Summary: New research links the rise in Americans identifying as religious “nones” to the increased visibility and political activity of the conservative Christian movement, particularly around opposition to LGBT issues such as same-sex marriage.
Source: University at Buffalo
Religious “nones” — people who do not formally identify with a particular religion — are growing in number across the United States. While multiple factors contribute to this trend, recent research suggests that the politicization of conservative Christian beliefs is an important driver, especially when those beliefs become highly visible in public policy debates.
A study published in April in the journal Political Research Quarterly examined state-level activity related to same-sex marriage bans and found a clear correlation: in states where conservative Christian groups were more publicly engaged in campaigns and policy fights over LGBT issues, the share of people reporting no religious affiliation rose more quickly.
The study, co-written by University at Buffalo political scientist Jacob Neiheisel, reports several key findings:
- The campaign to enshrine bans on same-sex marriage in state constitutions, which began in 2004, increased the public visibility of the religious right in many states, especially in jurisdictions where proposed bans drew contentious debate.
- By 2010, 29 states had enacted bans on same-sex marriage. These states tended to have larger evangelical populations and, at the start of the period studied, smaller shares of religious nones than other states.
- Between 2006 and 2010, the gap in nonreligious affiliation between states with same-sex marriage bans and those without narrowed substantially — from a 3.1 percentage point difference to just 1.4 points. In practical terms, a larger percentage of people left organized religion in the states where the religious right was most active.
“Regardless of which measure of religious-right activity we examined, in states that experienced heated fights over same-sex marriage the political presence of right-leaning religious groups tracked with rising rates of religious nones,” says Neiheisel, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo. “Salient controversy appears to be the key link connecting religion and politics in these cases.”
Neiheisel emphasizes that political sorting and departures from religious communities did not simply follow the presence of religious organizations alone. “People do not usually start leaving churches or sorting by political identity until those religious-political combinations become visible in the policy arena,” he explains.
The study’s corresponding author is Paul Djupe, an associate professor at Denison University, and the paper also lists Kimberly Conger, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, as a co-author.
This research builds on earlier work by Neiheisel and colleagues that followed individual congregants over time. That longitudinal research found substantial short-term churn: in one three-month window, 14 percent of surveyed congregants left their church, and the rate of departure increased when longer observation periods were used. Political disagreement was a notable factor in those exits.
“Both studies point to substantial churn within religious organizations driven by political disagreement,” Neiheisel says. “While everyday disagreements push people out across the political spectrum, the public salience of the Christian right — made visible by high-profile policy fights — helped to accelerate the growth of the nonreligious population in particular places.”
To measure the prominence of conservative Christian forces at the state level, the researchers used a combination of sources. These included expert surveys that tracked conservative Christian presence by state, counts of conservative Christian interest groups, decennial religious census data collected by the Glenmary Research Center, and survey estimates of nonreligious affiliation drawn from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).
Published by: University at Buffalo (reported)
Journal: Political Research Quarterly (April publication)
Authors of the study: Paul A. Djupe, Jacob R. Neiheisel, and Kimberly H. Conger
Study focus: The paper, titled “Are the Politics of the Christian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Controversy,” evaluates whether the public activity of the Christian Right — especially during conflicts such as same-sex marriage ban campaigns — is associated with increases in people who identify as nonreligious across U.S. states between 2000 and 2010.
Key takeaways: Rising rates of religious nones were more common in Republican-leaning states during the period studied. When conservative Christian politics became publicly contentious, such as during same-sex marriage ballot fights, the study finds a corresponding increase in the share of people reporting no religious affiliation.
Abstract summary
Previous arguments have suggested that the prominence and positions of the Christian Right — particularly on gay rights and abortion — have contributed to the growth of religious nones by making religion feel inhospitable to moderates and liberals. Using state-level measures of movement prominence alongside religious census and survey estimates, the authors reassess this claim and conclude that public conflict driven by the Christian Right helps explain rising none rates in many states during the first decade of the 2000s.