The Collapse of Cultural Christianity—and the Rise of Cultural Queerness
13th March 2024
How do nations become post-Christian? To quote Ernest Hemingway: Gradually, and then suddenly.
For decades, the United States has been a bastion of religiosity, bucking the trend of secularization, but in recent years, the needle has begun to move. According to a 2019 poll, between 20% and 25% of American adults now identify as ‘nones’ (meaning that they do not identify with any religion), a percentage that is higher among younger adults than older adults and likely indicative of a long-term trend. According to a 2020 Politico/Morning Consult poll, 49% of voting-age Gen Z (those born after 1996) respondents identified as either agnostic or atheist—a sea change in religious identification.
To unpack those numbers a bit further, consider that a 2017 survey found that only 11% of Americans claimed to have read the entire Bible—meaning that a whopping 89% have not. Thus, it is no surprise that even Americans who still identify as Christian are abandoning any semblance of orthodoxy, with 40% of American Christians claiming that the Bible is ‘ambiguous’ on abortion, 34% rejecting the biblical definition of marriage, and another 34% claiming that abortion is morally acceptable.