Ryan Burge is a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of “The Vanishing Church.”
One of the defining features of American religion and politics is the “God Gap.” This is the idea that Republicans depend on the votes of Christians (particularly white Christians), while Democrats rely on the growing share of Americans who claim no religious affiliation. The data from the 2024 presidential election makes the difference clear.
Among Trump voters, 71 percent were Christians and about 60 percent were white Christians. Meanwhile, supporters of Kamala Harris were almost evenly split between Christians and the nonreligious (42 percent versus 45 percent). When the average American thinks about the political leanings of the average Christian, it’s more than likely that they conjure up a Trump supporter.
But as someone who has studied American religion and politics through hundreds of surveys and thousands of data visualizations over the past decade, I must remind people of a simple fact: It hasn’t always been this way.
In the early 1970s, a majority of white evangelicals identified as Democrats, and even through the early 1990s, an attendee of a white evangelical church was just as likely to be a Democrat as a Republican. Though about two-thirds of white Catholics were Republican voters in the 2024 presidential election, they were a core part of John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960.
In fact, just a few decades ago the most prominent religious group in America was not evangelicals or Roman Catholics. Instead, it was the Protestant mainline, a collection of denominations that defined the center of American political, religious, and cultural life. In the 1950s, America was home to nearly 10 million Methodists. The Episcopal Church could claim nearly a third of all U.S. presidents to that point. Along with the Methodists and Episcopalians, other mainline bodies such as the Presbyterians and the United Church of Christ served as the moral core of American life. These traditions taught religious pluralism, political tolerance, individual rights, and civic engagement. They were a refuge not just for theological doubters but also ideological moderates.
But in an America that always wants to code institutions and individuals as “left” or “right,” the mainline refusal to be pushed into one political corner may have led to its ultimate demise. In 1975, 30 percent of all American adults were mainliners. Today that figure stands at just 8.5 percent and will quickly slide to 5 percent as the baby boomers in the pews depart.
I saw this happen not just in the line graphs and bar charts that I make as part of my work as a social scientist but also in my other career as a part-time pastor in the American Baptist Church. When I took over the pulpit in 2006 of First Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, Illinois, there were 50 souls on a good Sunday. This church boasted an average attendance of nearly 300 when the new building was consecrated on the edge of town in the mid-1950s. As I saw the survey data point to a tradition that was fading, I also saw my pews getting emptier every single year. I was doing a lot more funerals than I was baptisms.
In July 2024, that church — a typical mainline congregation — closed its doors for the final time, and I preached the last sermon in the 156-year history of First Baptist. And I know for certain that more churches will close in the next few years. In fact, it’s highly likely that hundreds, if not thousands, will share our fate in the decades to come.
But what is lost when a church like mine is no longer a part of the community? One frequently overlooked aspect of the mainline has always been its ideological diversity. While evangelicals and Catholics have swung to the right in the past few years, mainline congregants have always averaged out to moderate on the ideological spectrum. These are congregations where people learned key civic skills that helped them navigate the larger democracy — including how to disagree politely and how to take responsibility for the broader community.
In a political climate that shuns compromise, we need the mainline more than ever. But unfortunately, this once-proud tradition is a shadow of its former self. And now we are left with right-wing evangelicals and left-wing atheists yelling at each other from the edges of the American religious landscape with little left between. The decline of moderate congregations is not only hurting American religion; it’s also hurting American democracy.
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