Some sociologists believe that the rising number of non-religious Americans is a reaction against rightwing evangelicals. But that’s just part of the story.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/25/the-backlash-against-rightwing-evangelicals-is-reshaping-american-politics-and-faith
What if I were to tell you that the following trends in American religion were all connected: rising numbers of people who are religiously unaffiliated (“nones”) or identify as “spiritual but not religious”; a spike in positive attention to the “religious left”; the depoliticization of liberal religion; and the purification and radicalization of the religious right? As a sociologist who has studied American religion and politics for many years, I have often struggled to make sense of these dramatic but seemingly disconnected changes. I now believe they all can all be explained, at least in part, as products of a backlash to the religious right. - Ruth Braunstein
Agreed. American white evangelicals are only part of the reason for the decline of religious participation there over the last many decades.
I associate the American white evangelicals with their 81% support of Trump in 2016, and their support of Alabaman Roy Moore for the Senate, both of which I interpret as stage IV cancer of the soul. I'm sure that millions of others do as well.
The public failures of Christianity in the lives of the Palins and Duggars were unflattering to religion and underscored its hypocrisy and failure as an ethical system. The Duck Dynasty people were visibly Christian and homophobic. I assume that they are all evangelicals. The whole clutching to guns and Bibles meme is unflattering to believers is associated with such people.
But that is just part of a decades long public relations problem that the church well beyond the evangelicals has suffered in the media, as with Jim Jones, hypocritical televangelists exposed in the news, David Koresh, Heaven's Gate, Warren Jeffs, and pedophile priests. The news makes religion appear less relevant and less likeable. I imagine that the antiscientism of today's vaccine wars is viewed as an outgrowth of religious antiscientism. Whenever you read about an antivaxxer dying or dead, it's generally full of mentions of prayer and being in heaven now.
And there are other factors leading people to a life without religion not coming directly from it. One is the growing influence of atheists whether through best sellers or Internet activities such as this one. Today, it's socially acceptable to be an atheist (or a pagan).
Science is popularly viewed as a rebuttal to religion. Some theists argue that there is no conflict there and never has been, but I disagree as do millions of others. In this context, perception is what matters. People learn early on in church that faith is a virtue and reason the enemy, and that the wisdom of the world is foolishness. Then they go to university and discover that the opposite is true.
Have you noticed how poorly the entertainment media depict religion? That's an indirect measure of the opinion of the culture at large as well as a predictor of where it is heading. Go back to the era of Leave It To Beaver and The Flying Nun, and the family pastor or priest was always a good, decent, and wise person, much sought after to sit around the Sunday table. Not any more. Father Phil in the Sopranos lusted Tony's wife Carmela from the first season. A recent successful series called The Young Pope depicted the papacy unflatteringly. Seinfeld mocks the Eastern Orthodox church when George attempts to convert for a girl and explains to the priests that what he likes about the religion is the hats the clergy wear. Also, a dentist converts to Judaism for the jokes, so he can tell Jewish jokes in the office. It's not an overt attack, but it is a depiction of religion as ridiculous and not respectable.
The recent assault on reproductive rights in the States is probably poor PR for the church. Fence sitters likely disapprove.
I'd say that all of this contributes to the declining popularity of religion, but certainly the evangelicals are poster children for bad religion. That Westboro Baptist Church and its overt homophobia didn't help religion's public image, nor does flying Christian banners at white supremacist marches and insurrections. How does one tease out just how much responsibility the evangelicals should be assigned to all of this?
