[FONT="][h=1]We're at the end of white Christian America. What will that mean?[/h]
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After accounting for eight out of 10 Americans in 1976, white Christians are now a minority, a study has found. The political implications could be profound
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[FONT="][FONT="]A[/FONT]merica is a Christian nation: this much has always been a political axiom, especially for conservatives. Even someone as godless and immoral as the 45th president feels the need to pay lip service to the idea. On the Christian Broadcasting Network last year, he summarized his own theological position with the phrase: “God is the ultimate.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]And in the conservative mind, American Christianity has long been hitched to whiteness. The right learned, over the second half of the 20th century, to talk about this connection using abstractions like “Judeo-Christian values”, alongside coded racial talk, to let voters know which side they were on.
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[FONT="]But change is afoot, and US demographics are morphing with potentially far-reaching consequences. Last week, in a report entitled America’s Changing Religious Identity, the nonpartisan research organization Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) concluded that white Christians were now a minority in the US population.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Soon, white people as a whole will be, too.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The survey is no ordinary one. It was based on a huge sample of 101,000 Americans from all 50 states, and concluded that just 43% of the population were white Christians. To put that in perspective, in 1976, eight in 10 Americans were identified as such, and a full 55% were white Protestants. Even as recently as 1996, white Christians were two-thirds of the population.
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[FONT="]White Christianity was always rooted in the nation’s history, demographics and culture. Among North America’s earliest and most revered white settlers were Puritan Protestants.[/FONT]
[FONT="]As well as expecting the return of Christ, they sought to mould a pious community which embodied their goals of moral and ecclesiastical purity. They also nurtured a lurid demonology, and hunted and burned supposed witches in their midst. These tendencies – to millennialism, theocracy and scapegoating – have frequently recurred in America’s white Christian culture.
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[FONT="]Successive waves of religious revival, beginning in the 18th century, shaped the nation’s politics and its sense of itself. In the 1730s, the preacher Jonathan Edwards sought not only the personal conversion of his listeners, but to bring about Christ’s reign on Earth through an increased influence in the colonies.
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[FONT="]The author of The End of White Christian America, Robert P Jones, says it is “remarkable how fast” the trend is moving. In 2008, white Christians were still 50% of the population, so that “there’s been an 11-point shift since Barack Obama’s election”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]According to Jones, there are two big reasons for this shift.[/FONT]
[FONT="]One is “the disaffiliation of young people in particular from Christian churches”. That is, especially among the young, there are proportionally fewer Christians. If trends continue, that means that there will be fewer and fewer Christians.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The “youngest” faiths in America – those with the largest proportion of young adherents – are non-Christian: Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. This reflects the second big driver of white Christian decline: both America and its family of faiths are becoming less white.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The big picture is the steady erosion of America’s white majority. Due mostly to Asian and Hispanic immigration, and the consolidation of already established immigrant populations, white people will be a minority by 2042. This will be true of under-18s as soon as 2023. According to Pew’s projections, in the century between 1965 and 2065, white people will have gone from 85% of the population to 46%.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Perhaps inevitably, this is being reflected in a more diverse religious landscape.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In a two-party system, the overwhelming whiteness of the Republican party has seen Democrats “following the trends, and becoming more diverse”. Democrats are heavily favored by black and Hispanic Americans, including Hispanic Catholics, by young people, and by the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For years, these trends have produced optimism among Democrats – their coalition appears to resemble America’s future, whereas the Republicans appear mired in the past, with a shrinking base. Even Republicans have been growing alarmed: the famous “autopsy” document produced by Reince Priebus’s RNC in the wake of Mitt Romney’s defeat urged the party to reach out to Latinos with, among other things, meaningful immigration reform.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A glance at the present, however, shows Republicans in charge of Congress, the presidency, and a majority of statehouses, and Trump looking to implement the stridently anti-immigrant, Christian right-friendly platform he was elected on.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Turner says that in the short term, changing demography will not necessarily guarantee election results: “For a long time people have been saying that the marriage of Republican politics to white Christians was a losing game, but it wasn’t last year.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]And it bears saying that nothing guarantees that Latinos, African Americans, or other non-white groups in America will remain loyal Democrats. White Christianity is not an immutable category. After all, white Catholics and Mormons – formerly the targets of Protestant persecution – have themselves become a part of the white Christian coalition.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Last week John Judis, previously a leading advocate of “demography is destiny” predictions about an emerging Democratic majority, recanted, remarking: “Whiteness is not a genetic category, after all; it is a social and political construct that relies on perception and prejudice. A century ago, Irish, Italians, and Jews were not seen as white.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Jones, though, thinks that even if the trends aren’t decisive in the short term, “sooner or later these demographic realities will show up” in national elections. He adds: “We need to remember how close the 2016 election was.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]He says “there is a lag”, but by 2024 the changes will have become electorally decisive, and for Republicans the problem will increasingly be that “when one part of your base is so large and vocal, it becomes hard to pivot”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Republicans’ white Christian base in large part wants to slow immigration or even halt it altogether – but it may be that that ship has sailed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]If Republicans cannot change, they may find that the country has changed around them.[/FONT]
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[FONT="][FONT="]
After accounting for eight out of 10 Americans in 1976, white Christians are now a minority, a study has found. The political implications could be profound
[/FONT]
[/FONT]
[FONT="][FONT="]A[/FONT]merica is a Christian nation: this much has always been a political axiom, especially for conservatives. Even someone as godless and immoral as the 45th president feels the need to pay lip service to the idea. On the Christian Broadcasting Network last year, he summarized his own theological position with the phrase: “God is the ultimate.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]And in the conservative mind, American Christianity has long been hitched to whiteness. The right learned, over the second half of the 20th century, to talk about this connection using abstractions like “Judeo-Christian values”, alongside coded racial talk, to let voters know which side they were on.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]But change is afoot, and US demographics are morphing with potentially far-reaching consequences. Last week, in a report entitled America’s Changing Religious Identity, the nonpartisan research organization Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) concluded that white Christians were now a minority in the US population.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Soon, white people as a whole will be, too.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The survey is no ordinary one. It was based on a huge sample of 101,000 Americans from all 50 states, and concluded that just 43% of the population were white Christians. To put that in perspective, in 1976, eight in 10 Americans were identified as such, and a full 55% were white Protestants. Even as recently as 1996, white Christians were two-thirds of the population.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]White Christianity was always rooted in the nation’s history, demographics and culture. Among North America’s earliest and most revered white settlers were Puritan Protestants.[/FONT]
[FONT="]As well as expecting the return of Christ, they sought to mould a pious community which embodied their goals of moral and ecclesiastical purity. They also nurtured a lurid demonology, and hunted and burned supposed witches in their midst. These tendencies – to millennialism, theocracy and scapegoating – have frequently recurred in America’s white Christian culture.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Successive waves of religious revival, beginning in the 18th century, shaped the nation’s politics and its sense of itself. In the 1730s, the preacher Jonathan Edwards sought not only the personal conversion of his listeners, but to bring about Christ’s reign on Earth through an increased influence in the colonies.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The author of The End of White Christian America, Robert P Jones, says it is “remarkable how fast” the trend is moving. In 2008, white Christians were still 50% of the population, so that “there’s been an 11-point shift since Barack Obama’s election”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]According to Jones, there are two big reasons for this shift.[/FONT]
[FONT="]One is “the disaffiliation of young people in particular from Christian churches”. That is, especially among the young, there are proportionally fewer Christians. If trends continue, that means that there will be fewer and fewer Christians.[/FONT]
[FONT="]
[/FONT]
[FONT="]While two-thirds of seniors are white Christians, only around a quarter of people 18-29 are. To varying degrees, this has affected almost every Christian denomination – and nearly four in 10 young Americans have no religious affiliation at all.[/FONT][FONT="]Advertisement[/FONT]
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[FONT="]The “youngest” faiths in America – those with the largest proportion of young adherents – are non-Christian: Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. This reflects the second big driver of white Christian decline: both America and its family of faiths are becoming less white.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The big picture is the steady erosion of America’s white majority. Due mostly to Asian and Hispanic immigration, and the consolidation of already established immigrant populations, white people will be a minority by 2042. This will be true of under-18s as soon as 2023. According to Pew’s projections, in the century between 1965 and 2065, white people will have gone from 85% of the population to 46%.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Perhaps inevitably, this is being reflected in a more diverse religious landscape.[/FONT]
[FONT="]In a two-party system, the overwhelming whiteness of the Republican party has seen Democrats “following the trends, and becoming more diverse”. Democrats are heavily favored by black and Hispanic Americans, including Hispanic Catholics, by young people, and by the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.[/FONT]
[FONT="]For years, these trends have produced optimism among Democrats – their coalition appears to resemble America’s future, whereas the Republicans appear mired in the past, with a shrinking base. Even Republicans have been growing alarmed: the famous “autopsy” document produced by Reince Priebus’s RNC in the wake of Mitt Romney’s defeat urged the party to reach out to Latinos with, among other things, meaningful immigration reform.[/FONT]
[FONT="]A glance at the present, however, shows Republicans in charge of Congress, the presidency, and a majority of statehouses, and Trump looking to implement the stridently anti-immigrant, Christian right-friendly platform he was elected on.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Turner says that in the short term, changing demography will not necessarily guarantee election results: “For a long time people have been saying that the marriage of Republican politics to white Christians was a losing game, but it wasn’t last year.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]And it bears saying that nothing guarantees that Latinos, African Americans, or other non-white groups in America will remain loyal Democrats. White Christianity is not an immutable category. After all, white Catholics and Mormons – formerly the targets of Protestant persecution – have themselves become a part of the white Christian coalition.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Last week John Judis, previously a leading advocate of “demography is destiny” predictions about an emerging Democratic majority, recanted, remarking: “Whiteness is not a genetic category, after all; it is a social and political construct that relies on perception and prejudice. A century ago, Irish, Italians, and Jews were not seen as white.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Jones, though, thinks that even if the trends aren’t decisive in the short term, “sooner or later these demographic realities will show up” in national elections. He adds: “We need to remember how close the 2016 election was.”[/FONT]
[FONT="]He says “there is a lag”, but by 2024 the changes will have become electorally decisive, and for Republicans the problem will increasingly be that “when one part of your base is so large and vocal, it becomes hard to pivot”.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Republicans’ white Christian base in large part wants to slow immigration or even halt it altogether – but it may be that that ship has sailed.[/FONT]
[FONT="]If Republicans cannot change, they may find that the country has changed around them.[/FONT]
