The End of White Christian America

In The End of White Christian America (2016), Chief Executive Officer of the Public Religion Research Institute Robert P. Jones examines the implications of new research that shows that white Christians are now a minority in America. It bears noting that the study, conducted by Jones's Public Religion Research Institute, was based on rigorously compiled data. It surveyed Americans from all fifty states, and its sample size of 101,000 respondents would be considered large by any standard of peer-reviewed sociological research. The study found that 43 percent of Americans today identify as white Christians. This is not only down from the high of 80 percent in the 1970s, but it also represents a precipitous decline since only 1996, when white Christians still represented two-thirds of the population in America.

To discuss the significance of this dramatic demographic shift, Jones begins by adding context, explaining America's history as a Christian nation. The Puritans weren’t the only group to colonize America early in its history; of equal or greater importance, Jones asserts, were the teachings of the eighteenth-century preacher, Jonathan Edwards. Preaching in the 1730s, Edwards believed that he could help precipitate the return of Christ as the messiah by ensuring that the New World in the colonies embraced Christianity wholeheartedly. The religious historian Dale T. Irvin is quoted as saying, “By the time of the American revolution, Edwards’s followers had begun to secularize this vision of a righteous nation that was charged with a redemptive mission in the world."

Jones discusses how in the eighteenth century, American thinkers looked to Christianity to justify their exploration and conquering of the American West, referring to this invasion of the frontier as "manifest destiny." Then, in the twentieth century, Christianity began to be used as a political wedge for Republicans looking to capture religious Southern Democrats who had become disillusioned with their party after Democrats sided with black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. From this point on, whiteness and Christianity became inexorably tied together in many ways. Politicians began to use the term "Judeo-Christian values" as a coded racial language to mean "white values." President Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" explicitly sought to target white voters in the South by appealing to their Christianity.



With that in mind, there are many reasons why the sudden slide of the white Christian establishment into the minority after centuries of being the majority will have major consequences in America. For example, the Democratic Party can expect to make unprecedented gains in certain areas due to the increase of minority and non-Christians voters who have come to see that party as the de facto political faction, because Republicans have wedded themselves to the politics of white Christians. This includes the large, growing population of Latino Catholics. So in turn, this influx could cause the Democratic Party to become more attuned to Christian concerns to appeal to those voters.

Jones also discusses the role youth plays in this demographic shift. According to Jones, young adults between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine are less than half as likely to be white Christians as people over sixty-five. It stands to reason that as an ever-greater portion of the senior citizen population dies of old age, the generations that replace them will be less likely to vote the way their parents and grandparents did.

Jones also notes that Americans who claim no religious affiliation at all are on the rise. In fact, if trends continue, he says, religiously unaffiliated Americans will outnumber all Protestants—not just white Protestants—by 2051. Speaking of 2051, Jones is careful to note that while some impacts of this demographic shift are visible, other changes will still take many years to take shape. It is also an important point that "whiteness" is as much a cultural construct as it is a discreet racial distinction. Viewing oneself as white, or viewing oneself as part of a cohort that includes white Christians, is as important as actually being a white Christian.



In the end, The End of White Christian America is an illuminating book detailing how quickly and dramatically a country can change, and what that change means for the future.