Editor’s note: It’s the time of year for year-enders, when newsrooms, think tanks and others post lists of the most important stories and topics from the previous 12 months. Thus, here are the five most-clicked Graphs About Religion items of the year from the omnipresent political scientist (and progressive Baptist) Ryan Burge. This list starts with his No. 1 post.
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(1) “Religion Has Become a Luxury Good — The formula: College degree + middle class income + married + children.”
This one was an absolute thunderbolt.
I published it the day I was driving back from officiating a wedding about four hours away and every time we stopped to get gas or use the bathroom I would check my phone and the social media traffic was just insane. It took on a life of its own and was shared and discussed for a long time. Which is exactly what I want to do with my work. In the end, this one got 50% more hits than any other post from this year.
In short, I argue that religion has become a haven for folks who have done everything “right.” They have college degrees, decent incomes, are married and have children. It’s become really homogeneous. That’s bad for American religion and American democracy.
I’m not done with this idea. I’ve presented it a number of venues over the last couple of months and the reception has been really humbling. People want to talk about this and think about it more deeply. It’s too early to announce anything, but I think you can expect to see these ideas expanded upon in more complete ways in the year to come.
(2) “Liberals Have Won the Culture War — Opinion on sex, drugs, and abortion have all moved left over time.”
This one was based on a graph that I had put together a while back that tracked the trajectory of a bunch of cultural issues: marijuana, same-sex marriage, abortion, pornograph and extramarital sex. Those are the Sexual Revolution issues that the General Social Survey has tracked really consistently for the last several decades.
The overwhelming sense you get is that the American public is a lot more socially liberal today than they were five decades ago. Huge majorities want to legalize marijuana and have no problem with same-sex marriage.
That wasn’t the case even 15 years ago. These shifts are especially large among younger folks. For instance, even a majority of 18-35 year old evangelicals are in favor of gay marriage now.
Lots to chew on for pastors in this one. A burning question: why aren’t you more effective at passing along centuries of Christian doctrine?
(3) “Just How Bad Is Denominational Decline? — A deep dive into the trajectory of nine denominations.”
This became the most widely shared post I wrote on the topic of denominations and their hemorrhaging of membership. I managed to pull together some data on nine different denominations. Most were mainline but I threw in the Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God, too.
This is an old, but important news topic. The trend lines point downward, sometimes dramatically so, especially in the mainline world.
The United Church of Christ is down 50% since 1987, so is the Presbyterian Church (USA). Even the Southern Baptist Convention is 4% smaller now than it was back in the late 1980s. And even for the denominations that are growing, that rate has slowed significantly in the last couple of years.
It’s just bad news, really.
(4) “Religion as a Cultural and Political Identity — Republicans like the *idea* of religion, without the actual religion part.”
One of the scariest trends in American religion is this simple idea — for many people religion doesn’t mean anything theological. It’s a cultural and political marker. As I wrote back in July, “People like the *idea* of religion, without the actual trappings of said religion.”
We are seeing the rise in non-attending self-identified evangelicals. But we are also seeing a rise in the share of Republicans who say that they never attend religious services but still say that religion is very important to them.
CONTINUE READING: “The Most Popular Posts of 2023 — A quick recap of the top five” from the Ryan Burge Graphs About Religion newsletter on Substack.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited graphic featured at the Benefits Canada website.