Trumpism Is Emptying Churches: The former president’s embrace of White Christian militantism coincides with a precipitous decline in religious affiliation in the US

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%.

uis,

What percent of people visited church on christmas?

BonesOfTheMoon,

Trump the Bible salesman.

Okay then.

tacosanonymous,

That’s correlation, not causation, at best. In fact, it might be the other way around.

The precipitous decline in Christianity is more likely the reason they’re getting more aggressive.

jupiter_jazz,

Yeah. Actually it wouldn’t surprise me that he makes a trump church and urged ppl to go to that instead.

linearchaos,
@linearchaos@lemmy.world avatar

If he doesn’t get in this is a foregone conclusion. Untaxable donations, tax shelter for purchases. Every Trump property will become a church campus, every collection attempt religious oppression.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

I mean the logo for Christianity is already a lowercase t.

Passerby6497,

The precipitous decline in Christianity is more likely the reason they’re getting more aggressive.

That’s exactly what this is

Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.

It’s a 35 year old trend they’re trying to pin on the wannabe fascist in chief.

p5yk0t1km1r4ge,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

Say it with me now: RELIGION AND POLITICS ARE EXPLICITLY FORBIDDEN FROM JOINING EACH OTHER ACCORDING TO THE WISHES OF OUR FOUNDING FATHERS. SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

uis,

Secular state. Ask France, they are experienced at it. And at atheism state.

ChunkMcHorkle, (edited )
@ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world avatar

deleted by creator

AlecSadler,

I’m legitimately surprised there is any conscious uncoupling happening. But…I guess that’s something?

InternetUser2012,

Might actually be the best thing this piece of shit has done.

Veraxus,

Yeshua (i.e. “Jesus”): “Treat everyone with love and respect. Welcome the stranger. Don’t worry about other people’s perceived shortcomings, worry about your own; live and lead by example. Pay your taxes. Share everything you have with others, especially the less fortunate, the needy, and the hurting. All of it. If you are rich, you aren’t doing this, and you will not enter the Kingdom of God. Profit from my faith and I will end you.”

Religious MAGAs: “Kill foreigners. I’m “good people” but those others who want to be left alone and live differently than me need to be beat into submission. Taxation is theft. And socialism! My bank account is God’s will! Let those poors pull themselves up by their bootstrings. My pastor needs a new limousine to spread the Good News of supply-side Jesus! Hey, why are all the people leaving the church?”

jj4211,

My parents pretty much gave up on church over 40 years ago.

Growing up they went to church regularly, and then they moved deep into the “bible belt” and the churches never were about community but all about “you all are hellbound sinners” and that just didn’t seem constructive.

Sam_Bass,

Gave up my churching before orange buffoon came stompin. And his malarkey plays no part in keepin it that way.

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

Nice. I remember thinking even in his initial campaign for 2016 that if he wins, there might be a silver lining of benefit we could get out of it, in the same way that a hangover is beneficial for an alcoholic: it’ll suck, but it might slap some sense into people who wake up that next morning and decide they’re never letting that happen again.

…unfortunately that didn’t really happen on a large scale, but this hits close enough to that mark that I’ll take it.

RBWells,

What’s funny to me is my ex mother-out-law (mom of the long term ex I never married) told me recently she could not find a Christian church she agreed with. She said they are unchristian, so I asked “not welcoming to the poor and immigrants? Too focused on dogma and not the spirit of Christ? Prosperity Gospel nonsense?”.

No, apparently the Christian churches were too “woke” for her. Too nice, not enough conservative politics in the sermons. Oh my goodness, but I think at least my questions landed.

So she may be part of this number of dis-churched people but not for the reasons we might hope.

someguy3,

There’s a whole movement of people leaving churches because they aren’t radical enough. The bad part is they conglomerate to echo chambers of unbridled hate.

TankovayaDiviziya,

Well yeah, the rise of the far-right (or alt-right however they want to call it) is a reaction to globalisation and (neo)liberal world order in the past 30 years. The religious right do not like this trend and felt they need to counter this.

Nightwingdragon, (edited )

Trump may be accellerating the issue, but people have been turning away from religion for at least the 5 decades I’ve been on this planet. I think it’s more that younger people take a more critical eye to the idea and realize that if you look at organized religion in general, none of it makes the least bit of sense.

I’d love to see a CinemaSins style video on the Bible.

This is my own personal experience, so your experience may vary significantly. But I was born in the early 70s and I think my generation was really the first generation that may have had strict, God-fearing parents, but were the first generation to actually start thinking critically about it instead of just blindly accepting the religious ideas being passed down by our parents even if we know they don’t make sense. In turn, we raised our children either without religious influence at all, or at least a heavily scaled down emphasis on religion, while allowing our children to make their religious decisions on their own, assuming they bother practicing religion at all. All things considered, the increasing trend of abandoning religion entirely should not only be no surprise, but should also accellerate as the next generation will likely be raised by mostly atheist parents, or at least non-practicing parishioners, who’s children will look at religion as a relic of the past that their great grandparents cared about back in the day.

I think in a few short generations, our descendants will look at religion the same way we look at medieval practices of using leeches to cure disease.

AngryCommieKender,

It’s not CinemaSins style, but Satan’s guide to the Bible is certainly an interesting watch.

youtu.be/z8j3HvmgpYc?si=Zrpy2pXIEcfcCl_u

frezik,

Religious affiliation often goes up under harsher times. If economic woes and global warming continue, I think we’ll see the trend reverse.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean Christianity, mind you. It might be some form of neo-paganisim. I’ve been noticing this trend among some of my ex-Christian friends.

RBWells,

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.

Nightwingdragon,

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.

Oh there were plenty. But I think our generation was really the first generation to start questioning things en masse, to the point where it was actually impacting church attendance and causing even more people to start questioning their own religion.

And we are definitely missing the social group aspects of society. It’s been replaced by social media and we as a society are suffering for it. A tool that was supposed to usher in the free flow of ideas ended up instead just giving everybody their own fortified echo chamber to live in, and it shows when you see how people act with one another today; they have no idea how to handle it when someone is telling them something they don’t want to hear.

And my kids said the same thing. Outside of a few who were born into theirs and a handful of old-school religious parents, the overwhelming majority all see religion as who’s imaginary friend is pretending to be better than who’s.

aphlamingphoenix,

Have you heard of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible? It’s probably the closest thing to CinemaSins on the subject of the Bible.

Gloomy,
@Gloomy@mander.xyz avatar

A Youtuber called Mindshift is doing a secular bible study from the perspective of a deconverted evangelist, where he goes trough each book of the bible and points out its flaws. He’s got the Old Testamsnt down and will start with the new Testamsnt in a couple of weeks.

I recommend it, I think he has a lot of interesting views to share.

m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLecYLkaBsy1XKwQ5eWY…

S_204,

My understanding is that Christianity is dwindling in numbers but Islam and Judaism are growing.

I also think religion is on the downswing, I’m fascinated by how we’re seeing people like Trump accelerating it.

Nightwingdragon,

Well that makes sense because Islam and Judaism are religions that people are typically born into. Baptism and other religious ceremonies aside, nobody is Christian by birth. So it’s not a surprise to see those religions grow as the population grows.

And don’t forget that Catholics can simply just stop going to church. Even considering that option in some Islamic countries is punishable by death. Which means there are probably at least some Muslims that aren’t Muslims by choice.

S_204,

LoL. Ya, one of those certainly isn’t known for forcibly converting people at the threat of death or for force converting part of an entire continent and not a single one of those raped choir boys was born into that environment.

This is the best comment I’ve seen online today and I’m not complementing you.

AlecSadler,

Your last paragraph - I sure hope so.

My extended family all complains about how their church attendance is declining and people are being let go from leadership because the tithing isn’t coming in like it used to and etcblahetc…

I don’t fucking care. Burn. Topple. Go away. We’ll all be better off.

BonesOfTheMoon,

Was also born in the 70s, feel the same way. I was raised Catholic, but we were taught that abortion and gay people were absolutely fine no matter what the church said. When I left home I left Catholicism simply because I didn’t relate to it, what does a voluntary eunuch have to say to a young woman about her life, was my reasoning?

But in the last few years I started going to a very lefty inclusive and completely welcoming non-denominational Christian Church. I still think much of the Bible is loony tunes, but applying some of the wisdom of the teachings of Christ to life is appealing to me, and there’s just something about singing in an old building with stained glass windows on a Sunday morning that feels sacred in a way nothing else does. This church is actively trying to find a path forward to be good humans together while acknowledging and trying to repair the damage Christianity has done, we have openly gay and trans people who attend and participate fully, and I don’t know why they all can’t be like that. Conservatives suck the life breath out of everything they touch.

jballs,
@jballs@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fantastic opening:

Donald Trump, a 77-year-old Bible salesman from Palm Beach, Florida, has emerged as the nation’s most prominent Christian leader.

Blackmist,

Well, silver linings and all that.

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