On this broader trend, I think at least part of what's happening is that people whose social views never really changed have started identifying as Evangelical in opposition to changes in the left.
There's a cluster in my extended family that -- while not really redneck, we might call "redneck-adjacent". They vote Republican WHEN they bother to vote, never attend church, but I think for most of my life, they contrasted their social views with those of the more religious members of my family. While not complete libertines, they're more open to premarital sex, children out of wedlock, abortion, heavy drinking, gambling, etc., and they see the rest of us to some degree as fuddy-duddies.
When Trump came along, this group jumped on the MAGA train without hesitation. I think the religious members also mostly voted for him, but with a lot more reservations.
Alongside this, what's happened is that the non-attending group, instead of primarily contrasting their social views with their more religious neighbors and family members (the fuddy-duddies, who never really changed), they're contrasting them with the extreme representatives of Pride culture, who 20 years ago they'd never heard of or thought about but are suddenly much more prominent in media. Which naturally makes this group much more open to the Evangelical identity that they previously ran away from.
I wonder how it'll affect the perception of American Christianity in the future. There's going to be quite a lot of people that aren't Christian, but will say they are because they see Christianity as baked in the American identity.
My expectation is that Christianity's cultural association with the right is one that will only deepen as the generations that remember the Mainline's central place in American life die off, and as the Mainline churches themselves die off.
So yes, I think you will find that Christian identity will be hard to dislodge among people who vote for the GOP. For right-leaning nominals, Christianity will hold a place similar to the National Anthem. Something you of course show respect to when the topic comes up, but otherwise you don't think much about.
Among people on the left, a total rejection of Christian identity will increasingly be the norm, though Democratic politicians will still try to slice it thin and only condemn the bad, socially conservative Christians. Still, the left's increasingly flagrant rejection of and disrespect for Christianity will itself continue to generate equal and opposite tribal responses from right-leaning nominals, just like kneeling during the National Anthem.
It’s weird when I go to my wife’s family. They are all boomers from New England that are devout weekly church attending leftists. Of an older kind of working class Irish catholic that is dying off.
When you ask them why they are democrats you don’t hear about progressive culture war stuff but Vietnam and Medicare.
It’s notable that of the six children only my wife’s mother had children, and she’s the least political. Something about leftism just kills fertility.
The mainlines have died because their attendees didn’t have kids.
I think there is going to be a big divide between people with lots of kids and those without, and it’s going to map into church attendance more and more. Even people that don’t accept the theology will see the church as pro-family.
I went to Catholic high school and was well-acquainted with several large families with weekly-attending Catholic Boomer Democrat parents. Yours seems like a common story. A lot of these kids went off the deep end in leftist politics in college and as young adults. One became a professional abortion activist. I'm aware of zero that have kept the faith or that ended up to the right of their parents, and very few grandchildren were produced -- the family I know best has produced 2 grandchildren, and 2 marriages, out of 5 children that are now in their mid 30s to early 40s.
I also think part of the recipe is that this high school was in a more leftist part of the country, and the kids from left-leaning families assimilated to that broader regional culture. Our particular county leaned Republican though, as did the school community overall, and so the kids from conservative families were more inclined to remain in that culture.
In the South, the formula is a little different because the broader secular culture is more conservative. The student populations of the flagship schools in the South are pretty evenly divided politically. And there's also "redneck" white working class culture.
I'd disagree that the Mainlines died because the attendees didn't have kids though. I grew up Mainline. I went to a Mainline preschool in the 80s -- it was booming. My Evangelical church is full of Millennials who grew up Mainline (and a surprising number that grew up Catholic).
What happened is the Mainlines had nothing to offer Millennials, so those who didn't apostatize went Evangelical.
I looked up the TFR of many of the big leftist mainline churches and it was very low. Episcopal's did a report on why nobody was episcopal anywhere and the low TFR of episcopal was a big driver.
Of course mainline means a lot of different denominations and you are going to get some variance. And not all of them are hard left.
Is that their current TFR though, or their TFR in the past? And is it accounting for age of members?
I'd predict that in the 1980s, when the earlier Millennials were being born, TFR for regular attenders of the largest Mainline denominations (let's say, UMC, TEC, PCUSA, and ELCA) was close to, or above, the national average at the time.
Plenty of ordinary middle-class Reagan-voting Boomers attended these churches with their kids in the 1980s. It's just that very few of their kids stayed to raise their own kids in those churches.
I do think Christianity among non-immigrant populations will go the way Judaism is also going: secular/Reform Jews intermarrying and simply stop affiliating at all, while Orthodox Jews have 5+ kids and keep the faith going, which will likely making the future of American Judaism very conservative.
However, a major development in American Christianity is that immigrants and their descendants will be a much larger part of it. Especially as the Latin American population grows, Christianity will develop a reputation as something nonwhite people and immigrants believe in, which might then give Christianity a shield on the left. Basically, white Christianity will be heavily right-coded, but non-white Christianity will be given more leeway by the left.
Other than a special dispensation for the black church, I don't think an Evangelicalism that is, say, 40% nonwhite would receive any special treatment in the abstract -- though individual Evangelicals might.
Which is another way of saying that POCs receive more leniency for thoughtcrime. I think this is generally true in practice, especially once you start looking at regular people and not a powerful figure like Clarence Thomas.
Just the other week, I watched a black colleague express some reactionary ideas about crime and punishment to a very liberal white prospective client, which caused me to bite my tongue and wince. But the prospect nodded along thoughtfully; "The black community has been through a lot," etc. I don't think it would have gone so well if I'd expressed those ideas.
On your first paragraph, I do think there's an important difference, because Christians will remain an important part of the (shrinking) conservative coalition for the foreseeable future and will retain a certain amount of thought leadership within that coalition when it comes to social issues.
Also Christians, if we include nominals, will remain a local majority in many or most of the places where they actually live, even if Christians + nominals shrink to less than 50% of the total US population.
Secular and Reform Jews are assimilating because they are a small minority, and without sincere dedication to the faith, the commitment to remain a set-apart minority is something that burns out fast. So Jews are of rapidly declining importance in the left's (growing) coalition.
Amongst people (particularly those under 30) who do not identify themselves as Christian, their reasons can generally fall under two categories. 1.) The central claims of Christianity are poorly evidenced. 2.) The loudest voices in Christianity have convicted them the essence of the faith is being a bigoted jerk.
I don't think there is much Christians can do about point 1, but they can do a lot about point 2.
As a member of the group that you’re discussing, I would push back on point 2 a bit. I think that there are plenty of people of faith who are moral and “practice what they preach” so to speak. I think the problem I saw is that religious organizations use people’s faith as a tool to promote or push a bigoted agenda.
I would amend that statement to something more along the lines of, “the loudest voices in Christianity have convinced me that religion is a tool being used to promote bigoted beliefs”.
ok, if I was unclear in my post, I want to clarify. I do not believe that the essence of Christianity is "being a bigoted jerk", or that this describes most Christians. I was talking about a view that many (especially Americans under 30) have stated as the reason why they are not Christian.
You weren’t being unclear - I see your point. I’m just giving my perspective as an under 30 year old non-Christian. I don’t speak for all non-Christians, obviously, but was offering up my own perspective just to shed a bit more light on how people like me view Christianity and its members.
When I was a Christian under 30 the dividing line was that Christian’s wanted date for the purpose to get married and minimize drugs and partying and seculars wanted the opposite of that (hook up, party, partake).
One important part of this discussion not mentioned iis intrinsic vs extrinsic religiosity. There are plenty of people who attend church weekly who still just see it as a means to some end like cultural identity.
I don’t believe a lot of what the Catholic Church holds as truth, but I still go to the pew because people there are closer to my values then alternatives.
My Jewish lenses would challenge much of this, with no disrepect to the collected data. While we do not form our tribes as Democrat or Republican, Reform them as Orthodox-Conservative-Reform in America and in Israel as Observant-Non-observant. Many of the heads of state of Israel never went to a synagogue or rarely engaged in a theological discussion, yet not only were they unassailably Jewish but contributed much to it. We could say the same of the soldiers putting themselves in harm's way today.
In America, the large immigrant wave, my grandparent's generation, was ambivalent. No question they went to synagogue in Poland and owned tfrillin, often greeting Lady Liberty by throwing their tfillin into the harbor in her direction. Same person a week apart, one worshipped in synagogue once a week, the other had other prioritites to pursue.
A hundred years later in America, we see pretty much the same. We have synagogues, often funded by economically successful people who did not attend them to benefit people who wanted to, Rabbinical academies for people who worship and study daily, and any number of legacy agencies, from medical centers with Biblical names to highly endowed advocacy agencies. And as we see in the news, the militants on campus will target you irrespective of your personal practice or your level of knowledge.
So were we Jews ahead of the curve by 100 years? Jewish has been an identity that survives adherence to the specified rules. There are expectations, though not necessarily worship. They include advocacy for each other, tolerance of diversity or at least subdivisions of tribes for common benefit, and contribution to tribal causes even though you may personally have misgivings. And there is also a certain fluid nature to the subdivisions where people shift in and out of synagogue membership, move from Jewish causes to secular causes that intersect with ideology, or even opt out.
The evangelicals that Ryan's post describes seem to be doing now what we have done for a very long time, though with public data to figure that out.
My parents aren’t religious and don’t attend church. Nevertheless, they took me to church and Sunday school until first communion.
When I asked about this my mom said that kids need to be taught some basic morality and beliefs and she thought the church was better then the alternatives, even though she didn’t believe.
And if you asked her she would say she’s catholic even though she doesn’t attend.
I too would not endorse some of the key faith statements of the church. But it’s a good place to raise a family.
This sounds and behaves like the Serbian and Croatian view on religion-the ideal is important but not the practice and this is why I live in such a different world than they do-the corporate worship is as important as the ideal and it exposes me to everyone. Look at Spencer Cox's efforts to depoliticize dinner and you will understand the fundamental difference between those worldviews.
I think you may be overemphasizing the cynical use of symbols. Leaders and politicians are certainly cynical. Among normal people it may be a matter of wishing or 'aspiration'. I would love to be solidly religious. It's clear that life is better and longer for people who can do it. But I'm not built to be faithful. I'm spiritually retarded.
So I support and defend the idea of religion without understanding faith and theology.
It is self-report, so there is always going to be some level of people reporting what they want to present as true, maybe not what is actually true. Like when my Dr. asks me if am I getting execerise every day and cutting down on sweets.
Growing up, my mother was a nurse who worked most Sundays, and we only went to church when she was off, so I suppose that made us the definition of monthly attenders.
But barring some restriction on your schedule like that, I would expect monthly attendance (i.e. showing up 25% of the time) to be unstable. You're either going to drift towards 0% or become committed, make attendance part of your weekly routine, and move closer to 100%.
All voluntary associations are like this. I belong to a longstanding 3x/week men's workout group. I notice there are some men who try to drop in once every week or two; they always end up drifting away. The ones who aspire to be there every time are the core group that never leaves.
On this broader trend, I think at least part of what's happening is that people whose social views never really changed have started identifying as Evangelical in opposition to changes in the left.
There's a cluster in my extended family that -- while not really redneck, we might call "redneck-adjacent". They vote Republican WHEN they bother to vote, never attend church, but I think for most of my life, they contrasted their social views with those of the more religious members of my family. While not complete libertines, they're more open to premarital sex, children out of wedlock, abortion, heavy drinking, gambling, etc., and they see the rest of us to some degree as fuddy-duddies.
When Trump came along, this group jumped on the MAGA train without hesitation. I think the religious members also mostly voted for him, but with a lot more reservations.
Alongside this, what's happened is that the non-attending group, instead of primarily contrasting their social views with their more religious neighbors and family members (the fuddy-duddies, who never really changed), they're contrasting them with the extreme representatives of Pride culture, who 20 years ago they'd never heard of or thought about but are suddenly much more prominent in media. Which naturally makes this group much more open to the Evangelical identity that they previously ran away from.
I wonder how it'll affect the perception of American Christianity in the future. There's going to be quite a lot of people that aren't Christian, but will say they are because they see Christianity as baked in the American identity.
My expectation is that Christianity's cultural association with the right is one that will only deepen as the generations that remember the Mainline's central place in American life die off, and as the Mainline churches themselves die off.
So yes, I think you will find that Christian identity will be hard to dislodge among people who vote for the GOP. For right-leaning nominals, Christianity will hold a place similar to the National Anthem. Something you of course show respect to when the topic comes up, but otherwise you don't think much about.
Among people on the left, a total rejection of Christian identity will increasingly be the norm, though Democratic politicians will still try to slice it thin and only condemn the bad, socially conservative Christians. Still, the left's increasingly flagrant rejection of and disrespect for Christianity will itself continue to generate equal and opposite tribal responses from right-leaning nominals, just like kneeling during the National Anthem.
It’s weird when I go to my wife’s family. They are all boomers from New England that are devout weekly church attending leftists. Of an older kind of working class Irish catholic that is dying off.
When you ask them why they are democrats you don’t hear about progressive culture war stuff but Vietnam and Medicare.
It’s notable that of the six children only my wife’s mother had children, and she’s the least political. Something about leftism just kills fertility.
The mainlines have died because their attendees didn’t have kids.
I think there is going to be a big divide between people with lots of kids and those without, and it’s going to map into church attendance more and more. Even people that don’t accept the theology will see the church as pro-family.
I went to Catholic high school and was well-acquainted with several large families with weekly-attending Catholic Boomer Democrat parents. Yours seems like a common story. A lot of these kids went off the deep end in leftist politics in college and as young adults. One became a professional abortion activist. I'm aware of zero that have kept the faith or that ended up to the right of their parents, and very few grandchildren were produced -- the family I know best has produced 2 grandchildren, and 2 marriages, out of 5 children that are now in their mid 30s to early 40s.
I also think part of the recipe is that this high school was in a more leftist part of the country, and the kids from left-leaning families assimilated to that broader regional culture. Our particular county leaned Republican though, as did the school community overall, and so the kids from conservative families were more inclined to remain in that culture.
In the South, the formula is a little different because the broader secular culture is more conservative. The student populations of the flagship schools in the South are pretty evenly divided politically. And there's also "redneck" white working class culture.
I'd disagree that the Mainlines died because the attendees didn't have kids though. I grew up Mainline. I went to a Mainline preschool in the 80s -- it was booming. My Evangelical church is full of Millennials who grew up Mainline (and a surprising number that grew up Catholic).
What happened is the Mainlines had nothing to offer Millennials, so those who didn't apostatize went Evangelical.
I looked up the TFR of many of the big leftist mainline churches and it was very low. Episcopal's did a report on why nobody was episcopal anywhere and the low TFR of episcopal was a big driver.
Of course mainline means a lot of different denominations and you are going to get some variance. And not all of them are hard left.
Is that their current TFR though, or their TFR in the past? And is it accounting for age of members?
I'd predict that in the 1980s, when the earlier Millennials were being born, TFR for regular attenders of the largest Mainline denominations (let's say, UMC, TEC, PCUSA, and ELCA) was close to, or above, the national average at the time.
Plenty of ordinary middle-class Reagan-voting Boomers attended these churches with their kids in the 1980s. It's just that very few of their kids stayed to raise their own kids in those churches.
I do think Christianity among non-immigrant populations will go the way Judaism is also going: secular/Reform Jews intermarrying and simply stop affiliating at all, while Orthodox Jews have 5+ kids and keep the faith going, which will likely making the future of American Judaism very conservative.
However, a major development in American Christianity is that immigrants and their descendants will be a much larger part of it. Especially as the Latin American population grows, Christianity will develop a reputation as something nonwhite people and immigrants believe in, which might then give Christianity a shield on the left. Basically, white Christianity will be heavily right-coded, but non-white Christianity will be given more leeway by the left.
Other than a special dispensation for the black church, I don't think an Evangelicalism that is, say, 40% nonwhite would receive any special treatment in the abstract -- though individual Evangelicals might.
Which is another way of saying that POCs receive more leniency for thoughtcrime. I think this is generally true in practice, especially once you start looking at regular people and not a powerful figure like Clarence Thomas.
Just the other week, I watched a black colleague express some reactionary ideas about crime and punishment to a very liberal white prospective client, which caused me to bite my tongue and wince. But the prospect nodded along thoughtfully; "The black community has been through a lot," etc. I don't think it would have gone so well if I'd expressed those ideas.
On your first paragraph, I do think there's an important difference, because Christians will remain an important part of the (shrinking) conservative coalition for the foreseeable future and will retain a certain amount of thought leadership within that coalition when it comes to social issues.
Also Christians, if we include nominals, will remain a local majority in many or most of the places where they actually live, even if Christians + nominals shrink to less than 50% of the total US population.
Secular and Reform Jews are assimilating because they are a small minority, and without sincere dedication to the faith, the commitment to remain a set-apart minority is something that burns out fast. So Jews are of rapidly declining importance in the left's (growing) coalition.
One of your best posts (and they are all good).
Amongst people (particularly those under 30) who do not identify themselves as Christian, their reasons can generally fall under two categories. 1.) The central claims of Christianity are poorly evidenced. 2.) The loudest voices in Christianity have convicted them the essence of the faith is being a bigoted jerk.
I don't think there is much Christians can do about point 1, but they can do a lot about point 2.
As a member of the group that you’re discussing, I would push back on point 2 a bit. I think that there are plenty of people of faith who are moral and “practice what they preach” so to speak. I think the problem I saw is that religious organizations use people’s faith as a tool to promote or push a bigoted agenda.
I would amend that statement to something more along the lines of, “the loudest voices in Christianity have convinced me that religion is a tool being used to promote bigoted beliefs”.
ok, if I was unclear in my post, I want to clarify. I do not believe that the essence of Christianity is "being a bigoted jerk", or that this describes most Christians. I was talking about a view that many (especially Americans under 30) have stated as the reason why they are not Christian.
You weren’t being unclear - I see your point. I’m just giving my perspective as an under 30 year old non-Christian. I don’t speak for all non-Christians, obviously, but was offering up my own perspective just to shed a bit more light on how people like me view Christianity and its members.
When I was a Christian under 30 the dividing line was that Christian’s wanted date for the purpose to get married and minimize drugs and partying and seculars wanted the opposite of that (hook up, party, partake).
Everything else was just an excuse.
One important part of this discussion not mentioned iis intrinsic vs extrinsic religiosity. There are plenty of people who attend church weekly who still just see it as a means to some end like cultural identity.
I don’t believe a lot of what the Catholic Church holds as truth, but I still go to the pew because people there are closer to my values then alternatives.
My Jewish lenses would challenge much of this, with no disrepect to the collected data. While we do not form our tribes as Democrat or Republican, Reform them as Orthodox-Conservative-Reform in America and in Israel as Observant-Non-observant. Many of the heads of state of Israel never went to a synagogue or rarely engaged in a theological discussion, yet not only were they unassailably Jewish but contributed much to it. We could say the same of the soldiers putting themselves in harm's way today.
In America, the large immigrant wave, my grandparent's generation, was ambivalent. No question they went to synagogue in Poland and owned tfrillin, often greeting Lady Liberty by throwing their tfillin into the harbor in her direction. Same person a week apart, one worshipped in synagogue once a week, the other had other prioritites to pursue.
A hundred years later in America, we see pretty much the same. We have synagogues, often funded by economically successful people who did not attend them to benefit people who wanted to, Rabbinical academies for people who worship and study daily, and any number of legacy agencies, from medical centers with Biblical names to highly endowed advocacy agencies. And as we see in the news, the militants on campus will target you irrespective of your personal practice or your level of knowledge.
So were we Jews ahead of the curve by 100 years? Jewish has been an identity that survives adherence to the specified rules. There are expectations, though not necessarily worship. They include advocacy for each other, tolerance of diversity or at least subdivisions of tribes for common benefit, and contribution to tribal causes even though you may personally have misgivings. And there is also a certain fluid nature to the subdivisions where people shift in and out of synagogue membership, move from Jewish causes to secular causes that intersect with ideology, or even opt out.
The evangelicals that Ryan's post describes seem to be doing now what we have done for a very long time, though with public data to figure that out.
My parents aren’t religious and don’t attend church. Nevertheless, they took me to church and Sunday school until first communion.
When I asked about this my mom said that kids need to be taught some basic morality and beliefs and she thought the church was better then the alternatives, even though she didn’t believe.
And if you asked her she would say she’s catholic even though she doesn’t attend.
I too would not endorse some of the key faith statements of the church. But it’s a good place to raise a family.
This sounds and behaves like the Serbian and Croatian view on religion-the ideal is important but not the practice and this is why I live in such a different world than they do-the corporate worship is as important as the ideal and it exposes me to everyone. Look at Spencer Cox's efforts to depoliticize dinner and you will understand the fundamental difference between those worldviews.
I think you may be overemphasizing the cynical use of symbols. Leaders and politicians are certainly cynical. Among normal people it may be a matter of wishing or 'aspiration'. I would love to be solidly religious. It's clear that life is better and longer for people who can do it. But I'm not built to be faithful. I'm spiritually retarded.
So I support and defend the idea of religion without understanding faith and theology.
It is self-report, so there is always going to be some level of people reporting what they want to present as true, maybe not what is actually true. Like when my Dr. asks me if am I getting execerise every day and cutting down on sweets.
Growing up, my mother was a nurse who worked most Sundays, and we only went to church when she was off, so I suppose that made us the definition of monthly attenders.
But barring some restriction on your schedule like that, I would expect monthly attendance (i.e. showing up 25% of the time) to be unstable. You're either going to drift towards 0% or become committed, make attendance part of your weekly routine, and move closer to 100%.
All voluntary associations are like this. I belong to a longstanding 3x/week men's workout group. I notice there are some men who try to drop in once every week or two; they always end up drifting away. The ones who aspire to be there every time are the core group that never leaves.