Dr. Ryan Burge has a dual career, teaching Political Science at a university and serving as a pastor in an American Baptist church. A self-confessed data nerd, he pores over polling data in search of trends in religion. Recently he posted a column on “Four of the Most Dramatic Shifts in American Religion Over the Last 50 Years.” Things typically change slowly in religion surveys, he says, but these four trends “still blow my mind.”
I’ll provide a brief overview of Burge’s findings, and you can find more detail on his website.
The Evangelical Surge (1983-2000)
Election year fever is heating up, and already we’re seeing internet headlines about the powerful voting bloc of evangelicals. When Jimmy Carter—a Democrat—catapulted into the presidency in 1976, and spoke openly about his born-again faith, a Newsweek cover story pronounced that bicentennial year “The Year of the Evangelical.” Yet, as Burge points out, the real surge in the movement took place in 1983. In a single decade, the percentage of evangelicals shot upward to encompass three in ten American adults.
During that growth spurt, evangelical megachurches were springing up across the country, and Christian music was gaining airtime. People like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were regulars on television, talking as much about politics as theology. When the media wanted a soundbite from an evangelical, they turned to such prominent figures who already had sophisticated satellite uplinks and would offer a ready opinion on any subject.
By the year 2000, however, the percentage of evangelicals had declined to the same level as existed in 1983, and little has changed since then.
Young People Lose Their Religion (1991-1998)
Burge’s second chart covers the next two of the four dramatic shifts. The year 1991 saw the beginning of a downward trend among 18- to 35-year-olds. The number in that age group who checked “Christian” when asked their religious affiliation began an abrupt decline, falling from 87 percent to 64 percent. Meanwhile the “Nones,” who had no religious affiliation, grew from 8 percent to around 30 percent. Noting the steep changes between 1991 and 1998, Burge says, “That’s an insane level of growth/decline in such a short period of time.”
Burge proposes several possible explanations. Politics became increasingly polarized, especially over culture war issues such as abortion, transgenderism, and same-sex marriage. The end of the Cold War lowered the barrier between God-fearing Americans and godless communists, even as a surge of immigrants gave exposure to other religions. In addition, the internet allowed young people to explore different faiths as well as listen to strident voices against all faith.
In a mirror image of the decline among Christians, the Nones experienced a fivefold increase in just three decades. Burge comments that “the rise of the ‘nones’ may be the most significant shift in American society over the last thirty years.” The trend inspired him to write a book about the phenomenon (The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going).
The Collapse of the Mainline (1975-1988)
Burge’s final chart depicts a dramatic decline within mainline Protestant churches, which include the United Methodist Church, PCUSA Presbyterian, Episcopalian, American Baptist, the United Church of Christ, and some Lutheran denominations. These tend to be more moderate theologically than evangelicals, and most allow women pastors and are open and affirming to same sex couples.
In the 1950s more than half of all Americans belonged to this group; now barely 10 percent do so. Tens of millions have left mainline denominations, many of them opting for an evangelical church not affiliated with a denomination.
Burge, an American Baptist pastor, has no sure explanation for the major shift. Nor does he dare to predict the future.
Will the non-affiliated Nones continue to increase or has their number peaked? Will the disaffected young return to church as they become parents? Will mainline denominations revive, or will evangelicals experience another surge (even as their largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, bleeds members)?
I’m neither a social scientist nor a prophet, so I leave these questions with you the reader. What do you think, and why does it matter?
As a former Mormon who came to faith 20 years ago largely due to your book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” and then faithfully devoted my life to a relationship over religion philosophy, I am now one of the teetering Christians who does not attend church. Out of our five children, only one is still a believer. My husband (of 31 years) was so crushed under an abusive church leader that the flame has all but gone out. This is not the outcome I expected when we both plead with the Lord to never let go.
I still find great comfort in your writings and was transported by your memoir. I read Buechner and Dillard and anyone who says it like it is but inspires faith. What I’m really missing is community. The internet has allowed everyone to scurry to the corner of like-minded people. No one knows their neighbors, myself included. And churches have become places where the once radically free in Christ find themselves re-burdened by “works” and feelings of shame.
I have hope that the quiet seekers (who don’t fill out surveys or shout political and moral platitudes) will find each other. And mostly, that God won’t let me go.
I sympathize with the concerns of the “Nones”, but I have a problem with their rationale. Not all congregations, or even most, have the problems often given as reasons for leaving the church. Aside from that, real human relationships often involve conflict. In the church such relationships are intended take the form of a family. Families are where people can learn to handle personal conflicts while still maintaining a bond of love. It seem to me that many Nones want church without conflict and end up being a church of one in themselves, thinking they can chose their human relationships revolving around their own self-interest. Robert Bellah in his 1985 book “Habits of the Heart” called this “Shelaism”, coined by a woman by the name of Sheila who highly individualized her form of religion. While it may offer some relief from personal conflict, it’s also likely to end up being a very shallow existence full of personal regret.
When Philip Yancey questioned the Religious Right’s emphasis on finding God’s candidate in his 1995 “The Jesus I Never Knew,” while I loved the rest of the book, I regarded those words as almost heresy.
As a young Christian college grad, I’d earlier digested David Barton’s “America’s Godly Heritage,” with a miriad of quotes from the founding fathers, to the effect our nation was conceived out of a deeply-Christian belief system and they definitely wanted our religious convictions to guide public policy–but never a state church to run the show. Through many turns of events in my own life over the next two decades, I came to see the truth of the warnings Yancey and others have given that whenever “Christianity” has become too dominant in the political sphere throughout history, it has become a force unrecognizable from the early believers in the New Testament who loved even their enemies, forgave their persecutors, walked the extra mile, and lived such transformed lives among those who hated them that many of their detractors came to honestly admit some inexplicable power was at work among them. But instead, this politically dominant breed of “Christianity” becomes cruel and oppressive and has none of the underlying appeal of the meek version.
During this time I stumbled upon John MacArthur’s October? 1992 “A Radical Alternative to Political Activism,” in which he paralleled many similar points. And yet, while he’s pretty much the same teacher year after year, 25 years later he’d been recently influenced by the writings of some Christian British Parliamentarian from long ago and let loose a sermon of a more Right-Wing political slant about bringing one’s godly convictions into the political arena. Okay, I thought he had the right take on things in the 1992 version, but now a new influence came his way. I think just like all of us, his experiences and the influences in his life made some impression upon him that might be different from the influences that had shaped me to that point–he went from political hands-off to hands-on, and I went from hands-on to hands-off.
As for another purely scriptural view, Christ instructed us to be salt and light in the world, and what that means may be a little unclear–although judging by the comments here, most of us have seen times, in our humble opinions and best understanding, that the Religious Right and/or Christians have been too salty or too aggressive in their fervor, taking pages out of The Adversary’s play book on how to handle those they disagree with, not using the divinely-appointed “weapons” like love and prayer and kindness to heap proverbial burning coals–not actual ones. Instead, they have done many vicious things, putting on bitterness and hostility like a garment, openly arguing and attacking in even the socio-political sphere. Christ warned that openly broadcasting some of the pearls of the faith can be a huge mistake, and he warned it will bring on a reaction, and I think we can all attest we’ve seen a reaction!
I’ve been in a couple political marches, and I’ve seen and heard those with me on the “Christian” side of the ranks, who before they’re even rattled seem to have no clue about Christ and His ways (and I admit to struggle when rattled…) and so I’ve never doubted the testimony of those who say they were spit on and otherwise assaulted by, for instance, pro-life protestors, and I hope and pray their organizers have learned not to just swell their ranks with warm bodies–although I think I understand that the courts have largely put an end to gatherings that might work too much like a “sit in,” from the era of gangsters–an interpretation that seemed overbearing to those who claim they only wanted to speak for the innocents who have no voice, to save their lives–and that’s clearly another area!
Like all things in this sphere, where Paul tells us we don’t battle with flesh and blood, and like so many things that touch each of our hearts and consciences differently and where we each have different backgrounds and understandings, the struggle is very real.
About 8 years ago God arranged last minute that I could attend a convention in Richmond called “The Away Team,” where the point was that Christianity has lost too much of its appeal an alienated many thru our continual push for political influence, that as strangers and aliens in this world, we are the visiting team playing an away game and everything is unfairly arranged against us; the home team obviously opposes us, and we are disadvantaged in an unfamiliar stadium, the crowd (and the city) opposes us, and often even the referees, and we need to get back to the things that make Christianity attractive, like answering kindly when we’re insulted or bearing unjust suffering patiently, turning the other cheek when struck, loving our enemies, praying for those who persecute us and returning cursing with blessings and kindness. However, on the second day, I sat in one forum where the leader encouraged us to push for power and influence [like we did in the 80s and 90s], and one young Christian college student was there who was like, ‘finally, this is what I’ve been needing to hear!’
I guess those two hadn’t yet arrived at the same conclusion as many here. It took me some number of years and experiences to see things differently and arrive there, but two days at a conference hadn’t changed them.
And I confess, I still don’t know how it is all supposed to work exactly. Woke and cancel cultures and the ACLU, etc. want to make sure Christians have no voice and that we capitulate totally to their system or pay the consequences. And yet, somehow, we are called to be salt and light and love them and influence whoever we can for eternity while we’re here.
Going back 27 years, the Republican party has wanted to distance itself from an overly-Christian identification when they brought in Bob Dole. Overtly-Christian candidates come on the scene for every presidential election, with varying success. Not an evangelical, but having a platform with many conservative values; Trump came on the scene following financial and television success. I don’t think the Republican leadership wanted Trump as their candidate, based on things Trump said about back room meetings they’d had with him leading up to that in the last days before he was named their candidate in 2016–probably because of the controversial nature he brought with everything he was already doing. I don’t know all that has been said in support of Donald Trump from Christians, per se, as many here allude (I was equally shocked to see a coworker, a Baptist minister repeatedly defend and even laud Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal), but I can speak from personal experience and say there seemed to be a shortage of options in both 2016 and 2020, and I prayerfully had to make a choice, whether it was for a “better candidate” or “the lesser of two evils,” I’m not sure I’m qualified to say.
I recently heard on NPR that a majority of Americans polled believe they will see a civil war within their lifetime. They talked about a format called “Speaking Circles,” where people at polar-opposite ends of the political spectrum, who believe their opponents are cold, unfeeling, totally irrational, beyond redemption, etc.; well they take these people and arrange for them to sit down and talk to each other and get to know each other’s backstories and their true desires for a better world as they understand it, about who they are as humans and how they want the best future for themselves, their families, and even for society as a whole. After these sessions they are questioned again about the opposition and have a much more humane understanding of who their opponents are, the polarized, caricatured view of them has been stripped away. While they still disagree about the correct solutions, they have begun to see a basis for working together with other rational humans wanting what is best.
Again, I don’t have a clear answer for exactly how Christians are to be salt and light, exactly how far that is to extend and exactly what that’s supposed to look like–especially not an answer that will make everyone happy, but I hope I’m personally reaching the place God is guiding me right now, seeking to humbly walk thru life and be salt and light, to pray for the wisdom to know when to speak and when to be silent, and I only hope I have shed some light on the many facets of this difficult area that we may all learn to listen to each other and care about where others are in their walk, in their experiences, and in their struggles. Many here express they’ve been hurt in the struggle. I too believe I’ve been unfairly treated many times–and I pray I’ve not unwittingly hurt others the same number of times (or that they may be healed where I have hurt them)!
What if the problems we’re seeing are ‘just the way the world is,’ in a sense, in all its “perfect imperfections;” we are not God and are unable to adequately critique the world as a whole; nor, by the same token, can we adequately critique subsets of it. Is it possible to humble ourselves for a moment and realize we can’t even actually see the many failures and hurdles we’ve personally brought into the picture?
Nevertheless, each one of us has some small amount of influence on the greater whole, and our railing against the machine is at once an act of rebellion, a cry for help, and our way of cursing the darkness and lighting a candle?
May God grant us Serenity to accept the things we cannot change; Courage to change the things we can, and the Wisdom to know the difference; living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, and taking as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is–and not as we would have it, trusting He will make all things right if we surrender to His will, that we may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy in the next. Amen!
We have similar trends here in New Zealand. I am blessed to belong to a Presbyterian church which is multi- generational – a vital factor today – and evangelical. As an older person I struggle with the fact that 2 of our 3 children have not followed their early belief in Jesus. However, overall I think the Church (Christian’s) have made many huge mistakes over the years and we are reaping the effects. I am currently reading “Bullies and Saints” by John Dickson. It is both disturbing and reassuring! well worth a read. To move forward I believe we must be honest with where we have come from.
The gates of Hades will not prevail over the Church!
Whatever happen to: “separation of church and state”?? I appreciate all the comments and think this subject is well worth the time to read and re-read these comments. BUT, for me, the most important comment is that we now emphasize “church” more than “Christ”. Maybe it’s time to also review the KISS prinicple.