Another Vanishing Majority: Protestants

Most people are aware of the fact that the "white" majority in the United States is gradually coming to an end. Due to a combination of factors (greater immigration from non-European areas, differing birth rates) non-hispanic white people will become a minority of the total U.S. population before long.

According to a new study (a news article about it here and the published report in PDF here), the same thing is happening to Protestants. They're down to 52.4% of the population, compared to 62% a decade earlier (which used to be a fairly steady number). And since the data for this report was collected 2 years ago, the percentage might already be below 50%.

This decline isn't because people are leaving mainline Protestant denominations for more trendy churches. This survey defines "Protestant" very broadly, including Mormons, and New-Age-y churches that still call themselves "Christian" even though (the study's author admits) they might not have anything to do with established Christian theology.

Immigration is a factor here as well, but the main factor seems to be people personally giving up on Protestant Christianity, and fewer children being raised to believe in it. The survey shows a declining number of people who were raised Protestant that still believe in it (from 90% to 83%). And perhaps the most important statistic: the younger the age group they looked at, the fewer Protestants there were.

Some of that could be attributed to lower birth rates among Protestants (they're allowed to use condoms, after all, and some denominations accept abortion). Some could be the result of people in the survey identifying themselves as generic "Christians" instead of being specific enough to be categorised as Catholic or Protestant.

But then there's the figure for "no religion". Over the same timeframe that the Protestants dropped by 10%, the number of people reporting that they didn't have a religion went up by 5%, to 14%. That's now 1 person out of 7. I guess you're more likely to run into a "practicing" agnostic on the street, than a homosexual. The number of people who said "other" (which includes Muslims, Buddhists, anyone who just said "New Age", and anything else) is up from 2-3% a decade ago to nearly 7%. That's 1 in 14. Add these groups together, then throw in the Jews (a fairly steady 2%), and you're nearing 1 in 4.

This doesn't do much to contradict the theocrats who proclaim that the United States is "a Christian nation", because the percentage of Catholics is still about 25% and they're staying steady. So at the very least Christians in total have a lock on a supermajority for a while yet. "They" will still outnumber "us" by more than 2:1.

But that's a bit like saying that if you combine "whites" with "hispanics" that you still get a majority. That's not a majority, it's a coalition. Heck, Protestants have been something of a coalition-majority all along, dominating the rest of us only by the Bapitsts and Methodists and Lutherans and Presbyterians putting their theological and cultural differences aside to establish their common values as the law of the land.

As you look at the Protestant coalition, with its Mormons, Unitarians, Metropolitan Community Churches (gay/lesbian evangelicals), quasi-pagans who incorporate Jesus into their worship to make it more comfortable for recovering Christians, and so on... it's an increasingly diverse crew. They disagree not only about theological matters that rarely intrude upon secular life, such as baptism, communion, and the means of salvation, but social issues such as abortion, the role of women, environmental protection, the death penalty, the legal status of gay and lesbian couples, and many others. They're a contentious, often-fractured coalition.

My point in writing this isn't to gloat that "they" are a declining majority. I'm a bleached-in-the-wool white guy, and my race is one privileged-for-now soon-to-be-minority group I'm stuck with. I'm in the minority under a whole bunch of factors, and I'm OK with that. But this is part of an ongoing trend in American society that will have to have repercussions.

We're becoming increasingly a truly pluralistic society. A coalescence of coalitions. Presidents can't get elected by just appealing to white voters. Or just to Protestant Christians. Or "liberal" or "conservative" or "populist" or "libertarian" voters. They need to appeal to diverse populations.

(I think you can make a pretty good case that even "women" are no longer the slim majority they once were... and not because "men" have eclipsed them. With more people self-identifying as "gay male" and "lesbian" and "transgender" - and with measurably different attitudes to go with that - the number of "real men" and "real women" is each down into the 45-49% range.)

This need to cater to diverse pluralities isn't necessarily a Good Thing. The Democratic and Republican parties have responded to it by trying to be all things to all people. Or more to the point, they're both trying to appeal to the same people, hoping to build coalitions that include the various subgroups of our society who are most likely to vote, or who have the cash they need to fund their elections. So Democrats take positions that appeal to the barons of Wall Street and suburban housewives, and the Republicans are trying to figure out what they can offer to urban black people and rural hispanics. Each party is trying to turn itself into the same "centrist" ruling coalition government, of the sort that parliamentary democracies often form.

One key difference is that these other democracies have more flexible political systems. They actually have multiple parties, from which coalitions can be built - and discarded - as needed by the times. The United States used to have that. (A total of 6 presidential candidates received electorial votes in 1872, and as recently as 1912 the Republican candidate placed 3rd in the presidential election.) These trends toward pluralism may help to bring that back. If not, we'll be stuck with two increasingly interchangeable parties representing the same interests.

I'm hopeful that as Americans get more used to the idea that everyone is in the minority, that we might learn to spend less time trying to impose our values on each other, and cooperate more. Coalition members have to keep the interests of others in mind, whereas majority members can just do what's best for them. That's not just rude, it's also bad government.