Derek Thompson

likely to be liberal, more likely to watch MSNBC.

So there's the starkness of the divide where the atheists have swarmed toward the Democratic Party while the Republican Party has held on to the most religious.

I want to continue to tell this story because we've now explained why Americans are religious.

We've explained why this inflection point happened in the early 1990s.

That hockey stick moment that you've described seems to be over.

At some point between 2019 and 2022, the share of Americans, especially young Americans, who said they have no religious affiliation, which had been rising for like 30 years, just stopped.

Like Mount Kilimanjaro just found its peak.

So last question was what happened in 1990?

Next question, what the hell happened in 2020 besides the obvious?

I want to be clear that I understand this because there is absolutely a meme, a narrative that says that young Americans, in particular young men, are swarming back into Christian churches.

And you're saying it's much clearer, it's much clearer that it's older Americans, older self-identified Republicans that are now more likely to say, I am evangelical, I am Catholic.

Is that what explains the secularization pause that we're trying to figure out here?

What religions are growing?

What religions and denominations are growing the fastest right now?

Talk to me like I'm a reformed Jew who knows nothing about non-denominational evangelicalism, in part because that's exactly who I am.

I want to understand, like, what's special about these non-denominational churches that explains their unique growth at a moment when so many other faiths, and in particular, so many other, I'll call them, I don't know, legacy, traditional faiths are still declining.

It's interesting because I would have thought that the resurgence of Christianity

would be a counter movement to this larger theme of the decline of tradition and the decline of institutions.

I'd say, well, institutions are declining over here in media, but they're strong over here in religion because look at the religious revival.

And it sounds like what you're saying is no.