#1313 Ryan Burge: The Vanishing Church

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricard Lops, and today I'm joined by Dr. Ryan Burge. He's professor of practice at the John C. Dunforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis. And today we're going to talk about his book The Vanishing Church, How the Hollowing Out of moderate congregations is Hurting democracy, faith, and us. So Dr. Burge, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to everyone.

00:29 Ryan Burge: Thanks so much for having me.

00:31 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, um, what would you say is moderate religion? I mean, what characterizes moderate religious people?

00:44 Ryan Burge: Yeah, so the, the subtitle of the book is, you know, holling out a moderate congregations. I, I don't mean that in those congregations that everyone is a moderate. Um, YOU know, if we, if we think of political ideology as a scale from 1 to 10, you know, 1 being very liberal and 10 being very conservative, I'm not talking about a congregation where everyone's a 5. I'm talking about a congregation where for every 1 there's a 10 and for every 2 there's a 9, and for every 6 there's a 4. You know, the, the, the aggregate number averages out to, you know, 45, or 6, somewhere in the middle of, of the spectrum. And this is what I've realized, uh, after writing this book is that my definition of moderate is not pleasing to the 9s and 10s, nor the 1s and 2s. You know, for instance, when I say, you know, the, the view that two men should have the right to be married is a moderate view, um, evangelicals would strongly reject that statement. Um, AND, and, but my approach, and this is where my work really struggles with people of faith, is that I approach these topics from a lens of social science, not a lens of theology or philosophy. Um, THEY want to approach it with a philosophical lens, and my, my definition of moderate is if most Americans agree with a position, then that is empirically a moderate position to have. Um, AND I think that that is what rubs up against a lot of the, the people on each side, the kind of the ones and twos and nines and tens of the debate.

02:15 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, I know that that clarification was important because it's not the way I think most people tend to think about moderate politics when they hear that term. I mean they usually, I mean when they hear something or a position. That, uh, they look at as being, uh, diametrically opposed to theirs. They tend to think it's part of the opposite end of the political spectrum, usually,

02:47 Ryan Burge: right? I think the other thing about moderate though, it's, it's not just a position, it's a posture, right? A moderate posture is a posture that says, I'm willing, I know what my ideal outcome is, my ideal policy, but I also understand that I cannot achieve my ideal policy in the world that we live in, right? You know, for instance, let's say that you have a position that, you know, sperm plus egg equal human, um, which would mean that, you know, IVF should be illegal, um. You know, any form of abortion should be illegal, whether it be through rape or incest or for any reason should be illegal. I think we all understand in the modern political climate that, that position is not politically viable. You're not gonna get that passed, um, really at any level. So the question is, do you compromise? And then how much do you Compromise on an issue like that. So for me, also a moderate is a posture of compromise, saying that I, if I can move 11 click closer to my desired policy, then I will vote for that, you know, as opposed to, unless you give me all 10 clicks, I will vote for nothing. Um, I think that's a part of what moderate means as well, not just where you are in the 1 to 10 spectrum, but how willing you are to, to, to be malleable in your positions at the same time.

03:57 Ricardo Lopes: So I mean, particularly atheists, and I'm an atheist myself, I mean, it's very common for us to look at religion and assuming that all religious people are necessarily conservative, but there are also progressive and or liberal religious sects,

04:18 Ryan Burge: correct? Yeah, no, that's I will say that in America, you know, religion has, is, is seen as conservative sort of by default, you know, if you're a religious person, like the, you know, odds are you're probably a right, a right of center person depending on how far right of center you are, um, but there are, I mean, there, there used to be a lot more liberal religious people in America. I mean, uh, you know, not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but 100 years ago, the most dominant strain of Christian theology was the social gospel. Which was this idea that God wanted people to be fed and clothed and taken care of, you know, from, uh, the forty-hour work week, you know, union rights, uh, child labor laws, overtime rules, uh, prohibition were all pushed by social gospelers who wanted to try to make the world. Uh, A better place, more like heaven on earth. And, and so that, you know, that was the world that we live in right now in America with American religion and politics is a very modern incarnation of the relationship between the two things. And religion is not by default a conservative thing, by the way. I mean, I think in the current era, it's seen that way, but it's not. Throughout American history, it's not always been that way. So a lot of what I tell my students and when I give, you know, discussions is I say, it's not always been this way. You know, if you go back 50, 60 years in history, you'll see a lot more diversity in American Christianity, especially, uh, especially white American Christianity. I mean, there used to be a lot of Democrat-white Christians out there and they're sort of uh, an endangered species now.

05:43 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, and I mean, even historically we know that there were many religious movements and religious sects associated with progressive politics and progressive movements in, in the 19th century, for example, uh related to abolitionism in the 60s, related to uh civil rights and all of that, right?

06:05 Ryan Burge: Oh, that, that's, that, those. The younger people in America don't know anything about. And was driven largely by people of faith. The civil rights movement was, and I think we teach civil rights in America sort of one dimensionally. It's When really it was a, there was a religious fervor involved in a spirituality involved in the civil rights, and if you, if you read the writings of the civil rights reformers like Martin Luther King Junior, he was a pastor, you know. Religious imagery and religious language, uh, and we sort of forget that, I think. You know, we kind of make it into all about politics and secular things, but you don't walk across a bridge into a, uh, an, an army of guards with dogs unless you believe there's something beyond this world, you know, that there's something motivating you. And I think that's, that, that's the aspect that if you're Not a person of faith. It's hard to teach. It's hard to talk about because it sort of operates in this realm that is illogical and irrational and doesn't really follow the rules of science. So that's what makes social science hard and wonderful is it sort of operates in this liminal space between what we can understand and count and, and, and see and touch, but also something that's sort of beyond all those things.

07:11 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. So in the book you go through the through how the religious landscape in America has changed over the past 50 years since the 1970s, including the trajectory of Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, the rise of the nuns. So I would like to ask you about the trends. Uh, IN regards to which of those sects. So, uh, when it comes to the evangelicals, I mean, who are the evangelicals and how have they grown in the US? I mean, I think it's very important for us to talk about them because at least, I, I, I mean, I live in Europe. I, I, I don't know exactly. How things are there in the US if you look at things exactly the same way, but we tend to associate evangelical Christianity a lot with conservative political figures like Donald Trump and others. So is that the same way you look at it,

08:12 Ryan Burge: or no, there's The most conservative political group in America today are white evangelicals, without a doubt. I mean, 81, 83% of them vote for Donald Trump. I mean, and You don't get a group that's that politically unified, that's that large, uh, in American. You can find little smaller groups that may be 90%, you know, one or the other. But I mean, evangelicals in America make up 20% of the population. There's somewhere around 70 to 75 million evangelicals, uh, in America. About 40% of all of Donald Trump's votes in 2024 came from the evangelicals. So I mean, it's, there is no more important religious group in American politics than, than evangelicals, like full stop. And it, it, that will continue for decades in the future. Um, EVANGELICALS make up 20% of the population. Uh, THEY were 20% of the population 50 years ago. So that, you know, the size of the group is actually about the same. Uh, SO when people talk about religious decline in America, you gotta be more specific, right? Some groups have declined, you know, pretty noticeably, and other groups haven't really. And I think white evangelicals sort of fit in the category of no, they're doing, they're doing quite fine, uh, from a numeric perspective. And I think from a cultural perspective, They're actually probably more impactful today than they were 2030, 40 years ago because they're sort of one of the last bastions of American religion that's still strong and vibrant and growing and multifaceted. But, um, white evangelicals are conservative. I mean, they've been conservative for a very long time, by the way. The question that I really struggle with is why do so many evangelicals vote for Donald Trump? Well, the answer is because he's a Republican. I mean, 75% of them voted for McCain in 2008, you know, so it's the, the white evangelical vote is a Republican vote, you know, so whoever you put in, in that, on the ticket with a Republican after their name, that's who white evangelicals are gonna vote for, you know, whether it be McCain or Romney, who is a Latter-day Saint, or, or Trump or whoever comes after Trump, it's gonna be 75 to 80%, you know, voting for that person. So from that perspective, it's, Now, why do they like him so much? Uh, THAT'S a question I don't think I have a great answer for, um. He has a charisma that's hard to describe to a non-American. I'll just say that. Um, WE always are, are drawn to these very like proud, strong, aggressive figures, and that's what Donald Trump is. Evangelicals are predisposed to liking people like that, sort of like a strongman figure in American politics, and we Time. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. It's personality driven.

10:33 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm, RIGHT, and I, and I mean, uh, is it that, uh, you say that they voted for Donald Trump because he was on the Republican side, uh, uh, I mean, do you think that if he, if he had run for the Democrats, I mean, if he was on the Democrat side, of course it's really hard to, to imagine Donald Trump as a. Democrat, but anyway, do you think that if he was a Democrat or an independent, that they wouldn't have voted for him? I mean, maybe because the kind of conservatism that he expresses politically is not exactly in line with the conservatism associated with evangelical Christians, or, or is it?

11:21 Ryan Burge: I think he's remade what conservativism means in American life. And I think that's the, that's the part that's hard to describe to someone who hasn't followed American politics closely, but, you know, the American, the, the American Republican Party of 20 years ago was a free trade party, was a sort of hawkish interventionist foreign policy party. Uh, YOU know, George HW Bush, George W. Bush is kind of the prototypical, you know, compassionate conservatism, but definitely conservativism, right? Not super xenophobic, um, but, you know, family values, religious values, things like that. That was sort of a moderate, you know, the median Republican, and now the Republican Party is anti-free trade. Um, WHICH is, you know, so antithetical to what like conservatism was in America. Um, THEN Trump's had this very interesting foreign policy, right, which he said, he's like, we're done with foreign wars. We're not gonna be, you know, adventuring all over the world. And then he, you know, invades Venezuela and removes the dictator, and then he, you know, bombs Iran. So, you know, it's like you can't figure out what can, and then not even on abortion, you know, he's, he's moderated on abortion too. Obviously, it's illegal at the federal level, but at the state level, he said, I want states to have the right to do whatever they want, you know, including allowing abortion at the state level. So, in many ways, he kind of cuts across what we think conservativism is, and he's remade conservativism. So we actually have a term called MAGA, you know, in America, are you a MAGA Republican? OR are you sort of like an old-school Republican, a normie Republican? And I think, you know, MAGA has taken over and MAGA has taken over evangelicalism too. There's not a whole lot of normie evangelicals out there anymore. They're much more the Donald Trump style. The question though is, after Trump leaves the stage, what is the Republican Party? You know, does it kind of revert back to what it was 20 years ago or has it been permanently remade in the image of Donald Trump and MA politics? We just don't have an answer to right now.

13:09 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. In the book you also talk about trends, how trends have looked like for mainline Protestants. So what, what have they looked like over the past few decades?

13:22 Ryan Burge: Yeah, bad. I think that's the, the easiest way to describe it is bad, uh, and worse in many ways than, than even people think it is. Uh, MAINLAND Protestants were about half of America in the 1950s. Um, 52% of Americans were mainline Protestants in 1958. Um, AND by 1975, it dropped to 30%, and today it's less than 10%, somewhere about 8-9% of Americans, uh, are mainline Protestant. It was the sort of the proudest, most dominant religious tradition in America for most of the 20th century, and now it's not, obviously, and sort of sliding toward, um, extinction in many ways. If you look at demographics, I mean, Uh, the Episcopalians, half of them are over the age of 65. Uh, YOU know, these, a lot of these denominations average age is in the 60s. So, you know, they're not long for this world. A lot of denominations are gonna lose 30, 40, 50% of their members in the next 20 years because of death. Um, YOU know, there's very few, only 5% of Generation Z identifies as mainline Protestant. So that, you know, the future is just not very bright. Now, a lot of those denominations have a lot of institutional wealth though. It's been sort of piling up for generations and decades. The Episcopal Church in America can trace its history back 400 years. You know, it was given land by the Queen in the 1600s. So there's a lot of like sort of ancestral money in the Those denominations, they're gonna be zombie denominations though, in many ways, where they have a lot of money but not a lot of people. So, you know, what do you do in a situation like that where you have a building that's humongous and only has 30 people in worship. So, the mainline has definitely lost its cultural relevance too because young people don't even know what a mainline Protestant is. You know, you talk about what Protestant is, they think evangelicalism by default. They don't understand Methodism or Episcopalians or Presbyterians. When those gene, you know, those groups ran America for, for most of our history, now they're just, they're just a rounding error in the grand sweep of American religion.

15:11 Ricardo Lopes: How about American Catholics? I mean, I'm Portuguese. I'm living here in Portugal. Even though I'm an atheist, the country is still, I mean, the majority of the country is still Catholic. So, but here there in the US, how have trends looked like for Catholics?

15:29 Ryan Burge: So Catholics were very steady for a very long time, right around 25 to 27% of the population almost every year, very consistent. From the 1970s all the way to about 2010 or so, and then, um, the data says that the share of Americans are Catholic has dropped about 5% points in the last 15 years. They're down to about 20 to 22% of America, so down from a high of 27 or so. Um, SO there's still a ton of Catholics in America, 62 million according to their own records. Um, THEY'RE all over, you know, it's, it's hard to find a part of America that does not have a Catholic Church. I think pretty much every county in America has a Catholic Church. Um, BUT they're growing more racially diverse. You know, I think that's the biggest story in American Catholicism is they were overwhelmingly white 50 years ago. And now if you look at Generation Z, you know, 40% of the Gen Z Catholics are Hispanic. So, you know, it's, it's a changing religious group in America. And so there's a, there's a weird power dynamic happening right now is how much are white Catholics willing to give up, sort of the, the leadership of their church and give it over to, to non-white Catholics. Um, POLITICALLY speaking, the Catholic Church has, you know, for a long time it was Democratic. You know, the John F. Kennedy Democrats was a, was a huge part of the Democratic Party. And now, white Catholics are a solidly red voting bloc. About 2/3 of white Catholics voted for Donald Trump. In 2024, even like 42% of non-white Catholics voted for Donald Trump. So now the Catholic voting bloc is 55, 45%, 55% Republican. So it's, it used to be very divided. I used to always say that America looks like Catholics and Catholics like America, like at the voting booth. And that's not true anymore. Now, it's, they're, they're a right-leaning constituency in America. But what's overriding all that is that the average Catholic is not that devout. You know, only 25% of Catholics report going to mass, uh, every Sunday. It used to be 50% of Catholics were weekly massgoers. So a lot of cultural Catholicism in America, not sort of like theological Catholicism.

17:22 Ricardo Lopes: Mm. And what about the nuns or how, I mean, that's the word sociologists, for example, and some political scientists used to refer to people who, if I understand it correctly, do not identify as being part of any of any main religious sect. I mean, And we have to be careful here because sometimes, as I said, I'm an atheist, and sometimes atheists speak on the percentages of nun of people identified as nuns in the several different countries to make an argument that they are all atheists, but they're actually not. I mean, they can be agnostics, they can be part. I guess smaller religious sects or they can be spiritual people. So, uh, how have the trends for the nuns looked like over the past few decades in the US?

18:17 Ryan Burge: So the nuns have grown exponentially in America. They were 5% of the country. Uh, IN 1991, and today they're about 30% of America. Uh, IT'S the, the most significant religious movement in, you know, recent American religious history without a doubt. Um, YOU'RE talking 25% of Americans now, uh, just increased 25%. Um, AND the interesting thing about the nuns is that most nuns are not atheists. You know, I think that's a very important point that if If you put 5 non-religious people in a room, 1 is an atheist, one's an agnostic, and 3 are people who call themselves nothing in particular. That's literally the option on the survey. They look at all the options, and it's, it's sort of the none of the above, uh, category in American religion. These are, these are people who obviously aren't Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim, but also they're not atheists or agnostics either. They sort of shrug their shoulders in American religion. They're apathetic towards American religion, either, either direction, either being an atheist or being a Protestant or Catholic. Um, AND there's nothing in particular among young people. Actually, the most popular response option is nothing in particular. About 1/3 of 18 to 22 year olds described their religion as nothing in particular. And it's growing, you know, I mean, we, we gotta keep this in mind. Like 1 out of 5 Americans is nothing in particular now. Atheists are 5%, you know, so it's the atheists get all the play, right? They get all the media attention, all the discussions about atheism as an idea. But if you actually sit back and look at the data, then nothing in particulars are really the story. They're gonna win you elections. They're gonna change society like in a way that atheist agnostics, um, could not yet, you know, atheist agnostics are much more liberal politically speaking than nothing in particulars. Atheists are The most liberal group we have in America from a pure empirical standpoint are atheists on social issues. It's, it's atheists and agnostics are sort of slightly less liberal, but still liberal, but slightly less liberal than atheists. Uh, Nothing in particular are to the left of the political spectrum, but sort of center left politically speaking. They're, you know, 65% Democrat voting bloc while atheists are 85% Democratic voting bloc. Um, SO, and we also see some evidence right now that the share of Americans who are non-religious has stopped increasing. Uh, IN the last couple of years and maybe even decreased in some surveys. So, you know, the rise of the nuns is over, you know, effectively speaking for now at least.

20:39 Ricardo Lopes: Right. So I mean, looking at all those trends, what can we tell about, uh, I mean, the claims made by certain people that religion is on the decline? Of course, I mean when people make those claims, sometimes they are referring. To America specifically. Other times they are referring to other countries and even other times they are referring to just global trends. But I mean, is there really, uh, is religion really on the decline, uh, specifically in the US?

21:15 Ryan Burge: I would say it's on a pause right now. Um, IT definitely declined between 1990 and 2020, you know, in a very significant way. And it's, there's, there's a, we're not, where it's sort of the calm before the storm. We're gonna see secularism continue in America going forward because of generational replacement. You know, boomers are 20% non-religious and Gen Z are 40% non-religious. And what's gonna happen. On a massive scale in the next 20 years, boomers are gonna die, um, by the tens of millions of them. And the people that replaced them in surveys are gonna be Gen Z and Gen Z is half as religious as boomers are. So that means the number of nuns, the share of Americans who are non-religious is going, it's going to inevitably rise in the next 15 to 20 years. It's not rising now though because those boomers are still sort of like holding back the, the wave of secularism that's happening right now. Um, THE, the, the information about other countries is a lot harder to parse, to be honest with you. There's a lot of mixed messaging. There's this report that came out of, uh, you know, the UK called the Quiet Revival. It showed a huge jump in religion which ended up being methodologically problematic. Um, YOU know, the problem about measuring religion around the world is, is, is concepts don't travel perfectly from one country to another country, right? To say you're religious and India is not to say you're religious in, you know, in Ireland. Like those are just two different concepts, you know, the idea of going to a house of worship means different things to different religious groups. So, it really is hard to sort of measure what's happening. I think we can all admit that secularism, you know, had this unbelievable run, but that run is probably slowing down, if not stopping in most parts of the world right now. Not that we're gonna see a massive return to faith in the world. I don't think that's in the cards, but definitely of more slow growth in in the nuns across the world than we saw the last 30 years.

23:08 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, definitely we have to keep in mind cross cultural differences in how people approach religion and religiosity and how they identify or think about themselves as being part of a religious sect or not, so we, we definitely have to keep that in mind when Looking at the data. So, uh, and you talk about the trend of polarization in American religion. I mean, what does polarization mean in this particular context and how has that played out?

23:44 Ryan Burge: Yeah, so polarization is sort of like really amorphous, uh, a term that we sort of slap on everything at this point. But what it really means from, you know, a numerical perspective is that, you know, it's, it's more and more people going from being, you know, 45, and 6 on that on ideological distribution to being 8s and 9s and 10s and 1s and 2s and 3s, right? It's moving toward the edges of the political spectrum and away from the middle of the political spectrum. It's hotly debated in America, just like what, how that's happening, what level that's, is it even happening is actually a huge debate. Uh, IN America, when I was in grad school, it was like probably the biggest debate in American politics was, are we polarizing and at what level? You know, there's a debate that we're, uh, the elites are polarizing. So the partisans, like the, the party elites are polarizing left and right. Um, IS that actually trickling down to the rank and file people, you know, the average American, are they polarizing? How much is that sort of like sliding down the hill and, and changing us? Institutionally speaking, I think there's, it's hard to look at the evidence and say we're not polarized. I mean, you know, when you look at white evangelicals and the share of Republicans now is higher than ever, you know, it's been the last 50 years and, you know, you look at atheists, they're going the other direction. So you do see some sort of organization, institutional polarization, but there's something even more insidious, but I don't talk about that much in the book, which is effective polarization, which is the idea that you don't vote. For your candidate, you hate the other party, and that's why you vote for the party you vote for, you know, I mean, you know, you hear this a lot in the American political discourse. I heard a, a conservative commentator the other day said, I don't care if Donald Trump drops nuclear weapons on Iran. The Democrats are evil. You know, like it's, it's this idea of like, I could never vote for this party, so I have to vote for that party and I hate the other party. So I think a lot of it is that effective polarization thing is where we sort of demonize the other side. And then it justifies our, a lot, you hear a lot of evangelicals say this in America, by the way. I'm not voting for Donald Trump. I'm voting against the evilness of the Democratic Party. Um, YOU know, if that's true or not, I, I don't know. I think for some of them it is. I think a lot of them, it's a way to not say what they really believe, which is they really do like Donald Trump. They really like his politics. They really like his policies. They really like him as a person. So, you know, that that's the hard thing to parse is like what goes through a voter's mind when they go cast a ballot. You know, I don't think any of us have a, even me, you know, like why do I, why do I vote for this person, not for that person? I say our job, political science is the dumbest job in the world because we try to figure out what goes on through someone's mind when they walk into the voting booth on election day. And, you know, for some people, it could be an incredibly sophisticated discussion, right, about policy and, you know, and, and, and priorities and philosophy and theology and all these things. And for someone, it could be they walked in the room and they were drunk and they hit the wrong button. You know, it's, it's our job to try to figure out like what causes the votes to happen. So polarization is, is, is just the idea that the society is sort of like moving toward the edges, the fringes of the political spectrum, and moving away from the middle of American politics.

26:48 Ricardo Lopes: So if there's this polarization in American society and American politics as you argue in your book, what would you say led to it?

26:59 Ryan Burge: It's hard to not blame it on the media at some level. You know, you got to think to yourself like, OK, 30 years ago, we were fairly politically, uh, moderate. There's a lot of compromise, even like in Ronald Reagan's presidency, there's a lot of like, Ronald Reagan would, would play golf with Tip O'Neill and, and Reagan was a Democrat, and Tip O'Neill was a, I'm sorry, Reagan was a Republican, Tip O'Neill was a Democrat, right? You would never see that today. You know, the Democrats don't, don't even want to look at the Republicans and vice versa. And a lot of it is the 24 hour news cycle. You know, I, I think there's a lot to be laid at the blame of, you know, having to produce content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, means you're gonna have to, you know, and politicians lean into this, by the way. You know, they want to create that good content. They wanna get that sound bite on TV and a lot of it's just call the other party evil and bad and bad for America and anti-American. And what that leads us to sort of a, a downward spiral is if you say we're evil, we're gonna say you're evil. You know, and, and to go back and forth like that. So, I do think at some level, it is, it is the media, and then that's been sort of um turbocharged by social media, which is, I don't know if you can be more than 24/7, but somehow social media, it feels like it's more than 24/7, right? It's just, it's just running continuously. And the amount of information that comes out on social media is just staggering, even compared to cable news. So, I do think that social media, and now we can with, with, you know, the algorithms, we can curate our feeds in such a way where we only see what we want to see about, you know, each party. We don't want to hear, we never hear an alternative view of the other party. We only find another reason to hate them. And I think a lot of influencers are being, you know, being incentivized, to be quite honest with you, to lean into their left-leaning audience or right-leaning audience. And the algorithm will give, wants to keep you on the platform. And how do they do that by giving you the content that you want. Um, AND so I think that's kind of created this terrible feedback loop where a lot of Republicans don't see anything good in the Democrats. And a lot of Democrats don't see anything good in the Republicans cause the algorithm shows them nothing but bad things about the other party. So, I do think at some level, we have to blame at least some of this on the media and then social media, how it changed the Americans' information diet over the last 30 years.

29:16 Ricardo Lopes: And so, in what ways does this sort of uh social and political polarization relate to religious polarization in the US?

29:29 Ryan Burge: Yeah, it's, you know, we, we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but, you know, you could be a white Christian Democrat 30 years ago. There were lots of them, you know, Bill Clinton won a whole bunch of them in 1992 and 1996. Um, A lot of people voted for Jimmy Carter, you know, in 1970, a lot of evangelicals voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 cause he was an evangelical. Um, SO what it's done is it's sort of purified American religion, and you see a lot of rhetoric about this, by the way, like the Democratic Party is the party of the devil. It's an evil party, it's anti-Christian. They're gonna kill your babies and trans your kids. I mean, you do see that rhetoric all the time in American social media. That's what the Democratic Party stands for. They hate every, there's a phrase I see on social media all the time that makes me want to jump off a cliff, which says, you don't hate these people enough. Like they're, they want you to to be driven away from the other party. And in many ways, you know, we want to believe that religion is the primary philosophical lens that people have in America, but I don't think that's true. I think politics is first and religion sort of lives behind that. And so actually a lot of people are choosing what church to go to based on their politics or how often they go or what type of, you know, faith they have is based on their politics. And, and, and the thing about American religion that I think a lot of journalists miss. They want to tell tons of stories about how lots of people left evangelicalism because they're liberal and evangelicalism is conservative, but actually evangelicalism has gained a lot of people who are conservative. You know, it's actually been attractive to some people. That's the other side of the coin, right? People go, why are evangelicals doing this? Well, because it's actually, it, it might not be as bad as you think it is in terms of numbers. So, I think there are a lot of people, they don't have any concept of American religion that's not conservative and therefore, we're sorting ourselves out. So now the nuns, right? Usually the Democratic Party, you cannot rely on non-religious voters to win you anything cause there weren't enough of them. And now, 45% of Harris voters were non-religious. In 2024. So like, now the Democratic Party is leaning into the nuns because they realized that's a base of power for them and the Republican Party is leaning into conservative Christians because that's a base of power for them. So, you know, the size of each group has made it more amenable for these two groups to sort themselves out as well. So, You know, now we have what's called the God gap. You know, the idea of the Republican Party is a party of religious people and the Democrats, the party of non-religious people, and that gap is just gonna become more hardened and more part of American life in the future, and young people are just gonna have no concept, right? Before when it was 90% Christians were evenly divided, Democrats and Republicans. That just seems like bizarre today from what it used to be.

32:07 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, IS there a divide when it comes to, uh, how religious people, people are, I mean, comparing the more religious people to the less religious people, is there a divide in terms, uh, of their wealth and level of education in America?

32:29 Ryan Burge: Yeah, so a lot of people have this perception, uh, of religion that it's for sort of poor, uneducated people, and I think, I think people read too much Karl Marx back in the day, you know, that, that religion is sort of like this, the opiate of the masses, right? It's a tool of oppression for dumb people, you know, like. And you see this, by the way, Karl Marx writes about this all the time. Like the, the, the, the rich factory owner takes advantage of the workers and says, well, you know, God wants you to work hard. Well, who's gonna get rich if you work hard? It's the factory owner, not the people, right? Well, guess what? In America, that whole model just doesn't work. And actually, one of the clearest findings in all the data I've ever looked at is the people who are the most likely to attend church this weekend will be, be people with graduate degrees, and the people who are the least likely are those with a high school diploma or less. So there's a very strong positive relationship between education. Attendance, uh, in the United States. I, I think we forget that, right? That, that, that it's people in America have realized that to be a polite citizen, to be an upwardly mobile, you know, active member of the community means to be part of a religious group. I see the value in being part of a religious group because that's where the establishment is in a lot of small towns across America. You need to be part of that big church to have a, a, a veterinarian or insurance salesman or a real estate agent or to run for political office or, you know, whatever it is, like you want to be part of that crew. And so, you know, American religion is, is quite, quite literally, uh, uh, you know, part of the privileged set of American people. And there's a, and I don't write about this a ton in the book, but I write about this in other places. You know, there's a very clear through line in the data which is that dropping out leads to more dropping out. You know, so dropping out of religion is actually indicative of dropping out of education. It's, it's indicative of dropping out of politics. There's nothing in particular we just talked about, right? Huge group, growing group in America. They're the least level of education of any religious group in America. They're the least politically active of any religious group in America. Um, AND obviously, they're non-religious. So, you know, like, they're just pulling away from all the vestiges of a, a polite society. Meanwhile, educated people are, are, are leaning in, you know, they're being actually more engaged and more involved. So it's like sort of like this, things are going both directions at one time and it's like the rich get richer in all ways, not just financial, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and that gap is only growing over time.

34:52 Ricardo Lopes: So do you think that this problem of religious polarization in America and how that then manifests at a more societal and political level, it can be solved? I mean, can religion become less polarized and if so, do you have any idea of how that could happen or could be done?

35:17 Ryan Burge: That's the question I get asked with the most frequency that I don't have. A clear answer to, to be honest. Um, IT'S, I, I've always said, if you said, well, you know, I was a pastor for 20 years, and if you would ask me, would I rather lead a church of, you know, cultural diversity and political diversity or a church where everyone voted for the same candidate and basically the same views of the world, it'd be so much easier to lead that unified church, you know, cause they all agree, you know, you say certain things and they all kind of go, yeah, amen, brother, let's go, you know, like. It's harder to lead diverse organizations. It's, it's just a fact. And so I always say that like what I'm actually asking religion to do is bad for religion but good for democracy, right? Which is to become more politically heterogeneous, more diverse, you know, age-wise, race-wise, income-wise, education-wise. Um, I don't think there's a magic bullet, you know, to say, hey, let's, we're all a bunch of Republicans, let's invite some Democrats to come hang out with us, or a bunch of old people, let's invite young people, or, you know, we're a bunch of college educated people. Let's invite people with high school diplomas. Like it, it doesn't work right because religion is a voluntary organization, you know, you, you show up if you want to and you pick what church you want to, and you come in when you want to. So I, I think part of it is though, is I've been telling pastors that the goal they should have. IS to try to give people a coherent worldview to think about things that are happening in American politics and society, and not necessarily a partisan worldview. You know, I think that the good, the good, a good preacher afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. And you got to do both in equal measure. It it's so much easier to comfort people than to afflict them. But I think we all need to be afflicted sometimes, right? When you be told we're not doing good enough and the, the people that we think are the politicians we vote for maybe not be moral upstanding citizens and all those things. So I'm actually telling pastors to make their job harder, which I fully understand as a pastor, I didn't want my job to be harder. So, I don't think there's a magic bullet. I think it starts from the bottom up, you know, I think it starts for the average like that that 45, and 6 person who isn't going to church right now needs to show up, needs to become part of a church, right? Needs to, to lean into those communities. And I think that's on them, you know, I think it, it really is a, a mass movement that has to happen in America. And I'm not super hopeful that's gonna happen, but my goal in writing the book was, you know, reaching out to those 4, 5s, and 6s saying, hey, you know what, church might be a good thing for you. You might really benefit from this in a whole bunch of ways, so you should probably show up. Whether they actually do or not, uh, you know, I think that's an open question.

37:54 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. OK, so I have one last question and, and as I told you before, I'm an atheist, but I'm not an anti-theist, so I, I'm not necessarily against religion or religious people. Um, I mean, what would you say, let's see, let's say that religion in the future. uh, WILL decline further. Uh, I mean, what would you say could be the effects, whether social, political, or other kinds of effects that the decline of the church could have in in America, in America? Yeah,

38:33 Ryan Burge: yeah, um, I think we just, there's two ways to approach this. Obviously there's like sort of like a deep philosophical and theological conversation to be had about. You know, what's our shared morality if we don't have Christianity at the core? Cause we've had American Christianity at the core, you know, for since the founding, America was founded by Christian people and has been run by Christian people for our entire history, right? So if we get rid of that, what unifies us? You know, like how do we hold together the disparate pieces? That's, that's a philosophical question. I'm not super well equipped to answer. I, I just don't, I don't think about those things very much. But from a purely social standpoint, I think we're seeing a more atomized, a more, um, you know, We're drawing apart from each other. You know, we're, we're not operating in diverse spaces anymore. And I think that's the real tragedy of, of the decline of religion is that for all its foibles and failures, uh, the American church was always a place where rich and poor, you know, and, and, and educated and uneducated, and conservative and liberals all sat side by side on a Sunday morning and worship together. And you found out that you had a whole lot more in common than you had in difference. You know, and you can work through your differences because of what you held in common. So, I think we sort of lost our ability to know how to compromise because we don't practice that very often. We don't practice dialogue and discussion where we used to have these, these debates at places like church, but also places like, uh, we have like Elks Clubs and Moose Clubs and American Legion, like these kind of social organizations where people would hang out. Um, THOSE are all gone away, you know, so we're not, we're not as social as, as we need to be. And I think that's, that to me is like, uh, even if you're an atheist and listen to what I have to say, here's why it matters to you is America being less social hurts all of us. You know, I just don't see in any way that's a positive trend for Democracy, obviously, but also things like mental health, um, relationships. If we care about fertility in this country, you know, you've got to find a partner. And where do you find a partner in social organizations? Well, they're going away, so how do you find, you know, so it's, it's creating sort of all these knock-on effects in American life. And, you know, you can disagree with the teachings of Jesus or, or Moses or Muhammad or Buddha or whatever and still see the value in social organizations and people meeting together on a regular basis. And sharing their lives with each other. And I think that to me is something that's almost unassailable in the data is this is a bad thing for all of us. And so how do we, how do we move past that? How do we get over that? That is a harder thing to fix because we've been moving in this direction for 75 years now. And with more and more churches closing, there's fewer and fewer opportunities for that mixing and matching and, and being in diverse spaces. Uh, AND, and I don't know how we recover that. At least not, you know, it's not gonna happen. It doesn't feel like it's gonna happen in any organic way going forward. And to me, that's the, that's the red light, the flashing warning sign in American society right now is just the collapse of, of social society, not just religious society, but social society at the same time. And I don't see how we recover from that in a meaningful way.

41:41 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so, I mean, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of uh American politics more generally?

41:51 Ryan Burge: It, it depends on the day. I'm not gonna lie, you know, some days I have days where I think that this is it, you know, like we've had a good run, I guess, in America, and it's all over now. But I, I, I generally lean toward optimism. Um, I try to at least. I think like all the winds are blowing in the pessimistic direction in America, but like I try to like walk against that wind and say, no, no, no, there are, there are great and beautiful and wonderful things happening in America. I think in many ways we are, we are more economically prosperous today than we've been at any point in American history. Technological advancements are just, I mean, the speed. Uh, THE velocity of technological advancements. And by the way, most of them coming from the United States, like, let's be honest about that. I always tell my students, you know, like, yeah, Europe is great, but think about the most important inventions in, in, in the world in the last 25, 30 years. Almost all of them have come from the United States. And I think there's a lot of value to say like, we're an innovative culture. We're, we're always creating and being weird and edgy and different and, and, and moving things forward. Um, AND then from a, from a pure like science perspective, it's really hard to not look at the scientific community and go, holy cow, we've reached an inflection point in drug discoveries and therapies that we have today that we did not have 20 or 30 years ago. You know, if you get cancer 30 years ago, you're 30% more likely to die than getting cancer today. Uh, WE have a pill that you can take now that will make you lose 15 to 20% of your body weight with almost no known side effects. Like, we're, we're solving the biggest health crisis in America, which is obesity. Like we have the solution to that now. Like, uh, you know, we have a cure for cystic fibrosis, we have a cure for sickle cell anemia. We have, you know, uh, there are multiple myeloma, 5%, uh, uh, uh, survival rate 20 years ago. It's 50% today. Like, you look at all this data and go, why are we so mad about everything? They're actually not so bad right now. And obviously, we can talk about geopolitics and all this kind of stuff, but man. We have a good thing and, and, and my, my, my posture, at least my attempted posture is one of hopefulness and, and gratitude and thanksgiving for all the things that I, I have that I've been given that my parents didn't have and their grandparents didn't have. And my kids are gonna have even more of it than me. I mean, how, how great is that? So, the amount of suffering the average average person goes through in the, in the world today is probably 1/10 of what it was. 100 years ago. Like, how do you think about that and, and, and be mad about it? You know what I mean? So, yeah, we've got problems, but we'll overcome them because we always overcome our problems. We always always have. In the history of the world, we've always overcome our problems in one way or the other. And we're seeing that in America right now. We're overcoming some of the biggest challenges, uh, climate change, you know, we're, we're solar panels, you know, like we're, we're, we're moving in such a positive direction that it's just hard to be overtly pessimistic about the future of America.

44:45 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so let's end on that positive note then. And the book is again The Vanishing Church How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations is Hurting democracy, faith, and us. I will be leaving, leaving a link to it in the description of the interview. And Doctor Burge, apart from the book, would you like to tell people where they can find you and your work on the internet?

45:09 Ryan Burge: Yeah, so I have a newsletter, sub-stack newsletter called Graphs About Religion. Graphs about religion.com, new articles every Monday and Thursday, uh, tons of free content. There are some paid content, but most of it's free initially, so you can get a lot of good content by subscribing to graphs about Religion.com. Doctor Burge.com, DR Burge.com is my personal website. And uh go buy the Vanishing Church, which came out just a couple of months ago, wherever you buy fine books.

45:37 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, for sure, so thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's been a big pleasure to talk with you.

45:44 Ryan Burge: Well, thank you so much for having me.

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