America’s Religious Problem
In 2007, 78% of Americans identified Christian and 16% no religion. In 2024, 62% Christian and 29% no religion. But if you dig into the numbers 2007 had 29% Evangelical plus Mormon plus Orthodox and in 2024 that number was 26%.
So slightly over a quarter of the country is still identifying with a community that sees politics mostly in terms of stopping abortion and LGBTQ rights and that percentage dropped only 3% over 17 years. Catholics are no longer the same level of toxic as “While the Catholic Church opposes abortion, 59% of Catholics say abortion should be legal.”
So any politician willing to play fast and loose with race and separation of church and state starts the political race with a hard core base of singlish issue voters. Can you run a country that way?
Yes but only if there is a set of moral issues that can unite 25% or more sane Americans. Those sane Americans will of course include Christians:
And that set of moral issues will have to include indoctrination -
the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically
Because theocracy is not the same as fascism and Trump is only a stepping stone towards Christian Nationalists real goal:
As a result of the Alhambra Decree and persecution in the years leading up to the expulsion of Spain’s estimated 300,000 Jewish origin population, a total of over 200,000 had converted to Roman Catholicism in order to remain in Spain, and between 40,000 and 100,000 remained Jewish and suffered expulsion. An unknown number of the expelled eventually succumbed to the pressures of life in exile away from formerly-Jewish relatives and networks back in Spain, and so converted to Roman Catholicism to be allowed to return in the years following expulsion.
This time it’s not Jews but the “religiously unaffiliated” who are the target. If you really want to “own the libs”, then you forcibly convert them. This plan is partially laid out in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership:
- shifting federal aid away from neutral organizations (like NGOs such as Oxfam) and directing it through faith-based institutions
- dismantling the Department of Education and creating a voucher system to fund private (often religious) schools with taxpayer money
- recommending federal grants prioritize faith-based mentorship tied to local churches
- religious organizations participate in apprenticeship and vocational training programs that are subsidized by the government
- eliminating any terms tied to LGBTQ+, DEI, reproductive rights, etc. — effectively reserving public policy for those visibly aligned with Christian morality
Tucked within the mega-legislation known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) is a provision that some tax policy analysts call unprecedented, because it calls for a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations to private school voucher programs with no budgetary cap.
These efforts will not only fail but backfire and unfortunately that will cause evangelicals to become even more dangerous. America’s religious problem is with a conservative religion as James Talarico says above.
If you want to keep things the same you are facing an increasingly uphill battle. The evangelical Christian model of live in a small town and get much of your information from a local church is irreparably broken. It’s broken by the internet and it’s broken by the move to big cities.
New York City, Houston and Los Angeles saw the greatest numeric gains during this time and some cities in the Northeast and Midwest marked their first population increase in recent years.
However Christian nationalists have made if very clear they are not taking these trends lying down and they are partnering with an ever increasingly powerful oligarchy.