A 2018 survey from Lifeway Research found that just under half (46 percent) of Protestant churchgoers—and 57 percent of churchgoers under age fifty—said they prefer to go to church with people who share their politics.8 Forty-two percent said that they were open to attending services with people who had different views. That same survey found that

The General Social Survey, run by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, finds that about 24 percent of Americans say they attend services at least

moderate to severe conflict.

“faith unbundled.”

Stroop, coeditor of Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church, is one of the most vocal activists in what’s known as the exvangelical movement, people who grew up in the white evangelical subculture and left it behind.

holy men of God.

Even the mighty Southern Baptist Convention, whose leadership once scoffed at the decline of “liberal” mainline churches, has declined from a high of 16.3 million members in 2006 to about 14.2 million members today. Interestingly, the second-largest non-Catholic group in the United States is now the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“Mainline Protestants comprised over half of the population until the early 1960s, and together with Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists they accounted for upwards of 80 percent of Americans,” James Hudnut-Beumler, a historian of American religion from Vanderbilt University, told reporter and scholar Tara Isabella Burton at Vox.com in 2018.7

Older Americans are more likely to be religious and, if they are religious, to be white Christians. Younger Americans are less religious and, if they are religious, more likely to be Christians of color than white Christians.