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.
