nothing of abandoned standards of sexual morality--have driven many Americans away from church membership. This probably explains, for example, why the Catholic decline has been so steep. At the same time, Americans remain surprisingly positive about religion's social influence. By very large majorities, most continue to believe that churches "strengthen community bonds" (89%), "play an important role in helping the poor" (87%), and "protect and strengthen morality in society" (75%). In short, churches retain a reservoir of popular good will even among those who don't attend them.
- Third, while part of the overall decline is due to the exceptional drop in church-going and church membership among young people, some of this young-adult drop may be a one-time cohort effect. Religious affiliation has always followed a well-defined lifecycle pattern: People learn a religious tradition as kids, largely abandon it as single young adults, and then adopt it again when they get married and have children. Millennials, as we all know, are marrying and having children at older ages. That delay may itself may be redefining young adulthood as a less religious phase of life. Consider the Gallup data on church attendance by age.
- Here we see, in all three years, the classic lifecycle pattern: lowest church attendance in the early to mid-20s and gradually rising attendance at every age thereafter. Yet something else is going on as well. Notice the conspicuous gap opening up in the late-20s and early-30s between the green line (Millennials in 2019) and the earlier lines. That's the impact of Millennials having kids later in life. You can also see a gap opening up in the early-70s between Boomers and Silent--but that's another story.
- Finally, while many observers are making bold predictions about how declining religious affiliation will transform politics in America, I think the outcome is impossible to fathom.
- Many on the left expect the decline of religion to push more voters into their progressive (and secular) camp--on the assumption that religion works to defend the status quo. History demonstrates, however, religion also works to inspire people to join crusades and pursue reforms. Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic that while less religion may turn young mainstream Protestants toward the Democrats, it may turn young African-Americans away from the Democrats. (We saw both trends in the last election.)
- A close look at Pew data on the growth of the "nones" shows that only about a third of this growth is due to rising numbers of educated and engaged "atheists" and "agnostics." These adults do indeed tip heavily to the left in their politics. But the other two-thirds are quite different. They tend to be noncollege and disengaged and have given up caring for religion one way or the other. If and when they do engage, they may be especially inclined to move to the right.
- As Donald Trump's presidency demonstrates, Americans who self-identify as "evangelical" are rapidly becoming less defined by their faith than by their politics. The best-researched book on this shift from Christian belief to "Christian nationalism" is by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States.
- Who knows where this goes? According to Murtaza Hussain in "How the Death of Faith Will Hurt the Left" and Shadi Hamid in "America Without God," the dogma, zealotry, and apocalypticism of political ideology are replacing most of the space in our lives that used to be occupied by religion, without any longer the solace of an afterlife in which all wrongs will be made right. Wokeism and QAnon have each been defined as "new religions." Each has its own heaven for the elect, its own hell for the reprobate, and its own vision of the end times.
- America is becoming a postmodern nation in which conspiracy thinking really matters because, as Kurt Andersen put it in his brilliant book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, even if it isn't true, it may as well be true.
- While the numbers may exaggerate the trend, Americans' attachment to religion has weakened significantly over the last generation. And that's a serious development with unpredictable implications. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, when people choose to believe in nothing, well, they become capable of believing in anything.
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