By Abe Greenwald
COMMENTARY
February 26, 2025
A new Pew poll of religion in America captures something unexpected: “After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off—at least temporarily.” More specifically, the number of self-identified Christians stabilized during the past five years. And over that same period, the number of Americans who identify with a religion other than Christianity has ticked up ever so slightly.
What might explain the sudden interruption of atheism’s charge? Politics, naturally.
Like renewed trust in police, the turn against trans surgery for minors, and Donald Trump’s very election, the rediscovery of traditional religion is a piece of the public’s response to the radicalism that became institutionalized in 2020—five years ago. All leftist radicalism has its roots in socialism, which, with few exceptions, has always offered itself up as a godless religion and alternative to traditional faiths. It’s to be expected that after the public rejects the fruits of radicalism, it grasps for socialism’s natural nemesis: belief in God.
The trans factor looms particularly large here. Trans activism wages war on our scientific and religious understanding of man and woman. That’s why so much of it has been aimed at religious institutions. Consider, for example, the trans-activist organization calling itself the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Remember them? Their shtick is to go around as lascivious drag-queen nuns and mock the Catholic Church. In 2023, they were invited to Dodger Stadium to receive a community-hero award at a Pride Night event. When word got out about their repulsive hijinks, however, the Dodgers rescinded the offer. But this was back when cultural radicalism was still riding high, so there was a backlash to the backlash. In the end, the Dodgers reinvited them and gave them the award while religious groups protested at the stadium entrance. For five years, media and Democrats did everything they could to raise the profile of such activists. And when Americans got a clear look at the grotesquerie on display, surely more than a few lost their faith in radicalism and re-upped their religious commitments.
In addition to the ugliness of the then-prevailing radicalism, there are its enforced strictures on speech and conduct. Perhaps this, too, played a part in the cultural shift. The woke elite dictates what is permissible, and if you don’t follow, you’re excommunicated. In this sense, the left took on the role of the brittle, scolding clergy that American popular culture once assigned to the church. If you stopped attending religious services because you found them intolerant and small-minded, you’re certainly out of luck among the radicals. The left has become far more tedious and dogmatic than most American houses of worship. And, of course, less satisfying. Meanwhile, the radical left is deftly countered by a new breed of entertaining and engaging pro-religion superstar. In the realm of the public intellectual, the smug atheism of the late Christopher Hitchens has been buried by the Judeo-Christian dazzle of Jordan Peterson.
Helpfully, the Pew poll breaks down religious trends along ideological lines. “Today, 37% of self-described liberals identify with Christianity, down from 62% in 2007, a 25-point decline. Meanwhile, 51% of liberals now say they have no religion, up from 27% in 2007, a 24-point increase. There are now more religious ‘nones’ than Christians among liberals, a reversal since 2007.” At the same time, “a large majority of conservatives continue to identify with Christianity.”
Here's what’s interesting about that. There are now more self-identified Republicans than Democrats in the United States. That’s also a new reality. So the political party whose members are more likely to be discarding religion is suddenly in the minority.
This could all be momentary. The poll shows that, despite the general leveling off, young Americans are still significantly less religious than previous generations of young Americans. If they stay that way throughout the course of their lives, the country will resume its glidepath away from God. But the Democrats haven’t given up on radicalism. And Americans haven’t stopped rejecting it. If both circumstances hold for the foreseeable future, this could be the start of a long, slow-motion spiritual awakening. God willing.
Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.
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