Ryan Burge, perhaps our top “quantitative scholar of American religion,” makes numbers speak, and in his latest book they tell the sad story of how politics trumped creed in evangelical churches, leaving “no place for moderates,” many of whom departed.
“Churchgoers are far less likely today to worship alongside people who vote differently than they do,” Burge writes in The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us.
Ryan Burge
“For decades of American religious history, churches have been places that harbored a diversity of political opinions,” he writes. “The American church looked like the country as a whole. If one attended an evangelical church in the 1970s or 1980, it was generally just as likely one would be sitting next to a Democrat as a Republican. That’s no longer the case.”
Things changed in the 1990s, when “evangelicalism hit its numerical peak,” he asserts. That generation of evangelicals was told to wed their faith to the GOP. And it worked: “Religion became so deeply intertwined with politics that it is impossible to extricate it.”
Numbers tell Burge that political identity now trumps religious identity. Politics drives who we are, what we believe and who we love or hate.
“Political partisanship is the master identity of our lives, and everything else exists downstream of that.”
“It’s no longer accurate to think of political party affiliation as flowing out of other, bigger and more ultimate beliefs. Instead, it seems, political partisanship is the master identity of our lives, and everything else exists downstream of that.”
The way many Americans see things, religion isn’t primarily about following God but “as a type of shorthand for political views,” “as a tribal marker for politics.”
The numbers are deeply personal for Burge. He sees moderate American churches disappearing before his eyes, including the American Baptist congregations he served as pastor.
His experience leading churches makes him feel for other pastors and the landmines that can blow up when “the loudest voices in evangelicalism” rule the roost, he says. “Any pastor who tries to find common cause with those outside the evangelical tribe faces potential ostracism. This makes bringing new converts into the flock much more difficult but also makes governing nearly untenable.”
He grieves the death of once lively congregations and fears this collapse weakens us all and imperils our democracy.
The Vanishing Church gives a deeper dive into a subject Burge explored in a 2021 New York Times article, “Why ‘Evangelical’ Is Becoming Another Word for ‘Republican.’” He said then, “There is essentially no difference between a Republican who is white and born-again and a Republican in general.” The two identities are now one.
It’s not Christ’s Body on earth that is vanishing but a certain kind of church that believed pastors should teach members how to live, not how to vote. Such churches were a “great crossroads of American society,”
Today, “religion itself is increasingly coded as right-wing,” Burge says. Even Mormons and Catholics, who are less MAGA than evangelicals, have moved to the right. Donald Trump got 65% of both groups’ votes in 2024, up from 2020 and 2016.
“Christianity is conservative in America,” Burge said in a Jan. 20 webinar about his book hosted by Religion News Service. “If you are a religious person in America, you have shifted to the right.”
The story of politicization Burge describes echoes the story C.S. Lewis told in The Screwtape Letters. But it seems as if a generation of Christian leaders misread Lewis’ book and decided to follow the advice that demon Screwtape gave to Wormwood, a junior tempter, about how to corrupt one Christian’s faith.
The best place to start, he advised, is “the border-line between theology and politics.”
“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the ‘cause.’”
Burge describes the casualties of a politicized faith.
“The Religious Right divided American religion and society,” he says. The result is political and religious polarization “that has left us lonelier, angrier, sicker and more divided … than ever before.”