America’s Very Weird Religious Future
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What surprising trend is happening in American religion?
From New York Times Opinion, I'm Ross Douthat. And this is Interesting Times.
In the early 2020s, something unexpected happened. America stopped becoming less religious. The share of Americans with no religious affiliation had been rising for decades. Suddenly, that increase stopped. And all over the media, there was talk about religious revival, about trad wives and orthobros, about Gen Z potentially being more religious than their parents. My guest today is the perfect person to talk about what's really happening in American religion.
How is the gender balance shifting in religious participation?
Ryan Burge is an ordained minister who witnessed American Christianity's decline close up. In 2024, he had to close the doors of the church that he'd been pastoring. He's also, in my own opinion, the best data analyst tracking trends in American religion right now, with a new book, The Vanishing Church, How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us. Ryan Burge, welcome to Interesting Times. It's my absolute pleasure to be here.
What role do class and education play in religious affiliation?
So I wanna start just by talking about the big recent religious trends in American life, and especially the claim that secularization might be going into reverse, or even that revival is in the air. But before we talk revival, I want to start by defining a very important term for understanding what's been happening in the US for the last 20 years. And that term is nun. And I do not mean Catholic nuns, but something else.
How are non-traditional spiritual practices gaining popularity?
What is a nun?
Yeah, so nuns, N-O-N-E-S, are people who identify with no religious tradition. What that means is we ask a question about affiliation and they describe their religion as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. And that third piece is the one that we forget about a lot.
What is the significance of the decline of the Seven Sisters?
These are people who look at all the options, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Mormon, and they kind of just shrug their shoulders and say, I'm not a Christian, but I'm not an atheist either. And they just click none of the above. So the nuns are those three groups together, atheist, agnostic, nothing in particular. And that group has grown from 5% of America in 1972 to about 30% of America today. It's the biggest social movement happening in America or happened in America over the last 30 years that we just don't talk about that much.
I don't know if I agree that we don't talk about it that much.
How is politics influencing the religious landscape in America?
I feel like commentary on religion, as long as I've been a pundit, has been dominated by the sense that America is getting less religious. People are disaffiliating. But then something changed, right, around 2020, 2021.
I think we're moving into a new era of what's happening with American religion. So it was rapid secularization from 1991 to 2020. Now we're in a period of stasis. Share of Americans who are non-religious has really stuck at that same level, around 30%. The share of Americans who are Christians is in the low 60s, maybe 63 or 65%. And it's been that way for the last five years now. This is a plateau, not a reversal. This is not a revival. The directions are not going, they're not reversing themselves.
What predictions can be made about the religious future of America in 2050?
They're just staying where they are right now.
Give me some speculation, though, about why we've seen the plateau. Like, why do you think it seems like there is a sort of basically just a chronological pattern where for a while you could just count on. each generation being substantially less religious than the previous generation. And with Gen Z and the millennials, they are less religious, but it's just not as strong a pattern as you've seen before. And I know this is outside the realm of data. I'm going to do this to you repeatedly in the interview, but did something change in 2017 to 2025 that would put a floor under religion that would sort of make it seem a little more resilient?
Yeah, the way I think about it is, you know, there's a bedrock of American religion that I don't think exists in any other Western country. You know, what's happened over the last 30 years is a lot of people were loosely affiliated. You know, they say they were Protestant or Catholic.
How might new spiritual movements impact traditional religions?
They go to mass once every two or three years.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What surprising trend is happening in American religion?
0:03–0:59
2
How is the gender balance shifting in religious participation?
0:59–1:33
3
What role do class and education play in religious affiliation?
1:33–2:06
4
How are non-traditional spiritual practices gaining popularity?
2:06–2:23
5
What is the significance of the decline of the Seven Sisters?
2:23–2:56
6
How is politics influencing the religious landscape in America?
2:56–3:41
7
What predictions can be made about the religious future of America in 2050?
3:41–4:41
8
How might new spiritual movements impact traditional religions?
4:41–1:00:25
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Interesting Times
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