21st century American religion: decreasing church membership, rising generational divides

How will religion change in the 21st century?

A recent Gallup poll of American religious practice gives us a fascinating glimpse into future trends, both for society as a whole and education in particular.

The keep point in their report: church membership is trending downwards, especially over the past twenty years.  In fact, there’s a nine point dropoff in just the last six years:

(Some remarkable stability from 1938 to 1983!  Something happens around 1984, then things start shaking loose around the millennium.)

It’s confirmation and extension of the Public Religion Research Institute research we tracked in 2017.

Put another way, “[s]ince the turn of the century, the percentage of U.S. adults with no religious affiliation has more than doubled, from 8% to 19%.”  Or: “Three-quarters of Americans, 77%, identify with some organized religion, though that is down from 90% in 1998 through 2000.”  Bit by bit, at an accelerating clip, America is moving down the secularizing path.

Religious belief varies strongly by age.  Unsurprisingly, the older Americans are, the more likely they are to have a religious preference:

How will this play out over the next several decades?

If these trends continue – declining church affiliation, increasing age gaps – we should expect America to gradually become less religious and more secular, reshaping our culture.  Intergenerational divides may open wider and grow intense.  Imagine, for example, replacing the terms of today’s religious and gender-based culture wars with religious belief.  Perhaps religion will return to playing a key role in our politics and media.

I wrote “if” in the preceding paragraph because the trends might not play out.  There’s room for hundreds of millions of people to change their minds, of course, and aging is often correlated with rising belief.  A new great awakening could sweep younger and middle-aged Americans, perhaps in response to political frustration.  Belief might surge in certain areas or demographics – the rust belt, for example, or among nonwhites as atheism remains a mostly white movement.  New religious movements might catch fire; developments like the Eat, Pray, Love phenomenon or the NXIVM story may be signals of a new faith to come.

What does this mean for education?

If the declining religious membership trends keeps on, some religiously-affiliated colleges and universities may experience difficulties enrolling students, as well as attracting faculty and staff.  This could lead some of these campuses to close, seek mergers with different types of institutions, or restructure their affiliations even to the point of secularizing.

The discipline of religious studies, as well as religious topics in other fields (anthropology, history, literature, psychology, etc) may see enrollment decline.  This could lead to program cuts or closures, along with curricular transformation, as departments creatively seek viability.

Animosity towards education may take on a more deeply religious cast, as unbelief and higher ed remain linked.  It’s not much of a stretch to imagine Republicans deeply critical of universities and fearful of Godlessness combining the two more closely.

Supporting students may become more challenging, depending on the context.  Think of older faculty and staff with religious beliefs helping irreligious students succeed…

or the opposite, as the number of older students grows.  Again, we have the possibility of intergenerational tension.

One final caveat: the Gallup report is national, working at a macro level.  It’s not broken out by anything other than age.  It doesn’t divide up by region, race, or gender.  (For more info on this, check the PRRI study I referenced earlier.) Variations will certainly occur.

(via the excellent Economic Update podcast)

Liked it? Take a second to support Bryan Alexander on Patreon!