The collapse of American Christianity and the disuniting of America
by Kenneth Grasso, Mercator:
In the aftermath of the West’s victory in the Cold War, scholars were celebrating “the third wave” of democratisation that seemed to be sweeping the world, and democracy’s apparent triumph over its competitors. Today, however, it appears that the celebration was premature. Indeed, even in the United States, the home of modern democracy, there is increasing concern about democracy’s future.
The signs that something is amiss are myriad. One thinks here about the widespread collapse of trust in our political institutions and leaders; the decreasing ability of our political institutions to provide effective governance; the increasing disconnect between the people and political elites; our ever-increasing polarisation which finds expression in the ongoing and debilitating culture war which has transformed our political life into cold civil war; and increasing political violence (e.g., Charlottesville, the “1619” and January 6th riots, etc.). More and more, one gets the sense that America is falling apart.
Many different explanations have been proposed for the problems that beset us. While there are undoubtedly multiple causes at work here, what I want to focus on is what I believe to be a fundamental yet neglected factor: the sea change that has taken place in American religious life. As Ross Douthat has observed, a map of America’s religious past, “would look like a vast delta, with tributaries, streams and channels winding in and out… but all of them fed, ultimately, by a central stream, an original current, a place where all the waters start.” That place is “not the orthodoxy of any specific Christian church,” but “the shared theological commitments that have defined the parameters of Christianity since the early church.” For the past half-century, however, that spring “has gradually been drying up,” so much so that we are witnessing “the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity” in America.
The transformation of our religious landscape includes: the rapid demographic decline of American Christianity (according to Pew, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as Christians has declined by 12 percent between 1998 and 2018, and current projections are that within a few decades, less than half of Americans will identify as Christians); the increasing marginalisation of Christians and accelerating de-Christianisation of American culture; the declining importance of religion in the lives of Americans; the rise of the so-called “nones”; the emergence (especially among the young) of a deep-seated scepticism of — and even hostility toward — organised religion; the undisguised contempt of cultural elites towards Christianity; the emergence of religious traditions native to Asia and the Middle East as presences on the American scene; and the rise of what are sometimes called “remixed” religions or do-it-yourself religions. As late as 1931, the Supreme Court could describe Americans as “a Christian people.” Would anyone make that same claim today?
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