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The Nation's Pulse
A Secularizing America?
Not so fast — the new Pew study confirms Mainline Protestantism’s decline but otherwise shows religious practice to be thriving in the U.S.
A new Pew Research Center study of America’s evolving religious demographic asserts that nearly 20 percent of Americans are now religiously unaffiliated, while historically dominant Protestants are now under 50 percent. The headlines have understandably cited the study as proof of America’s secularization.
The truth is probably more complicated, more interesting, and a little less disturbing to religious America. Two-thirds of the religiously unaffiliated still believe in God, and 20 percent of them pray daily. A significant minority among them even regularly attend formal worship. Atheists and agnostics, although purportedly growing in numbers, still number only 6 percent of the total population. Over 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God. Seventy-six percent of Americans according to Pew say prayer is very important, the same who said so 25 years ago. Seventy-six percent of Americans, including most unaffiliated, believe churches and religion strengthen morality. Nearly 60 percent say religion is very important, similar to Pew’s 2007 study.
Perhaps most importantly, and largely unremarked, is that the numbers of Americans who regularly attend worship is still hovering around 40 percent, a figure that has remained remarkably the same for over 80 years. About 30 percent, according to Pew, never or seldom attend.
So what the Pew study may actually reveal primarily is the ongoing disaffection with denominational loyalties, most especially by Mainline Protestants. Catholics and evangelicals seem mostly to be retaining their overall market share. But once dominant Mainline Protestants are now in their fifth decade of continuous membership decline, and the spiral continues.
The World War II generation was Mainline Protestantism’s last stalwart generation, and they crowded Mainline churches in the 1950s. Sturdy octogenarians still sit in otherwise empty pews and disproportionately fill leadership positions in local Mainline congregations. But their Baby Boomer children began the exodus from the Mainline. And subsequent generations are virtual strangers to Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal churches. As Pew seems to confirm, Baby Boomers and others who once may have cited the denomination of their parents’ or childhood as their religious affiliation, while rarely if ever attending church, increasingly no longer bother to profess affiliation as memories grow dim and less meaningful. But they mostly still pray and regard themselves as religious.
This trend of religious nonaffiliation is compounded a bit by the collapse of denominational loyalty by even active Christians. Pew evidently tried in its poll to capture all evangelicals and other religious believers related to Protestant traditions under the Protestant category. But more and more church goers attending nondenominational churches, often gathering in theaters or public auditoriums, no longer identify themselves as Protestants. A few but growing number don’t even identify as Christian, preferring other quirky categories such as “Christ-follower.” Capturing these roving spiritual seekers who may not even call their regular worship “church” must have been a challenge for Pew.
As conservative Catholic New York Times columnist Ross Douthat describes in his new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Americans as a whole are not becoming less religious or more secular. Unmoored from clear denominational traditions, we are becoming theologically more individualistic and heterodox. Pew seems to confirm Douthat’s thesis. But as Alexis de Tocqueville observed 180 years ago, Americans were never strong on theology. And even then preachers typically focused on morals rather than dogma. Heresies have always been rampant.
As evinced by thousands of brewing denominations that cascade across American history, American religion has never been very fixed. It has always been entrepreneurial and a marketplace of its own, with religious consumers, for better or worse, rewarding spiritually vital places of worship while shunning the turgid. The Mainline Protestant consensus that sort of prevailed for parts of the 19th and 20th centuries was always evolving. Rising Methodists and Baptists, among others, displaced more established Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians in the early 19th century. Reformers and schismatics broke even from the newer churches throughout the 19th century, many of them eventually forming the seedbed of the new evangelical movement in the 20th century. They were joined by Pentecostalism’s emergence in the early 20th century.
Mainline Protestant seminaries began to succumb to liberalism in the 1890s or even before, and liberalism was fully enthroned there by the 1920s. But liberal discomfort with evangelism and traditional morals didn’t begin to suffocate Mainline Protestantism as a whole until the 1960s, by which time orthodox clergy among their ranks were a besieged minority. Modern evangelical churches, once considered a subculture, began to swell after World War II, gaining further legitimacy thanks to Billy Graham’s popularity and the creation of thoughtful journals like Christianity Today.
Evangelicals became America’s largest demographic in recent years. The Pew study shows their once dramatic growth, at least among white Anglos, has perhaps stalled. It perhaps persists among some ethnics groups, especially Hispanics.
The myth that America was once a solidly Christian and church going nation that only recently has secularized is widely believed by religious and secular alike. But the 40 percent of Americans who’ve regularly across the last 80 years at least claimed they attend church regularly is almost certainly higher than church going was in the 19th century, which itself was likely higher than the 18th century, as a footnote in the Pew study briefly admits.
If America now today seems more secular, it is because cultural elites 100 years ago, including college presidents and faculty, publishers and newspaper editors, were likely to be churchmen. Fifty years ago, cultural elites were less churchy but remained at least respectful of religion. Today’s cultural elites, joined by popular entertainment and broadcast journalism, clustered in coastal cities or in university towns in between, are neither respectful nor even very aware of religious America. Almost certainly the 6 percent of Americans whom Pew reports are atheist or agnostic are disproportionately represented within their ranks.
Of most concern to religious America is Pew’s finding that nearly 30 percent of Americans under 30 profess no religious affiliation. But Pew seemingly does not compare this number to previous years. More interesting would be to examine the rate over time of young people’s church attendance or participation in other spiritual groups. Younger Americans now are more inclined to attend non-denominational churches or spiritual groups.
And this Pew study apparently did not try to gauge theological beliefs. How many Americans today versus previous years believe in traditional Christian doctrines about the afterlife, Christ’s deity, the Virgin Birth or bodily resurrection? Other polls in recent years have actually shown increasing belief in Christian doctrine, even among the religiously non-practicing, as liberal churches have declined. Purportedly “post-modern” Americans are more open to the miraculous than were yesterday’s Enlightenment-based rationalists.
In some ways, the Pew study raises more questions than it answers. But the wide discussion it provoked itself proves that religion remains an extremely dynamic force in America.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (35) | Leave a comment
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TLP| 10.10.12 @ 7:48AM
I noticed that you neglected to mention The Immigration Act of 1965, who's effect was to Shut Off Immigration from Europe - Ted and Robert Kennedy - and open the Floodgates up to those who have Destroyed our Culture, our Cities, and our Way of Life, in an effort to Strengthen the Democrat Party.
Just thought I'd throw that in there.
Joellen| 10.10.12 @ 8:19AM
I strongly suggest all TAS readers start going on to ChurchMilitant.tv website. Michael Voris is excellent in explaining religious faith and the world today. Mike is a Roman Catholic and believe me he spares no one who has betrayed TRUTH. I first came upon his site when Jenkins (I refuse to call him a Priest) invited Obama to Notre Dame even thought thousands had asked him to rescind the invition. Mike started that campaign and I've been with ChurchMilitant.TV since). He and his staff address secular issues and how it affects us spiritually. Talk about Warriors - Michael and his group are an army that I think many readers here would be strong advocates of.
TinaB| 10.10.12 @ 9:58AM
Thank you Joellen, going there now. And if you have children, grandchildren, in the Public School System, may I recommend:
Invisibleserfscollar.com
For a clear look at Systems Thinking, OBE Outcomes Based Education, SEL Social Emotional Learning, Core Curriculum, the 3 Rs Rigor, Relegance and Relationship, Purple States
(on the NEA website), all of which were being pushed in Central Florida when I retired last year. We must be made aware of how we got to where we are, how a clown like BHO got elected, let alone worshipped and adored by the sheeple. It never occurred to me, I swear, that what I was observing my colleagues (in the History Dept of the school I worked in for 30 years) teach my math students was not what I had been taught in my private schooling and by my anti-Communist parents. I watched this in silence, but I wouldn't today. However I do realize we have a dumbed down and bold-faced lies fed population absolutely capable of reelecting a Pro-Communist Allah loving ignoramus in another few weeks.
TinaB| 10.10.12 @ 9:59AM
Relevance, not relegance
autdrew| 10.10.12 @ 7:05PM
I absolutely agree! I have been a member at ChurchMilitant.tv since about 2008. I am a Catholic convert (06) and I learned a lot from the channel. I like that they cut to the chase & give authentic Catholic teaching in line with the magesterium & not all the "spirit of Vatican II" stuff
Von Mises Jr| 10.10.12 @ 8:38AM
Many of our colonies were founded as religious sanctuaries.
England had much religious persecution with the Puritan rein of Cromwell followed by the return to power of the Stuart Kings. Charles II converted to Christianity on his death bed, and James II replaced the Anglican "Popery Laws" persecution of Catholics with their accent to positions of power and persecution of Protestants. It resulted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.
All this turmoil created the Puritan colonies in MA that expelled Quakers and Separatist. They fled to RI. Maryland was established as a Catholic colony. PA and NJ were Quaker to a large extent. The American colonies, save VA, Carolinas and GA that was Anglican, were all based on religious persecution.
It was the Protestant Ethic that helped establish American's "rugged Individualism." We still see this especially in the South were many Scot-Irish settled.
So it is not just that many portions of the country have declined in established religion in favor of socialism (that is a religion of redistribution), but the danger is that we are losing our "Rugged Individualism."
Perhaps we should all pray today.
JP| 10.10.12 @ 10:24AM
Von Mises - you forgot Dutch and North German Anabaptists. Those that didn't migrate to East Prussia fled to Pennsylvania.
Mick Lee| 10.10.12 @ 9:39AM
What about the declining birthrates among Mainline Proteatants? It seems that deliberately limiting family size at or below replacement rate is at least a factor in this discussion.
It wouls seem that the decline in Mainline membership was to a degree self-chosen.
JP| 10.10.12 @ 10:21AM
"Not so fast -- the new Pew study confirms Mainline Protestantism's decline but otherwise shows religious practice to be thriving in the U.S."
It all depends on how you define "religious practice". One of my local modern, suburban non-denominational churches (replete with cafe and gym) hosted a U2 worship service (from what I heard this was trend for hipster Protestants); while across the town, dancing nuns with tamborines perform liturgical dances (as usual, our Bishop quietly allows this). And up the road in Grand Rapids Michigan, the very cool hipster Rob Bell (Mars Hill Church) takes hetrodoxy to new levels. At St Mary's college wiccan lesbians teach Religious Studies. Yes, religious practice is alive and well. It's like Baskin Robins - there's a flavor for everyone.
But, for those who like their religion to actually stand for something there is always Islam.
BackToBasics| 10.10.12 @ 11:27PM
JP, I agree that there is way too much emphasis at least in evegelical services to have "hip" or "cool" services / churches.
Yes, the Lord can use anything to reach souls but such gimmicks have limits on how many people are reached. I'vr mentioned once before on AmSpec about how tiresome the one-size-fits-all noisefest that is called "worship" in so many churches is. It's so much better to have an emphasis on God's love, prayer, genuine love for the brethren and strong biblical moral guidance; not the equivalent of Christian "soundbites" and quick "Holy Spirit highs."
I will also add, that the evangelical church needs to stop greatly over-emphasizing 1 Corinthians 7: 7-8 which verges on becoming a 1 Timothy 4:3 forbidding to marry teaching. Without Christian marriages and having children the church becomes just a Chritianized facsimile of what is going on in our society as a whole. Who wants that? Not many!
I am happily married but I found my wife with the Lord's help in spite of the interference of pastors and teachers in the church, not at all because of help and support from them in this area.
Ryan| 10.11.12 @ 8:27AM
Or an emphasis on maybe...the Gospel?
BackToBasics| 10.11.12 @ 9:03AM
My use of the word evangelical was inclusive of the Gospel. I was writing within the framework of the evangelical church. Instead of a gotcha how about this part of my post, "genuine love for the brethren."
Ryan| 10.11.12 @ 1:29PM
Does "genuine love" include proper correction/calling to account for sin?
BackToBasics| 10.11.12 @ 2:56PM
Obfuscation on your part; my post was dealing with inner problems of the church as a reply to JP's similar post. I was not directly dealing with outreach although my post does not exclude the positive ways of saving souls.
Genuine love does not correct when no correction is needed. I saw no dialogue or questions put to me on your part, just a one-liner with the "corrective" barb in it.
Who Knows?| 10.10.12 @ 10:52AM
“There is the idea that faith (or the affirmation of belief) is the necessary basis for practice and the precondition for the attainment of the ultimate Revelation or Realization.
This basic notion is to be found in all the religions. It is even the basis for materialistic and social idealism (as can be seen in the fact that all atheistic political movements focus their first and primary efforts on the propagandization of a belief system and an idealistic orientation toward social altruism).
People in the West are profoundly familiar with this tactic in the domain of religion, politics, and science. The lives, incidents, and words and Revelations of such individuals as Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Jefferson, Darwin, Marx, Lincoln, Freud, and Einstein are the standard basis for propagandizing and motivating the mass culture of the Western world, and more and more of the total world. Indeed, the popular or exoteric mass culture of mankind has always depended on belief systems (or the motive and method represented by prior belief).”
Nirvanasara; by Da Free John, pages 197-198, 1982
No, mere belief doesn’t cut it.
Don’t worry, Be Happy.
KyMouse| 10.10.12 @ 2:40PM
Wow. I haven't heard anyone extol the wisdom of New Age guru Da Free John since the '70s.
Actually, I've never heard anyone extol his wisdom. How many devotees does he have these days?
Ryan| 10.11.12 @ 8:30AM
Revelation ended with John's writing of the book of Revelation. Otherwise, we would be adding to scripture.
And the problem is the OBJECT of faith, not faith itself. Faith in an inanimate object does me no good.
Quartermaster| 10.10.12 @ 12:42PM
The UMC may have saved itself on the mission field. This year's General Conference was pretty much a washout for the libs, and they are expected to lose the rest of their battles in the next GC. The Evangelicals are in the ascendent and they are close to locking the libs out.
IMHO, that is an outcome to be devoutly wished for. The UMC is large enough, even without the libs, that it could make a huge contribution to the Church at large. Under the libs it's been ashes, however.
Slacker| 10.10.12 @ 12:46PM
Late marriage has much to do with it. Churches haven’t figured out what to do with single men.
We start attending a new church, make friends, and being to fit in. Inevitably we get set up with a single woman in the congregation. This is the begging of the end.
Predictably she turns out to be a slut seeking redemption. Now you are openly socializing with slut –which is good -except nobody else identifies her as a used up slut.
She is presumed be feminine, pure, and virtuous. You are the male sexual predator. Your intentions and decency are scrutinized. Never mind she has admitted to sleeping with 50 some dudes before you. Why do sluts brag?
Them: Man up and marry that slut.
You: Nope.
Next you basically get run off.
Slacker| 10.10.12 @ 1:05PM
I forgot to mention she comes with a mountain of debt, a little bastard, and stretch marks.
Stick| 10.10.12 @ 3:14PM
But was she any good in bed?
Slacker| 10.10.12 @ 6:25PM
In the end, who cares? It is never worth it.
To be fair I should have added that the slut gets the dirty looks too.
Ronsch| 10.10.12 @ 2:24PM
I am glad someone else asked the question about he "non-traditional religions...i.e. heretics" first...So, are Witches, Warlocks, Satanists, and Jedi Knights counted in this too?
Quartermaster| 10.10.12 @ 2:35PM
You need to define "non-traditional." We look back from a rather provincial viewpoint. Calvinists and Wesleyans were at one time looked at as the new version heretics. Calvinism is still aberrant (although not to the point of Heresy). Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science and others, however, do fall under the head of heresy, meaning beliefe that separate from saving grace.
David T| 10.10.12 @ 3:31PM
Belloc called Protestants heretics. I prefer the term schismatics.
KyMouse| 10.11.12 @ 1:15PM
The schism is between those who take the Bible as their authority for faith and practice, and those who put something else -- tradition, additional writings, additional teaching -- above the Bible. The basic conflict is the question of authority.
Tradition has its place, but that place is never above Scripture (see Matt. 15:6, Mark 7:13, John 10:35, I Corinthians 4:6, 2 Tim. 3:15).
When the teachings of your church or religion deny or contradict what the Bible says, which do you believe? Which do you accept as your authority? Which do you obey?
The controversy over Mary is one example. Although she played an important role as the earthly mother of Jesus, the last time she is mentioned by name, as Mary, the mother of Jesus, is in Acts 1:14 -- in which she is merely one member of a group that gathers to pray.
The Bible gives her no titles such as Queen of Heaven and Earth, or says that she can pray for us sinners now and in the hour of our death, or that she obtains and distributes all graces for us. If those things were true, the Holy Spirit would have said so through the writers of the Bible.
Every sinner receives God's graces directly, through personal faith in Jesus, without going through a certain church, denomination, or priest/pastor. The Bible says so -- John 3:16, Ephesians 2:8-9, Hebrews 4:16, for example.
The Bible -- accept no substitutes.
JP| 10.10.12 @ 3:35PM
In other words, the US is nation where hetrodoxy thrives.
Ryan| 10.11.12 @ 8:32AM
Calvinism aberrant...right....
So....did you surprise God today?
Ned Ferguson| 10.10.12 @ 10:41PM
Great article, and most encouraging. Thanks.
John II| 10.10.12 @ 11:42PM
"Purportedly 'post-modern' Americans are more open to the miraculous than were yesterday's Enlightenment-based rationalists."
Well, I think a slight clarification is in order regarding the term "post-modern." As I've watched the term evolve in its usage over the past few generations, it seems to have acquired a broader referent.
The term now refers generally to a mood that emerged in the wake of World War II, so that 1945 is taken to be Year Zero of the "post-modern" era. The keynote is a disillusionment with the rationalist certitudes of the 18th-century Enlightenment (again, in the wake of unspeakable horrors traceable to the Enlightenment pose); but the rejection of rationalism from the start of the "post-modern" era went off in two distinct directions. More below for those still reading . . .
John II| 10.10.12 @ 11:43PM
One was the direction more often associated with the term "post-modern": the rejection of reason itself and the embrace of nihilism in a welter of guises and passing trends of mostly narcissist inspiration, all tending to conflate into an oddly insistent materialism. The current President of the United States and his retinue are at heart political avatars of post-modernism in the preceding sense.
But there is also another direction no less "post-modern": the rediscovery of faith as the underpinning of reason, and a renewed sense of the transcendent as the ground of observable reality. Even while our noisy secularist culture and its attendant witch-doctor politicians continue promoting a "post-modern" nihilism, science and philosophy are undergoing a quiet reconciliation after some three centuries of divorce. The physicists are finding God, and the theologians are finding new ways to express ancient truths. That's "post-modernism" too.
Ryan| 10.11.12 @ 8:33AM
I've always understood postmodernism to essentially be a rejection of absolute truth, an "anything is okay" attitude.
BackToBasics| 10.11.12 @ 1:14AM
Regarding your second "post-modern" direction, "...a renewed sense of the transcendent as the ground of observable reality," if you mean that faith is "included" as one basis for reason and observing reality, I agree. If by faith you refer to a return to Dark-Age thinking, your definition goes too far.
Some have said that the Renaissance followed by Luther's Salvation-by-Grace, more-personal-God teachings promoted freedom of thought which in-turn lead to modern scientific methodologies and the Age of Enlightnement.
Without any faith, nihilism will become a stronger force leading to the ultimate "post-modernism" which is the destruction of much of civilization. I am not 100% sure where you were headed with your second definition. Maybe we agree. I only respond because there is still low-key conflict of sorts between many scientists and those who also "include" faith in their philosophy. I do not think that the 2 are mutually exclusive as do many who call themselves only "scientists."
BackToBasics| 10.11.12 @ 1:15AM
I meant this as a reply to John II
shearwater| 10.12.12 @ 11:24PM
The churches that faithfully teach the ancient truths as still relevant and healthy are the churches that are thriving. Those which have being neutralized did so by adopting humanistic psychology in lieu of the Bible and superior to it. Further, liberal main line churches have actually questioned the Bible's relevance as a rule for life and conduct as an oracle from God through holy men who were moved by his spirit to write it. One of the fundamnetal doctrines of the church is that the Bible is the authoritative source for everything we need to know regarding God and the salvation from sin that he provides to us through Jesus Christ.