Donald Trump, a 77-year-old Bible salesman from Palm Beach, Florida, has emerged as the nation’s most prominent Christian leader. Trump is running for president as a divinely chosen champion of White Christians, promising to sanctify their grievances, destroy their perceived enemies, bolster their social status, and grant them the power to impose an anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, White-centric Christian nationalism from coast to coast. That Trump doesn’t attend church and has obviously never read the book that he hawks for $59.99, seems of interest exclusively to his political opponents.

What might catch the attention of some evangelical conservatives, however, is that Trump’s ostentatious embrace of White Christian militantism coincides with a precipitous decline in religious affiliation in the US. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, one-quarter of Americans in 2023 said they were religiously unaffiliated. “Unaffiliated” is the only religious category experiencing growth. In a single decade, from 2013 to 2023, the percentage of Americans saying that religion is the most important thing, or among the most important things, in their life plummeted to 53% from 72%.

  • RBWells@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m sure we weren’t the first generation to question religion, I’m your age and my dad did, and there were hippies and beatniks and I’m sure some version of freethinkers before that. My mom used church more like a social group and I think we ARE missing that in society now. But agree it’s reached a critical mass now in my kids’ generation, their friends from school mostly are nonreligious, a few are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu but overwhelming majority just not religious.