Ryan Burge

And that frames how they make decisions about their faith.

I feel for many of them,

They don't go to church because they vote for Democrats and Democrats don't go to church and sort of widening this polarization gap we have in America across multiple lines now.

Oh, there's a massive religious revival happening in America, Derek.

If you've watched Fox News, you would know all about it because they want to write a story about it every day, it seems like.

But no, that's it's not a religious.

I think this is such an important point.

It's not a revival.

It's just a pause.

And what we're seeing is older Americans are more likely to say they're religious today than boomers were even five years ago.

And that you're also seeing that with Gen X. So a slight return to religion among sort of middle age and older Americans is driving the aggregate number either to stay flat or maybe even go down a little bit.

But I've got and by the way, we don't know why that is.

Like, I've tried everything I can to try to figure out what is making those older Americans.

I do think at some level it is politics.

I think a lot of older Americans are Republicans, especially white older Americans, and they're realizing, like—we're seeing this, by the way, in all kinds of data.

For instance, the share of people who self-identify as evangelical but go to church less than once a year—

went from 16% in 2008 to 27% today.

So now over a quarter of self-identified evangelicals don't go to church.

And if you try to figure out what's up with those people, it's because they're Republicans and conservatives and vote for Donald Trump.

So I think part of the return of religion is I'm a Republican, I'm a conservative, and that's why we say that we're religious.