The Coming Evangelical Christian Decline

Despite Recent Political Wins, Evangelical Christianity is on a Downswing

There’s no official tally, but the best estimates suggest that evangelical Christians make up roughly one in three Americans. They are politically active and vocal about the state of American culture. But there are fewer of them than there once were. Polls have found that the number of Americans identifying as evangelical Christians is dropping rapidly. And it’s not just the polls. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical Protestant group in the country, has lost more than 2 million members over the last decade and a half. 

A Question of Definition 

But it’s not quite that straightforward. This count is based on a very broad definition that includes practically any self-identified Christian—Catholics, Orthodox Christians, members of the LDS Church, and other Christian denominations—who also claim to be evangelical or born-again. As NPR reporter Danielle Kurtzleben points out in a past report more exclusive definitions yield much smaller estimates. 

Kurtzleben notes: 

“The Barna Group, a research firm that specializes in religious issues, uses what may be the toughest definition of evangelicalism out there. It asks a series of nine questions about beliefs (Did Jesus lead a sinless life? Does salvation come from "grace, not works"?). Only 6 percent of Americans are "evangelical" by Barna's definition, according to their latest count.” 

There’s no universal agreement on who counts as an evangelical Christian. Even among evangelical Christians, there’s considerable diversity of belief, practice, and theological orientation. For instance, only half of evangelical Christians are biblical literalists. Most pollsters rely on a simple definition that requires the respondent to self-identify as either a “born-again” or an “evangelical” Christian. Because more nuanced definitions are simply not available in earlier data, I’ll be relying on this more expansive definition. 

A Recent Drop 

Nearly every religious group has experienced a decline in membership in recent years. The Pew Research Center found a massive decline in Christian identity since 2007. But most survey trends go back only a couple decades. What happens when we go back further? 

In a recent article for Religion News Service, political scientist Ryan Burge suggests that there are more evangelical Christians today than they were in the late 1970s. He bases his conclusion on the General Social Survey, an academic dataset that has tracked religious identities, beliefs, and practices at regular intervals over the past 50 years. “If you look at the share of people who say that they’ve had a born-again experience, it’s higher today than it was 30 years ago,” Burge states.  

This is probably not the ideal measure of evangelical Christian identity—more Americans are willing to identify as “born-again” than evangelical—but it’s good enough and honestly one of few measures that we have in these early surveys. What’s interesting in this data is the rapid increase in evangelical identity over a very short time in the late 1970s, which suggests less mass conversion and more a growing familiarity and affinity for the label among conservative Christians. 

The timing would make some sense. Evangelical Christianity received a considerable boost from the candidacy of Jimmy Carter, the first major party candidate to identify as an evangelical. George Gallup dubbed 1976, “the year of the evangelical Christian,” while Newsweek echoed this sentiment in placing Southern Baptist minister Jerry Falwell on the cover that same year. If conservative or fundamentalist Christians adopted the label after it become popularized during this period that would explain the sudden uptick in evangelical identity. 

Regardless of whether you believe there was a growth of evangelical identity in the late 1970s and 1980s, it’s difficult to argue that the trend is downward. In the late 1990s, close to half (45 percent) of all Americans were evangelical Christian. Since then, each year has witnessed a modest, but consistent decline. 

A Racial Division 

When political pundits talk about evangelical Christians and their affinity for Donald Trump, they nearly always refer to a subset of this group—white evangelical Christians. Their politics and voting patterns are distinct from black and Hispanic evangelical Christians. White evangelical Christians have at least numerically experienced the most precipitous drop over the past two decades. One-third of Americans in 1998 were white, non-Hispanic evangelical Christian. Today, they make up roughly one in five Americans.  

A recent Pew analysis found from 2016 to 2020 more white Americans were adopting the evangelical label most likely as a result of their personal affinity to Trump. For a growing number of white conservative voters, being evangelical was primarily about supporting the president and his policies. 

At the same time, black Americans may be shedding the evangelical label for precisely the same reason—that evangelical Christianity has become too closely associated with Trump’s brand of conservative politics. In 2016, more than six in ten (61 percent) Black Americans identified as evangelical Christian. By 2021 only about half (51 percent) still did, a 10-point drop. 

At one time, the American consensus on cultural questions such as pre-marital sex, pornography, gender roles, and same-sex marriage largely reflected the views of evangelical Christians. But not anymore. It’s not just questions of sexuality where evangelical Christians are out-of-step with the broader public. On fundamental questions of diversity, and pluralism evangelical Christians find themselves promoting a vision of America’s future that most Americans reject. 

Additionally, Americans face less social pressure to remain connected to a church or place of worship than they once did. Trust in organized religion has cratered, and religious leaders are viewed as being no more ethical than auto mechanics. Young adults today are more likely to know an atheist than an evangelical Christian. As a result, it has never been easier for Americans to shed formative religious attachments or to drift away from regular religious engagement. 

Still, there are good reasons to believe the recent decline does not portend the demise of evangelical Christianity. National statistics always mask important regional variation. In many southern states, evangelical Christians are as culturally and politically dominant as ever. Some might even argue more so. The growing racial and ethnic diversity among evangelical Christianity is another source of strength and resilience. Hispanics represent the fastest-growing group of evangelical Christians. Finally, evangelical parents do a pretty good job keeping their children in the faith—Pew found that 80 percent of teenagers with evangelical Christian parents are also evangelical. This is particularly important because surveys have shown that most formerly religious Americans disaffiliate during their teen years.  

Evangelical Christians will remain an incredibly important and distinct voice in the public square and their votes will decide critical election outcomes. However, even in victory—whether in cases over religious liberty or the overturning of Roe—evangelical Christians are less formidable than they once were. Not only are evangelical Christians numerically diminished, but the public is also becoming increasingly suspicious of their motives as their political activism now defines them.