Declining Church Membership

Amanda Marcotte notes that the failure to recruit younger generations has resulted in a steep drop in religious affiliation in the past couple decades. The trend in Gallup polls shows 73 percent participation in 1937, 71 percent in 1975, 70 percent in 1999, but only 47 percent by 2020.

It's a story with a moral so blunt that it could very well be a biblical fable: Christian leaders, driven by their hunger for power and cultural dominance, become so grasping and hypocritical that it backfires and they lose their cultural relevance. ... [I]t's undeniable that this decline is tied up with objectively good trends: increasing liberalism, hostility to bigotry, and support for science in the U.S.

Update (April 3):  While "creeping secularism" might be pushing the religious right toward increasingly anti-democratic views, John Stoehr argues it's a mistake to view secularization as being opposed to religion.

The same person can be religious and secular at the same time. Secularization is not, or should not, be a goal in and of itself. It is a means, rather, to an end, namely liberty.

I suspect many [non-religious liberals] believe religion itself is the problem, and they believe this, because they have accepted uncritically what the zealots themselves believe when they say the only way to be a religious person is by first being a conservative person.

All religions have liberal traditions. They may be buried. They may have been silenced. But they are there. More importantly, for liberals, is that these traditions be given oxygen, which is to say, be given the freedom they need to thrive. For the zealots, the point of religion is not doing unto others as you would have done unto you. It is not bringing the greatest good to the greatest number. It's about dominance. To the extent the liberals know this, it's from the inside of the zealots' preferred view, which means they are fighting against freedom even as they fight for a secularized America.

A secular society is not one in which religion is absent. A secular society is one in which there is enough room for the vast varieties of religious feeling to be expressed openly and safely, inside and outside the realm of politics. Liberals should pursue religious diversity with the same oomph with which they pursue racial diversity. With enough time and effort, perhaps religion will stop being a byword for conservative. That would be good for religion. That would also be good for American politics.