There was a good Pimlico Journal piece this past week on a similar poll in the UK, done by a similarly biased pollster, and the similarly deluded reaction from online cons/trads.
In addition to all the wishcasting you noted, Pimlico points out that immigration likely skews the numbers. In the UK it’s Africans and in the US it’s hispanics, but in neither case is a Great Faith Revival likely, at least not in the way online Cons would like, if the “christian youth upsurge” is in reality a lot of newly immigrated brownoids.
There are still some strong churches out in the burbs where young conservative families want to raise their kids. They need to be very accommodative of families though.
But the pickings are slim anywhere in the city or in shrinking zip codes.
What part of the country are you in? In blue America the suburbs are much more liberal than they used to be and thus less Christian while the big cities have super trad churches
Haha I live in NoVA I feel you. Youngkin was a bit of an anomaly and I think the last of a dying breed. Because of the parent’s rights issues he was able to pick off parents who aren’t insanely liberal and maybe not religious, but even still Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Loudon all went way liberal while 20 years ago some of those places were represented by people like Comstock. You can find good churches in the suburbs but only if they are associated with some Catholic power center (near DC for politics, Dallas because of UD, in FL near Ave Maria, near KC because of Bendictine). Most suburbs are slowly becoming secularized and liberal and can’t fight it unless there is a big cohort actively going against the spirit of the age. Christian Heines calls this the “donut effect” where cities are moving right while suburbs are moving left and the data shows it.
I'm pretty sure Barna's dataset is quota sampled, that is, non-random. Barna's wheelhouse is surveying the church community itself for internal opinions. This is probably why every other dataset in existence shows, year after year, a decline or at best plateau in religiosity with Gen Z being the least religious generation in recorded history. It's a complete outlier because it's using a methodology to show its own year-over-year trends, not really what the country is looking like as a whole.
Scott you’re missing the big picture about quality vs quantity which is the real story and although I know you’re pretty anti religion you usually try to shoot straight and say it like it is. The young men (and right now it’s only men) who convert are much more traditional and radical than their millennial or boomer counterparts and represent an actual counter elite to the progressives which hasn’t existed in 80 years. The moral majority guys were evangelicals and got totally destroyed by liberals in both power politics and intellectual debates because Protestantism is essentially just appealing to authority without a deeper tradition of philosophy and reason. What we are seeing now is different. The recent president of the Harvard Republican Club who was completely secular converted to Catholicism after reading from the intellectual tradition https://www.harvardmagazine.com/students/harvard-young-americans-conservative-turn . Before that the conservative intellectuals on these campuses were all Hayek libertarians (this is even true of Hillsdale in the 80-90s which was more free trade than Christian). An example of these types in DC was a memorial Mass for Charlie Kirk that was attended mostly by young men: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1337065407984202&id=100050422662794 . Anecdotally most people have been reporting that confession lines at Church are full of young men (https://x.com/alexathallow/status/1990564912171790705) the Vice President famously converted after being in contact with the Thomistic Institute in DC and isn’t a Catholic simply because he’s Irish. Cardinal Newman Society schools have been setting records in enrollment while colleges as a whole are trending downward (https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/a-growing-light-in-the-darkness-newman-guide-colleges-increase-in-2024-25/) and these institutions simply didn’t really exist for the boomers to the scale they are now meaning there is a pipeline of young people being educated in the Western tradition. So if there’s a story here it’s that society is devolving into FanDuel Americans so you’re right it’s a more secular country on average but among the elite there are a growing number of young men that are anti hedonism and progressivism and have reasons for it like the mind can’t be material because it has intentionality and can access universal concepts instead of just “mamaw always said it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve” and they slowly infiltrating elite positions in DC and will control the GOP. Just look at the interview between Matt Fradd and John Crist if you want to the see differences in the intellect between the moral majority of the 80s and the new social conservatives. The question is will they be able to slowly march through the institutions and gain power secretly like the progressives did in the 60s, only this time with a hostile media and ConInc working against than rather than having the institutions on their side. Only time will tell
"Elite" conservatives have been embracing a traditional version of Catholicism since the 1950s. This was a common event among National Review contributors in its early days. Conservative activists at elite schools did this as well. DC conservatism has always boasted this feature. This is not a new phenomenon. What's newer is that there are fewer evangelicals among the ranks of elite conservatives.
Sure and I acknowledge Russell Kirk and all his pals were the forefathers of a lot of conservative Catholics and their institutions but what I’m saying is that there used to be a fusionism between conservative Catholics and libertarians and evangelicals but that is totally fading into just Catholics vs Nietzscheians, which is a positive develop for America becoming more Christian because there will be a political party that is more trad than modern evangelical and so it will actually be able to challenge liberal intellectual hegemony especially as liberals become less impressive from all their DEI. Compare this to the 2000s where you had liberals at the height of their technological and media power who could say “reality has a liberal bias” and their opposition was Catholics who gave the game away by making up “new natural law” and evangelical chuds and Ayn Rand bros. Totally different elite battlefield now that will be more traditional Christian without having to appeal to evangelical or libertarian pieties
Evangelicals are still a huge presence in the grassroots and conservatives still depend on appealing to them. See the Charlie Kirk funeral. It wasn't very Catholic. Kirk and co. were also challenging "liberal hegemony" in their day. The Ivies are even more overtly liberal than they were in the 20th century, as seen by studies showing 90 percent of students vote Democrat.
Despite the number of vocal trads, conservative movement has made its peace with gay marriage, sports betting, weed, and a lot of other things the Religious Right would've never tolerated.
Yeah I think we are agreeing on the basic facts we just have different predictions on the future based on our prior commitments. I agree the moral majority essential lost to MAGA and MAGA doesn’t care about morality as much as it cares about nationalism vs globalism in demographics, culture, and politics so the conservative movement and evangelicals had to make peace with abandoning gambling, weed, porn, marriage, etc which is why they are not going to be relevant long term. I just think that nationalism vs globalism is only in the short term story of politics but if you zoom out politics in the long term will actually look more like Copleston vs Russell which is essentially trad religion vs progressivism because those are the true only coherent belief systems
Thanks for the splash of cold water. We all need to have realistic expectations. My local NO parish, St Typical's, is largely a senior center on all days, and week days it is especially populated w very senior women.
I've never been polled and I don't know anyone else who has. Though to be fair it's not something that comes up often in conversation.
I only believe polling when it's vastly to one side...like those polls that say 90% are unhappy with Congress. That is true; Congress sucks. 80-90% think Kennedy was not assassinated by LHO. That's also probably true. Nearly 100% think housing prices are too high. Vox populi, vox dei.
Any polling that's not at least 80-20 is extremely suspect, and not a reliable indicator of anything. As always, look for other signs, such as consumer habits, migration, how many crosses or American flags you see.
I think we've exhausted the portion of the population who believed and went to church because it was just what was expected of you. The only way for attendance and belief to go back up is for Christianity to be considered high status again. I think we've passed the George W Bush/new Atheist era where being religious was completely coded as dumb and being an atheist was coded as smart, but we're still a long way from being a good Christian and going to weekly services being the expected behavior of an upstanding citizen.
That's my experience as well but it's partially due to the neighborhood my parish is in. Upper Middle class suburbs just don't have a ton of young people in their 20's in today's world.
I said partially. Young people do tend to drop out, but it looks like Gen Z, and every other group, has hit the bottom of the decline. It remains to be seen if there will be a bounce back.
There was a good Pimlico Journal piece this past week on a similar poll in the UK, done by a similarly biased pollster, and the similarly deluded reaction from online cons/trads.
In addition to all the wishcasting you noted, Pimlico points out that immigration likely skews the numbers. In the UK it’s Africans and in the US it’s hispanics, but in neither case is a Great Faith Revival likely, at least not in the way online Cons would like, if the “christian youth upsurge” is in reality a lot of newly immigrated brownoids.
There are still some strong churches out in the burbs where young conservative families want to raise their kids. They need to be very accommodative of families though.
But the pickings are slim anywhere in the city or in shrinking zip codes.
What part of the country are you in? In blue America the suburbs are much more liberal than they used to be and thus less Christian while the big cities have super trad churches
Florida. But the same was true when I was in Northern Virginia and Maryland.
In Virginia 62% of whites voted for Youngkin. And 53% of all races in the "suburbs" voted Youngkin.
59% of men with children and 56% of women with children voted Youngkin.
White voters with a college degree voted 47% Youngkin.
So there are a lot of white conservatives out in the burbs.
Virginia is a "blue state" because NOVA is flooded with non-whites and childless DC professionals.
Haha I live in NoVA I feel you. Youngkin was a bit of an anomaly and I think the last of a dying breed. Because of the parent’s rights issues he was able to pick off parents who aren’t insanely liberal and maybe not religious, but even still Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, and Loudon all went way liberal while 20 years ago some of those places were represented by people like Comstock. You can find good churches in the suburbs but only if they are associated with some Catholic power center (near DC for politics, Dallas because of UD, in FL near Ave Maria, near KC because of Bendictine). Most suburbs are slowly becoming secularized and liberal and can’t fight it unless there is a big cohort actively going against the spirit of the age. Christian Heines calls this the “donut effect” where cities are moving right while suburbs are moving left and the data shows it.
I'm pretty sure Barna's dataset is quota sampled, that is, non-random. Barna's wheelhouse is surveying the church community itself for internal opinions. This is probably why every other dataset in existence shows, year after year, a decline or at best plateau in religiosity with Gen Z being the least religious generation in recorded history. It's a complete outlier because it's using a methodology to show its own year-over-year trends, not really what the country is looking like as a whole.
https://gildhelm.substack.com/p/its-no-great-awakening
There is data showing a bit of a spike among Gen Z men, but it's plummeting among the women. I
Scott you’re missing the big picture about quality vs quantity which is the real story and although I know you’re pretty anti religion you usually try to shoot straight and say it like it is. The young men (and right now it’s only men) who convert are much more traditional and radical than their millennial or boomer counterparts and represent an actual counter elite to the progressives which hasn’t existed in 80 years. The moral majority guys were evangelicals and got totally destroyed by liberals in both power politics and intellectual debates because Protestantism is essentially just appealing to authority without a deeper tradition of philosophy and reason. What we are seeing now is different. The recent president of the Harvard Republican Club who was completely secular converted to Catholicism after reading from the intellectual tradition https://www.harvardmagazine.com/students/harvard-young-americans-conservative-turn . Before that the conservative intellectuals on these campuses were all Hayek libertarians (this is even true of Hillsdale in the 80-90s which was more free trade than Christian). An example of these types in DC was a memorial Mass for Charlie Kirk that was attended mostly by young men: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1337065407984202&id=100050422662794 . Anecdotally most people have been reporting that confession lines at Church are full of young men (https://x.com/alexathallow/status/1990564912171790705) the Vice President famously converted after being in contact with the Thomistic Institute in DC and isn’t a Catholic simply because he’s Irish. Cardinal Newman Society schools have been setting records in enrollment while colleges as a whole are trending downward (https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/a-growing-light-in-the-darkness-newman-guide-colleges-increase-in-2024-25/) and these institutions simply didn’t really exist for the boomers to the scale they are now meaning there is a pipeline of young people being educated in the Western tradition. So if there’s a story here it’s that society is devolving into FanDuel Americans so you’re right it’s a more secular country on average but among the elite there are a growing number of young men that are anti hedonism and progressivism and have reasons for it like the mind can’t be material because it has intentionality and can access universal concepts instead of just “mamaw always said it’s Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve” and they slowly infiltrating elite positions in DC and will control the GOP. Just look at the interview between Matt Fradd and John Crist if you want to the see differences in the intellect between the moral majority of the 80s and the new social conservatives. The question is will they be able to slowly march through the institutions and gain power secretly like the progressives did in the 60s, only this time with a hostile media and ConInc working against than rather than having the institutions on their side. Only time will tell
"Elite" conservatives have been embracing a traditional version of Catholicism since the 1950s. This was a common event among National Review contributors in its early days. Conservative activists at elite schools did this as well. DC conservatism has always boasted this feature. This is not a new phenomenon. What's newer is that there are fewer evangelicals among the ranks of elite conservatives.
Sure and I acknowledge Russell Kirk and all his pals were the forefathers of a lot of conservative Catholics and their institutions but what I’m saying is that there used to be a fusionism between conservative Catholics and libertarians and evangelicals but that is totally fading into just Catholics vs Nietzscheians, which is a positive develop for America becoming more Christian because there will be a political party that is more trad than modern evangelical and so it will actually be able to challenge liberal intellectual hegemony especially as liberals become less impressive from all their DEI. Compare this to the 2000s where you had liberals at the height of their technological and media power who could say “reality has a liberal bias” and their opposition was Catholics who gave the game away by making up “new natural law” and evangelical chuds and Ayn Rand bros. Totally different elite battlefield now that will be more traditional Christian without having to appeal to evangelical or libertarian pieties
Evangelicals are still a huge presence in the grassroots and conservatives still depend on appealing to them. See the Charlie Kirk funeral. It wasn't very Catholic. Kirk and co. were also challenging "liberal hegemony" in their day. The Ivies are even more overtly liberal than they were in the 20th century, as seen by studies showing 90 percent of students vote Democrat.
Despite the number of vocal trads, conservative movement has made its peace with gay marriage, sports betting, weed, and a lot of other things the Religious Right would've never tolerated.
I'm not sure where the Nietzscheans are.
Yeah I think we are agreeing on the basic facts we just have different predictions on the future based on our prior commitments. I agree the moral majority essential lost to MAGA and MAGA doesn’t care about morality as much as it cares about nationalism vs globalism in demographics, culture, and politics so the conservative movement and evangelicals had to make peace with abandoning gambling, weed, porn, marriage, etc which is why they are not going to be relevant long term. I just think that nationalism vs globalism is only in the short term story of politics but if you zoom out politics in the long term will actually look more like Copleston vs Russell which is essentially trad religion vs progressivism because those are the true only coherent belief systems
Thanks for the splash of cold water. We all need to have realistic expectations. My local NO parish, St Typical's, is largely a senior center on all days, and week days it is especially populated w very senior women.
I've never been polled and I don't know anyone else who has. Though to be fair it's not something that comes up often in conversation.
I only believe polling when it's vastly to one side...like those polls that say 90% are unhappy with Congress. That is true; Congress sucks. 80-90% think Kennedy was not assassinated by LHO. That's also probably true. Nearly 100% think housing prices are too high. Vox populi, vox dei.
Any polling that's not at least 80-20 is extremely suspect, and not a reliable indicator of anything. As always, look for other signs, such as consumer habits, migration, how many crosses or American flags you see.
I think we've exhausted the portion of the population who believed and went to church because it was just what was expected of you. The only way for attendance and belief to go back up is for Christianity to be considered high status again. I think we've passed the George W Bush/new Atheist era where being religious was completely coded as dumb and being an atheist was coded as smart, but we're still a long way from being a good Christian and going to weekly services being the expected behavior of an upstanding citizen.
What is a poll?
What is its purpose?
How does it collect data?
How does it interpret data?
…and the central question:
Who pays for the poll—and WHY??
That's my experience as well but it's partially due to the neighborhood my parish is in. Upper Middle class suburbs just don't have a ton of young people in their 20's in today's world.
I said partially. Young people do tend to drop out, but it looks like Gen Z, and every other group, has hit the bottom of the decline. It remains to be seen if there will be a bounce back.
To me it seems the evangelical churches are the only ones with a younger demographic. I also live in central Florida, FWIW.