PRRI study reveals Christian decline, unaffiliated growth

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) just released a new study about religious changes in America. They also gathered information about how respondents grew up and their support for Christian nationalism. It’s a real bombshell, and it’s got evangelicals coping and seething. Today, let’s cover this study’s main points—and see how some evangelicals are responding to it.

(From introduction: The video about Jesus totally calling himself I AM; Archaeologist saying there’s no evidence for Christians for almost 200 years; Early Christians worshiped alongside Jews.)

(This post first went live on Patreon on 4/2/2024. Its audio ‘cast also lives there and is publicly listen-able!)

Situation Report: The main findings of the newest PRRI study

At the end of March, PRRI released a study called “Religious Change in America” (archive). This study surveyed 5600 adults in America. Broadly speaking, respondents answered questions about:

• How they grew up in terms of religion
• What religious (and political) labels they use for themselves now
• If they’ve left a religion, why they left and where they went
• If they’re seeking a new religious label or home now
• How effective religious groups are at retention

The survey also asked questions about these topics:

• Prosperity Gospel (the notion that Yahweh/Jesus rewards faithful believers with health, wealth, and happy relationships)
• Christian nationalism (an add-on to Christianity that advocates turning America into a theocracy)
• Charismatic experiences (such as speaking in tongues)

It’s quite an interesting study, especially as compared to PRRI’s findings from 2016.

What the study discovered about the nonreligious

First and foremost, the study found that “‘Unaffiliated’ is the only major religious category experiencing growth.” Ouch! The term “unaffiliated” includes Nones, atheists, and agnostics. A decade ago, 21% of Americans were unaffiliated. In 2023, 26% were. In addition, 18% of Americans became unaffiliated after leaving a religious group.

That 26% figure makes the unaffiliated the current largest single religious demographic in America. (Here’s how PRRI gets that number: 17% of Americans are Nones, or “nothing in particular,” 4% are atheists and 5% are agnostic). Evangelicals and mainline Protestants trail behind the unaffiliated at 14% each, preceding white Catholics at 12%.

The religiously unaffiliated tend to be diverse. Most of them identify as Democrats (35%) or Independent (38%) politically, but about 12% are Republicans. As well, most of them (65%) are white, 16% are Hispanic, and 7% are Black. Unaffiliated people are equally likely (50%) to be men or women, and 19% of them are LGBTQ.

In terms of other religious labels, about 45% of the unaffiliated identified themselves as “spiritual.” Breaking that statistic down further, 58% Hispanic unaffiliated people identified as spiritual, while 34% of white people did. And 51% of unaffiliated women call themselves spiritual, while 29% of men do.

In addition, the unaffiliated aren’t looking to join any religions. Only 9% said they were looking for one that’d be a good fit for them. If they’re Democrats, that figure drops to 5%.

What the study says about religious switching

When people leave one religious group or denomination to join another, researchers call that “switching.” It’s been a significant feature of Christianity in particular for years now, and it’s only become more important amidst their decline.

In their new study, PRRI found a wealth of information about switching—especially when compared to their 2016 study on the topic (archive).

In 2016, we saw a huge number of Americans switching religions. Almost across the board, Christian groups lost more members than they gained. The standouts were “other Protestants of color,” which gained a very few more than they lost, and those of “non-Christian religion.” By contrast, “Unaffiliated” grew enormously—in fact, by almost as many people as Christian groups lost!

They also asked respondents in 2016 about their “childhood affiliation.” That year, 9% of Americans grew up without any religious affiliation. Almost none of them, at 3.1%, left that grouping.

Things change so quickly!

This time around in 2023, we see that white evangelicals got better at retention (76%). That led to them reducing the number of people leaving, from 6% to 3.3%. With 3.4% of Americans joining them, that made their net loss of numbers go from -2.2 in 2016 to 0.1. Not a bad comeback!

Unfortunately for the rest of us and especially for non-evangelical Christians, evangelicals’ slightly improved retention rate means that the face of Christianity itself is growing more evangelical.

Later on, PRRI says in their study that “roughly one in five of today’s white evangelical Protestants (18%) were previously unaffiliated.” However, the same number of mainline/non-evangelical Protestants say the same thing.

As for those growing up without a childhood affiliation, in 2023 we see that number increasing from 9% to 10.4%—and only 2.5% leaving it. Between those leaving and the much higher numbers entering the group (18.1%), the unaffiliated—without even trying—have just as good a retention rate as white evangelicals do after years of dogged effort.

It’s interesting that only 1% of Americans converted to Catholicism in 2023. Of them, 38% switched from mainline denominations and 18% from evangelicalism. About a quarter (26%) of Catholic converts came in from the ranks of the unaffiliated.

Of the 18% who left a religious group to become unaffiliated, 35% had been Catholics, 35% mainline Protestants, and 16% evangelicals.

(See also: Revitalization; How to fix everything; George Barna sounds the alarm.)

Study reveals why people leave religion, too

In their 2016 study, PRRI asked those who’d left religion why they’d done so. At the time, 60% said they’d simply stopped believing whatever their religion taught. Others cited a fairly secular home life growing up (32%) and anti-gay/lesbian bigotry (29%) as important reasons for their disaffiliation. Fewer people said that “the clergy sexual-abuse scandal” (19%) was important, as well as their church being overly-political (16%).

What innocent days those were!

In 2023, more people cited these reasons as important ones:

• 67% stopped believing in their onetime religion’s teachings
• 47% cited anti-gay/lesbian bigotry
• 41% said they’d had a fairly secular upbringing
• 31% cited clergy abuse scandals
• 20% thought their church had become too political

Interestingly, this year PRRI asked their study respondents about their former churches’ effect on mental health. In response, 32% said their former church had been “bad for [their] mental health.” Also, LGBTQ people were far more likely (48%) to name this as a reason than non-LGBTQ people (29%).

Of interest, younger unaffiliated people were more likely (60%) to leave over bigotry than older folks. The older the respondents were, the less likely they were to cite bigotry as a reason for leaving their religion.

Study finds that religion’s overall importance to Americans has dwindled, too

Back in 2013, PRRI found that religion was of far more importance to Americans than it is nowadays:

Back in 2013, 72% of Americans said religion was either the most important thing in their lives (27%) or among the most important things at least (45%). In 2023, only 53% total said so. The number of people saying religion is the most important thing in their life went from 27% to 15%, while those saying it was among other important things went from 45% to 38%.

Meanwhile, those saying religion wasn’t as important as other stuff rose from 14% in 2023 to 19%, while those saying it wasn’t important at all rose from 13% to 26%.

PRRI broke these numbers out by a number of factors, such as political leaning. In 2013, 35% of Republicans, 25% of Democrats, and 21% of Independent voters said religion was the most important thing in their life. But in 2023, that dropped to 22% of Republicans, 11% of Democrats, and 12% of Independents.

Here’s a surprise, too: The biggest decline in religion’s importance comes from those aged 65+ (from 33% to 16%). For those aged 50-64, they had a slightly smaller drop (31% to 17%). This trend continues as we work our way down to Americans aged 30-49 (26%-14%) and finally those under 30 (18%-14%). PRRI said there was “no meaningful changes” in that last group.

Segue: Americans still seem to be lying about church attendance

PRRI captured church attendance figures in their study as well. Across the board, church attendance has fallen in all attendance categories.

In 2013, 31% of respondents said they attended church at least once a week. In 2023, that figure dropped to 24%.

It’s still probably not accurate, since Americans are famous for lying about exaggerating their attendance rates. I’ll believe them when their self-report falls to around 17%, which was the figure someone at Church Leaders got in 2017 (archive; the live link leads to a rerun of the article from 2018, but the information remains the same).

Those who say they attend services at least “a few times a year” said they did so for the following overall reasons:

• To feel “closer to God”
• “Experiencing religion as a community”
• “Instilling religious values in children”

Meanwhile, the number of people saying they “never” attend church rose from 21% in 2013 to 33% in 2023.

Charismatic experiences in the PRRI study

I really liked that the survey asked people about their experiences with charismatic elements of Christianity. That term means stuff like prophecy, speaking in tongues, magic healing, and the like. (Charism means “a gift of the Spirit” (archive), and when Christians capitalize the word “Spirit” they mean that their god’s behind it. I suppose “a gift from Jesus” doesn’t have the same ring to it.)

Of Americans claiming at least occasional church attendance, 50% said they’d gotten a divine answer to prayer within the past year. 39% said they thought “the Spirit” had helped them or someone else “to do a specific task.” 29% thought they’d had a divine revelation, while 27% thought they’d witnessed a magical healing. 21% claimed to have spoken in tongues within the past year.

For normies: “Speaking in tongues” is supposed to be a divinely-granted gift that causes its recipient to start praying in another language unknown to them. Officially, this is almost exclusively a fringe evangelical thing, though some very weird Catholics do it—and Mormons have a form of it as well. Most Christians practicing this gift think there are two specific forms of it. One is a private language they use for individual prayer, and the other is a magic prophecy that must be translated by—usually—another person entirely.

(No evidence supports either claim. Nor is it actually a real language, ever. Instead, it sounds exactly like you’d expect it to sound: like a poorly-educated American monoglot’s idea of Aramaic.)

And the other stuff in the study: Prosperity Gospel, prophecy, and white nationalism

A truly unsettling number of Americans (31% overall) bought into Prosperity Gospel, thought that magic healing was totes for realsies (36%), and thought the Christian god “reveals his plans for the future to humans as prophecy” (45%). Compared to Democrats or Independents, Republicans were more likely to buy into all of those claims.

Using the scale they’d developed to measure religious beliefs, PRRI was also able to measure sympathy for and adherence to the elements of Christian nationalism. Republicans who bought into Christian nationalism were far more likely to have seen or experienced charismatic events than Republicans who rejected it.

Similarly, Republican Christian nationalists bought into prophecy way more often than those who rejected Christian nationalism.

In the wild: Cue the coping and seething

I deliberately waited to discuss this study because I wanted to see what evangelicals would make of it. Their response has been predictable.

Most evangelical sites celebrated an improvement in their retention rate, forgetting that they’re still actively in decline and losing members overall. Back in 2016, I remember evangelicals gloating that they were declining slightly less quickly (archive) than other flavors of Christianity, and they’re at it again now.

Al Mohler, an intellectual coward and longtime crony-network bootlicker who leads Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), released a podcast talking about the PRRI study (archive). He clearly believes that if he obfuscates and tries to cloud the picture enough, he’ll end up with a flawless victory for his denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He also throws in some “no true Christian” blahblah to make those leaving sound like they weren’t really strong believers in the first place:

But I simply have to say, by my experience, I don’t think that exodus is driven by the church’s positions on LGBTQ issues. I’m not saying that’s unimportant. I’m simply saying when people leave, they leave for a complex of reasons. And quite frankly, the evidence in local church ministry indicates this as well. Those who leave are seldom those who are deeply involved and deeply committed.

SBC leaders have been playing this same failed song for about a decade now. The evidence does not support their accusations, but that’s never stopped them before. Why on earth should it stop them now?

However, I fully agree with this part:

There is just basically no cultural reason for most people to identify with Christianity in the United States, and that fact is just going to grow. [. . .] [T]he culture is no longer going to do any work for us. It’s going to be working against us.

Yes, now it matters a whole honkin’ lot for Southern Baptists to cultivate strong salesmanship skills. As well, they must make their groups as appealing as poss-

We’re going to find out how many churches believe what they say they believe, and how many churches will steadfastly continue in the Apostles’ teaching.

Never mind.

Here, Mohler makes the same exact mistake that evangelicals always make: If something sounds super-duper-ultra-Jesusy, then it cannot fail. It will totally work as advertised. Preaching “the Apostles’ teaching,” even if Mohler or Southern Baptists could ever find out what that meant for sure, has never kept a church alive or made it grow. Similarly, the opposite has never guaranteed a church’s failure.

It’s very interesting that he completely skipped the 67% of disaffiliating Americans who realized they simply didn’t believe their former religious group’s teachings. Evangelicals can’t do anything about that, of course, since none of their claims have any real-world support. It’s just interesting that he latched onto the bigotry-for-Jesus stuff.

Other evangelical sites, like Word and Way (archive), quibbled with how PRRI had arranged the myriad flavors of Christianity. I found that exact quibble repeated across various other sites, like Baptist Standard (archive). One of the more right-wing sites, Christian Post (archive), didn’t mention that 16% of the unaffiliated were formerly evangelicals (it’s in the section called “An In-Depth Look at Religious Switchers”).

Study reveals the power of childhood indoctrination

Christian Post also didn’t mention what is possibly the most damning statistic of all:

People raised in nonreligious households overwhelmingly tend to remain nonreligious. Once someone’s unaffiliated, they tend to remain so. Very few people migrate from unaffiliated status to something else. Children must be indoctrinated very young and very thoroughly if religious leaders have any hope of keeping them religious for life. Even then, the ranks of ex-Christians contain a great many people who were very well-indoctrinated as children.

Between that truth and the soaring rise in young adults objecting to anti-LGBT bigotry, evangelicals in particular have good cause to be concerned about their future. Immersing a child in religious indoctrination can’t happen just on Sunday morning or a midweek youth-group meeting. It has to be constant and consistent between the various spheres children inhabit. One single contradictory clue during that time can help them escape the Christian bubble for life.

Obviously, nonreligious parents don’t tend to work hard to indoctrinate their children. As more and more people grow up without religious indoctrination, they go on to have children who—in turn—are not raised to be religious. All the while, more and more people will disaffiliate and join the ranks of the nonreligious, and those people will raise children who also aren’t indoctrinated.

That 4-14 Window just keeps getting smaller and smaller with every generation. Evangelicals might soothe themselves here and there, but the overall picture of evangelicalism has never seemed more bleak than it does right now.

To me, that’s the real “Good News” for humanity!

NEXT UP: Evangelicals spar with each other over how best to save the ailing Southern Baptist Convention.

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