Thinking about the Fourth of July, in just a couple of days, I re-read the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Adopted on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress, the Declaration of Independence, was written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, who later became the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Interestingly, Jefferson, born in 1743, died on July 4, 1826, as did the second U.S. president, John Adams, born in 1735. The prominent U.S. lawyer Daniel Webster (1782 – 1852) delivered a two-hour eulogy for Jefferson and Adams on August 2, 1826 in Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, insisting that the fact both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the nation’s 50th birthday was “proof” from on high that the country, and its benefactors, are under the care of Divine Providence.
The Declaration of Independence stresses the principles on which the U.S. Government and American identity are based. The sixteenth U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), called it “a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression.” The July 4th Declaration proclaims that all people are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also asserts that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that the people have the right to alter or abolish a government that becomes destructive of these ends. (Many Americans today should re-read the Declaration of Independence.)
The Declaration of Independence, is not an explicitly Christian document but it does reflect a belief in God and natural rights, influenced by Enlightenment thought. The document’s emphasis on natural rights, derived from the Creator, played a crucial role in shaping the American understanding of religious freedom, and the separation of church and state. Right from the beginning, the United States had a variety of religious traditions: Protestant Christian, Catholic Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and indigenous religious traditions, which emphasized a connection to the spirit world
A couple of days ago, after re-reading my notes about religious practice at the time of the Declaration of Independence, my thoughts turned to contemporary religion in the United States. The non-partisan Pew Research Center, in Washington DC, reports that the Christian share of the U.S. population, after years of decline, has been relatively stable since 2019. And the religiously unaffiliated population, after rising rapidly for decades, has leveled off – at least temporarily.
At present, 62% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christians: 40% are Protestant, 19% are Catholic, and 3% are other Christians. But 29% are religiously unaffiliated: 5% are atheist, 6% are agnostic, and 19% identify religiously as “nothing in particular.” Additionally, 7% belong to religions other than Christianity: 2% are Jewish, and 1% each are Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu.
As many readers of my blog know, my professional area of research for many years has been “Religion and Values in American Society.” I remain an American observer and researcher. Right now, my observation and that of many colleagues is that there are strong indications that we may see, very soon, significant declines in the religiousness of the American public. Young U.S. adults, even those who once had a highly religious upbringing, are far less religious than older adults. In general, Americans consider religion important but are divided about its role in society. Less than half of all adults now say religion is important in their lives, down from majorities who felt that way in earlier studies. Just 44% in a new poll say they pray daily, also down from majorities in prior polls. While most contemporary Americans continue to say they believe in a God or a universal spirit, the share who say they are certain one exists has dropped from 71% in 2007 to 54% now.
While the overall change in religious views has happened in similar ways across key demographic groups, there are differences in how it is being played out in people’s socio-cultural orientation. Among people who call themselves “liberal,” just 37% now identify as Christian, down from 62% in 2007. But 54% of today’s liberals are more likely to say they have no religion than to consider themselves Christian. Among “conservatives,” by contrast, the share who are Christian has declined just 7 points to 82%.
Americans’ degree of religious engagement is also closely tied to their political identity. The most religiously engaged people are more likely to consider themselves Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while those with little religious engagement are more likely to be Democrats or Democratic-leaning. As has long been the case, White voters are much more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to associate with the Republican Party. Black voters continue to associate with the Democratic Party, although the extent of the Democratic advantage among this group has fallen off over the last few years. About six-in-ten Latino voters (61%) are Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party. The relationship between partisanship and voters’ religious affiliation continues to be strong – especially when it comes to whether they belong to any organized religion at all. Protestants mostly align with the Republican Party.
The GOP, however, now has a modest advantage among Catholics. About half of Catholic voters identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party, compared with 44% who identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. In the 2024 presidential election, Catholic voters split 56% to 41% in favor of the Republican candidate. Today, among U.S. Catholics to the left of the ideological center, there is optimism that Pope Leo XIV will carry on Pope Francis’ outreach to poor and marginalized people, including migrants, and provide a counterweight to policies of the current presidential administration, which they find distressing. U.S. Catholics on the right, however, hope Pope Leo, like his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, will strongly uphold traditional Catholic doctrine, by which they mean opposition to abortion, opposition to same-sex marriage, and opposition to women’s ordination.
It is especially noteworthy that today’s incumbent U.S. president is building a strange new far-right religious movement. The old religious right is gone. Members of the U.S. religious right in the 1980s and 1990s were political because of their theology. Members of the current new religious right are working in the opposite direction. They are constructing a new “theology” that fits their far-right politics. Take, for example, the defense by contemporary far-right evangelical leaders of the incumbent president’s sexual transgressions. They say his transgressions are excusable because he is a messianic figure, sent not to save souls but to save America. Their viewpoint makes no coherent religious sense but clearly fits their political sense. Some U.S. Catholic leaders appear to support this perspective as well. In December 2024, for example, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the soon to be back in the White House president-elect “takes his Christian faith seriously.” Cardinal Dolan has been one of the U.S. President’s supporters for a long time and maintains a friendly relationship with him in his private life.
On May 1, 2025, the incumbent U.S. president announced that he was setting up a presidential commission on religious liberty: “The Religious Liberty Commission.” I find it noteworty that five of the members are conservative Catholic bishops: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, of New York; Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota; Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco; Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois; and Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort-Wayne-South Bend, Indiana. According to Melissa Deckman, a political scientist and CEO of Washington DC’s Public Religion Research Institute, the Religious Liberty Commission caters to Christian nationalist groups who “see their loss of dominance as persecution.”
What the new U.S. religious right is building has more in common with the ancient pagan religion of the Roman Imperial Cult than the evangelical revivals of an earlier America. The Roman Imperial Cult stressed that emperors and some members of their families held divinely sanctioned authority. Their focus was on imperial power. Today’s MAGA supporters have declared a religious war, not just against secularism or progressive forms of religion, but against traditional religion that refuses to serve their radical nationalistic power goal to “Make America Great.” They are not advocating a new theocracy, but a new religion of nationalism and national identity disguised in the trappings of a religious movement, that stresses strong loyalty, shared beliefs, and a sense of superior white supremacy based on a judgmental “us vs. them” perspective. In his speech to Americans on June 21, 2025, about the U.S. bombing of sites in Iran, for example, the current U.S. President said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God…”
The key socio-political issues we need to look for and think about in the coming weeks are Truth and Moral Integrity.
- Jack
PS: After my Another Voice vacation, I am happy to be back online and hope to share meaningful observations. And next week an update on my book!
Another Voice 