Mormons and White "Christian" Nationalists ("Nat-Cs" who used to be bitter rivals, but have now buried the theological hatchet to achieve common goals) are dying off and younger people are not joining their ranks.
The big problem for Mormons is this: as Mormonism once again shinks to become a Utah / Mountain West centric cult, what will happen when the number of non-white overseas followers outnumber those in North America? As they won't have any power, will they break away and form their own group and take their dollars with them?
For Nat-Cs, this is driving them to abandon democracy and towards extremes like authoritarian rule, fascist dictatorship, and/or terrorism.
https://www.prri.org/spotlight/prri-2022-american-values-atlas-religious-affiliation-updates-and-trends/The 2022 Census of American Religion update is part of an annual update to PRRI’s groundbreaking 2020 Census of American Religion, the first study to provide reliable county-level religious affiliation data. To see the 2021 Census of American Religion update, click here.
As part of PRRI’s 2022 American Values Atlas, a random sample of 40,000 respondents from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel shows that most trends in religious affiliation moved little between 2021 and 2022. Notably, the proportion of white Christians in the country has remained steady, at 42%, after a long decline from 72% in 1990 to 42% in 2018. In 2020 and 2021 the share of white Christians in the country bumped up to 44% before returning to its current rate. The proportion of those who are religiously unaffiliated has ticked up again, to 27%, after rising from 16% in 2006 to nearly 26% in 2018, which was followed by a brief downward dip to 23% in 2020.
The 2022 Census of American Religion update is part of an annual update to PRRI’s groundbreaking 2020 Census of American Religion, the first study to provide reliable county-level religious affiliation data. To see the 2021 Census of American Religion update, click here.
As part of PRRI’s 2022 American Values Atlas, a random sample of 40,000 respondents from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel shows that most trends in religious affiliation moved little between 2021 and 2022. Notably, the proportion of white Christians in the country has remained steady, at 42%, after a long decline from 72% in 1990 to 42% in 2018. In 2020 and 2021 the share of white Christians in the country bumped up to 44% before returning to its current rate. The proportion of those who are religiously unaffiliated has ticked up again, to 27%, after rising from 16% in 2006 to nearly 26% in 2018, which was followed by a brief downward dip to 23% in 2020.
An additional quarter of the country (25%) is composed of Christians of color, meaning Christians who are Black, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, multiracial, or any other race or ethnicity. This figure is essentially unchanged from the preceding few years. The remaining 6% of Americans belong to a different religion. This group includes those who are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Unitarian Universalist, or belong to any other world religion. This proportion has also remained steady over the past few years.
The white Christian portion of the U.S. adult population includes 14% who are white evangelical Protestant, 14% who are white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestant, 13% who are white Catholic, and small proportions of white Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Orthodox Christians. The proportion of white evangelical Protestants in the population steadily declined starting in 2006 (when they made up 23% of the population) before settling at about 14% over the past few years. White mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants and white Catholics accounted for similar portions of the population in 2022, at 14% and 13%, respectively. Both these groups have declined as a proportion of the population since 2006, when they were at 18% and 16%, respectively. However, these drop-offs of roughly four percentage points are less pronounced than the nine-percentage-point decline in white evangelical Protestant affiliation. The religiously unaffiliated category has absorbed much of the fall-off.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/19/poll-religion-christian-white/You might find it strange that a large segment of the Republican base thinks Whites are the true victims of racism and that Christians are under attack. After all, America’s biggest racial group is still Whites; the most common religious affiliation remains Christianity. Whites and Christians dominate elected office at all levels, the judiciary and corporate America. What’s the problem?
Well, there is a straightforward reason for the freak-out, and an explanation for why former president Donald Trump developed such a close bond with white Christian nationalists.
This group feels besieged because they are losing ground. “The newly-released 2022 supplement to the PRRI Census of American Religion — based on over 40,000 interviews conducted last year — confirms that the decline of white Christians (Americans who identify as white, non-Hispanic and Christian of any kind) as a proportion of the population continues unabated,” writes Robert P. Jones, president of the Public Religion Research Institute. “As recently as 2008, when our first Black president was elected, the U.S. was a majority (54%) white Christian country.” By 2014 the number had dropped to 47 percent, and in 2022 it stood at 42 percent.
The group that has declined the most is at the core of the MAGA movement, the group most devoted to Christian nationalism. “White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%,” Jones explains. “Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.”
And that decline may yet accelerate, because they skew older than the population as a whole. Put differently, there are far more baby boomers in this group than Generation Z members. White evangelicals are “losing” people with each successive generation. (“White Christian subgroups have each lost approximately half their market share just across the generations who are alive today,” according to Jones.) If your business had lost half its market share, you would be panicking, too.
With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about “fixing” what’s wrong by adapting to a changing market. Instead, many in this cohort have doubled down, becoming the foot soldiers in the red-hatted MAGA movement. The decline isn’t going to be reversed by angry, gray-haired folks demanding abortion bans and “don’t say gay” bills.
Instead, White evangelicals might look at former “customers” who are abandoning organized religion in droves. “Nearly four in ten Americans ages 18-29 (38%) are religiously unaffiliated, an increase from 34% in 2021," the PRRI census said. "As the cohorts age, the growth in religiously unaffiliated Americans has started to show up more in the 30-49 age category, which is up to 32% unaffiliated from 26% in 2016.”