It’s inevitable. Because Demographics Are Destiny:
The white Christian portion of the U.S. adult population includes 14% who are white evangelical Protestant, 14% who are white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestant, 13% who are white Catholic, and small proportions of white Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Orthodox Christians. The proportion of white evangelical Protestants in the population steadily declined starting in 2006 (when they made up 23% of the population) before settling at about 14% over the past few years. White mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants and white Catholics accounted for similar portions of the population in 2022, at 14% and 13%, respectively. Both these groups have declined as a proportion of the population since 2006, when they were at 18% and 16%, respectively. However, these drop-offs of roughly four percentage points are less pronounced than the nine-percentage-point decline in white evangelical Protestant affiliation. The religiously unaffiliated category has absorbed much of the fall-off.
Why, you may ask, has this happened? The main reason, something that Lindsey Graham pointed out years ago, is that angry white people are dying off. Because they’re older:
Republicans resemble older Americans — the vast majority are white Christian, and, while the religiously unaffiliated portion is growing, it is not a substantial constituency within the party. However, Republicans are more likely to be white evangelical Christians than those ages 65 and older, and the proportion of unaffiliated Americans is higher in the older age category than among Republicans.
Jennifer Rubin lays out why this trend may not change:
The group that has declined the most is at the core of the MAGA movement, the group most devoted to Christian nationalism. “White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%,” Jones explains. “Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.”
And that decline may yet accelerate, because they skew older than the population as a whole. Put differently, there are far more baby boomers in this group than Generation Z members. White evangelicals are “losing” people with each successive generation. (“White Christian subgroups have each lost approximately half their market share just across the generations who are alive today,” according to Jones.) If your business had lost half its market share, you would be panicking, too.
With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about “fixing” what’s wrong by adapting to a changing market. Instead, many in this cohort have doubled down, becoming the foot soldiers in the red-hatted MAGA movement. The decline isn’t going to be reversed by angry, gray-haired folks demanding abortion bans and “don’t say gay” bills.
It will likely take awhile to undo the court-packing of recent years, but the MAGA Movement is doomed!
Just some good news to start your week.