Why Republicans Will Finally Destroy the Church in the USA
How state support kills Christian faith
A couple of months ago, I moved back to the town where I grew up after two decades of living elsewhere. I felt waves of nostalgia as I showed my wife and children around.
“This is where I went to school,” I explained as we drove through town. My wife humored me, but the kids looked kind of bored. Regardless, I was having a good time reminiscing, as older people sometimes do.
“And there… there is where I went to church when I was a kid,” I pointed to an old, steepled building that, to be honest, looked a little tired and run down. The gardens were slightly overgrown, and the paint was chipping off the walls. The sign out the front was exactly as I remembered it, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Dad, that looks like a dump,” My daughter said.
I couldn’t deny it, and I felt a little sad to see a piece of my childhood in such a state of disrepair.
Once we had settled into our new home in my old town, I began to make inquiries about the local churches that were around. The plan was to go and try a few out. I remembered from when I was a kid where all the big and ‘happening’ churches were, so I asked about them first.
What I discovered left me shocked — although perhaps it should not have. Without exception, every single big and ‘happening’ church from when I was a kid had shrunk… significantly and noticeably. It was easy to find a car park. The pews were half-empty, the laughter of children was missing, and the congregations were overrepresented by the elderly.
I knew on an academic level that the church in the west is in decline, but to see it before my own eyes suddenly made it very real.
What’s going on?
Why is Christianity growing in some countries but declining in others — most notably in the West? Why? When you explore the many theories on offer, there are a number of common themes and ideas.
Is it Persecution?
Around the world, hundreds of millions of Christians live in countries where they experience high levels of persecution as a result of their Christian faith. Many Christians believe that persecution is a major factor in church decline. However, while Christian persecution has greatly damaged Christianity in some nations — such as modern-day Iraq — the church has proven surprisingly robust — not only continuing to exist but also, in many cases, thriving even under great persecution. In fact, Christianity is no more likely to be growing in countries that are free from Christian persecution than those that are not. The opposite may even be true.
Is it Pluralism?
Many Christians believe that the best way for Christianity to thrive is to shut out all other religions. They cite the rise of religious pluralism as a key reason for the decline of the Christian church. “If only we didn’t allow all those other people of other faiths into our country. If only we didn’t legitimize their systems of belief and give them a voice in our culture,” They bemoan.
Is it affluence?
Others have suggested that the decline of Christianity in the West is linked to the accumulation of wealth. Increasing prosperity, it is believed, frees people from having to look to a higher power to provide for their daily needs. Evoking a deity is reduced to superstitious nonsense. In other words, there is a direct link between affluence and atheism. Some use this argument in inverse to explain the rise of Christianity in Africa, for example, where there are still many people in great need. They need their God as a kind of cosmic crutch, or so the argument goes.
Is it science and education?
Another popular theory is the so-called secularization thesis: the theory that science, technology, and education will result in a decline in Christianity’s social influence. It is not unusual to hear someone claim, “I don’t believe in God; I believe in Science,” for example, as if the two were somehow mutually exclusive. The belief that one day our knowledge of the universe would supersede our need for a God as an explanation, is prevalent.
Is it the church itself?
The church has proven more than capable of shooting itself in the foot. Perhaps the crisis of church attendance is a mess of the church’s own making. Guilt-based religion, spiritual abuse, and child-sex scandals are not great for public relations. Add to this the fact that the prevailing views of modern people are increasingly at odds with conservative Christianity on many issues — like human sexuality and gender, for example — and it is no surprise that many choose to distance themselves from their former religious beliefs.
What new research tells us
There may be merit and truth to some of the arguments above. Perhaps it does have something to do with persecution, pluralism, affluence, science, and education, or even problems within the church itself. However, a new study published recently in the journal Sociology of Religion has revealed a surprising new theory behind the decline of Christianity in many Western nations.
After a decade-long statistical analysis of over 160 countries, Nilay Saiya of the University in Singapore has discovered a link between the decline of Christianity in particular countries and the level of official support governments give to Christianity through their laws and policies. Or, to put it another way, as governmental support for Christianity increases, the number of Christians declines significantly. So it turns out that church and state make lousy bedfellows. Who would have thought?
Yes, the more Christians clutch at political power, the faster they drive Christianity to extinction.
Why Government Involvement Destroys Christianity
When I first read this research, I found it hard to compute. How could government support for Christianity actually lead to its decline? Growing up in the church, I had been taught to believe that we needed good Christians in politics to preserve the Christian fabric of our society — enforce it, in fact.
Far from the marriage of church and state being detrimental to the health of the church, I was taught that inserting Christians in positions of influence would ensure the church’s future. And certainly, that’s the clear and shameless goal of much of the conservative branch of Christianity in the USA.
However, the more I reflected on the findings of this study, the more they began to make complete sense. Let me explain how state support negatively impacts the spiritual health of the church.
When the church forgets its mission
I used to work with a Christian organization that ran programs for troubled youth in local schools. It was a grassroots movement that simply wanted to demonstrate the love of Christ by offering practical and tangible assistance to others with no strings attached.
At some point, though, they began to lobby the government for financial support. They actively encouraged people connected to the organization to vote for particular politicians who would advocate for government funding while rejecting other candidates. Thus, by bringing political pressure to bear, they were able to obtain government funding and achieve bipartisan support.
However, something changed in the organization after that. Every election cycle, the organization would have to carry out another round of political lobbying to protect its financial interests. They would spend much of their time and resources convincing the community at large that they deserved to receive such government support. And, once they were enslaved to political funding, they were equally enslaved to the bureaucracy and red tape that comes with government money. Eventually, this organization lost its heart and soul, and many of the people who made the organization great in the first place.
Similarly, when the church attempts to curry favor from the state, they can become distracted from their mission and engrossed in the ‘things of Caesar’ rather than in the things of God. The focus shifts from the practice of Christian faith — of loving God and loving others, of serving the poor and unfortunate — to the maintenance of privilege. For this reason, state-supported churches often become bereft of real spiritual substance such that people who practice the faith end up becoming disillusioned and walking away.
What is worse, when favored churches use their privileged positions to exert influence over the rest of society, imposing conservative Christian values on those who have no desire to practice them, it leads to resentment against the church. Consider the church’s appalling treatment of the LGBTIQ+ community as an example.
The repellent of favoritism
State support for Christianity can include other privileges such as funding for religious purposes, special access to state institutions, the freedom to discriminate on the basis of religion, tax breaks, and exemptions from regulations imposed on other minority religious groups.
Paradoxically, though, the state’s preferencing of Christianity in this manner does not end up helping the church at all. According to Saiya’s study, nine of the ten countries with the fastest-declining Christian populations in the world offer moderate to high levels of official support for Christianity. Not surprisingly, all of those ten countries are located in Europe.
For example, in the United Kingdom, the law established the Church of England as the state church and Christianity as the state religion, granting privileges not afforded to minority religious groups. However, The Guardian reports that less than 40% of Brits now identify as Christians, and only 1% of people aged 18–24 identify as members of the Church of England.
A similar pattern can be seen in Catholic-majority states. For much of the 20th century, countries such as Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and Italy offered strong support to the Roman Catholic Church and actively discriminated against non-Catholics in the areas of family law, religious broadcasting, tax policy, and education. Now, Church attendance in these countries is among the lowest in the Christian world, despite the vast majority of citizens nominally retaining their church memberships.
On the whole, European churches have taken on a largely ceremonial function and have little impact on people's day-to-day lives. Magnificent cathedrals designed to cater to hundreds of people typically welcome only a handful of worshipers in their normal Sunday services. They are purely for decoration, nothing more than relics of a bygone era and tourist attractions to the masses.
Consequently, Saiya argues that the secularization of Europe is strongly linked to the widespread support given to Christianity by the state. In short, Christianity in Europe has been waning not despite state support but because of it.
The benefit of competition
Many Christians believe that religious pluralism is one of the leading factors in the decline of Christianity. Subsequently, when Christians perceive any kind of threat from religious minority groups, they may look to the state to give them a head start on the competition, and enact laws and precepts to preserve so-called Christian values. They even try to limit immigration to prevent people of other faiths from entering their countries.
However, Saiya’s research suggests that Christianity is often stronger in countries where it competes with other faith traditions on an equal playing field. Perhaps the best explanation for this phenomenon is found in Adam Smith’s well-known work, The Wealth of Nations. Smith, a famous economist, argued that just as a market economy spurs competition, innovation, and vigor among companies by forcing them to compete for market share, an unregulated religious marketplace has the same effect on institutions of faith.
In countries where religious pluralism is commonplace, Christians are forced to present the best arguments possible for their beliefs, even as other faith traditions are forced to do the same. This requires Christians to have a deep knowledge of their beliefs and defend them in the marketplace of ideas. The Christian may say that Christianity provides answers to life’s questions. The onus is on them to demonstrate the fact.
Saiya’s research concludes, quite remarkably, that as a country’s commitment to pluralism rises, so too does its number of Christian adherents. Seven of the 10 countries with the fastest-growing Christian populations offer low or no official support for Christianity. Paradoxically, Christianity does best when it has to fend for itself, as evidenced by the two world regions where Christianity is growing the fastest: Asia and Africa.
As a country’s commitment to pluralism rises, so too does its number of Christian adherents.
The greatest increase in Christianity over the past century has been in Asia, where the faith has grown at twice the rate of the population. Christianity’s explosive growth in this part of the world is even more remarkable when one considers that the region contains only one Christian-majority country: The Philippines.
In contrast to Europe, Christianity in Asian countries has not received preferential treatment from the state at all, and yet they have experienced stunning Christian growth rates. Thus, the Christian faith has actually benefited by not being institutionally attached to the state, feeding its growth and vitality.
Africa is the other region where Christianity has seen breathtaking growth, particularly in recent decades. Today, there are nearly 700 million Christians in Africa, making it the world’s most Christian continent in terms of population. Indeed, the top 10 countries with the fastest-growing Christian populations in the world from 2010 to 2020 are all located in sub-Saharan Africa.
Christianity has made inroads into Africa not because it enjoys a privileged position with the state but because it has to compete with other faith traditions on an even playing field. A handful of African nations, such as Tanzania, have a modest level of official support for Christianity. On the whole, though, government support for Christianity in Africa is below — and usually well below — the global average, according to Saiya.
In short, Christianity in Africa, as in Asia, is thriving not because it is supported by the state but because it is not supported.
The unsuitable marriage of religion and politics
Meanwhile, in Europe, politicians and political parties have sought to deepen the relationship between Christianity and their governments. Some successful politicians have positioned themselves as defenders of Christianity against a perceived wave of Islamic faith that threatens the ‘Christian-ness’ of their respective countries. In many cases, right-wing populist parties have proven capable of increasing their share of the vote by promising to defend their countries against the rising tide of religious pluralism.
A similar story can be observed in the United States. Conservative Christians initially became involved in politics in the 1970s as a way to fight against the erosion of “Christian values” in society and to “take America back for God.” Yet, as Christianity has become increasingly involved in politics, the USA has experienced a precipitous decline in Christian belief — a trend confirmed in several scholarly studies.
The intertwining of religion and politics has repelled people from a version of Christianity that they see supporting a certain kind of politics that they personally disagree with. As a result, politicized Christianity is able to appeal to an increasingly narrow group of individuals, even as it drives liberals and moderates away from the church.
Enter Donald Trump.
In the Evangelical world, whether or not a person was a good political candidate was dependent not on their policies, but on their profession of faith — even if the content of their character was at odds with that profession of faith. They merely had to hold up a Bible and stand in front of a church, and they would get the Evangelical vote, much to the chagrin of those looking on. Yes, the more Christian nationalists with the Republican Party push their agenda for a “Christian” nation, the more Christianity is despised, and the less likely they are to ever obtain that which they seek. What is more, they will destroy the church in the process.
Where to from here for the church?
One thing is certain. Jesus Christ was not interested in political power, or he could have had it. He arrived in human history precisely at the right moment to lead an uprising against the rule of his Roman conquerors.
He could have raised an army. He could have led an insurrection. He could have probably stormed the capitol. He could have leveraged his considerable influence to restore his nation to its former glory, preserve its religion, and vanquish its foes.
Yet, he did not.
The movement that he started required no armies, governments, or rulers to champion its cause. It can be practiced with or without the approval of any state and, therefore, can never be legislated out of existence. Neither is it threatened by those who believe different things. It is the movement of the human heart that takes place when one resolves to simply love God and love others.
Therefore, the best way for Christian churches to recover their credibility is to reject the quest for political protection and privilege and see it for what it is — completely inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Christians who believe that Trump and the Republican Party will save Christianity are kidding themselves.
Oct 20,2022
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