Twilight in the Pews, Part 1
White conservative Christians made a bet with Trump, and he is taking them down with him.
Originally published on Medium.com 11 January 2021
In 2020, as in 2016, White Christians supported President Trump. Although the media focused its attention on working class voters in rural midwest counties, Trump’s staunchest support actually came from the evangelical, fundamentalist, and traditionalist branches of the church. A growing sense of catastrophic threat had taken hold amongst these groups in the Obama years, and in 2016 conservative White Christians they responded by throwing in their lot with the great disruptor.
It was a mistake. By embracing Trump, conservative White Christians have hastened the decline of the church in general and of their congregations in particular.
The evidence of that failure is pretty straightforward. Here, for example, is a chart of membership in the Southern Baptist Church (SBC) over the last forty years:
Numbers sourced from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention
The interesting thing about the chart is not that the SBC is in decline — that began all the way back in the Bush administration. The important thing to note is that the losses continued to accelerate during the Trump years. As a denomination, the SBC shrank by approximately 72K members per year during President Obama’s first term. But that number began to seriously accelerate in 2010, and in Obama’s second term (2013–2016) the average losses grew to more than 129K a year. In the three years following President Trump’s inauguration, that acceleration continued, culminating in a loss of 288K members in 2019. Simply put, Southern Baptists’ support for President Trump helped him win in 2016, but it did not measurably improve SBC member churches’ fortunes.
And that was before Covid.
For churches generally, the losses of the last three years will probably pale in comparison to the losses of the pandemic. We do not yet know how bad the damage to Christianity will be, but there are some important hints. Like every other kind of organization offering large-gathering experiences (concerts, movie theaters, conventions, etc.), churches were particularly vulnerable to harm from shutdowns. Most rushed to offer services through remote platforms, like Zoom and YouTube, but remote worship cannot replace the weekly experience of interpersonal connection — the hugs and short chats after the service that are the lifeblood of community.
Source: LifeWay Research, “Pastors’ Views on the Impact of COVID-19: Survey of American Protestant Pastors” (http://lifewayresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Pastors-Sept-2020-COVID-Impact-Report.pdf).
Unsurprisingly, church attendance has plummeted over the course of the pandemic. Numbers are hard to come by, but the ones we have are grim. In July of 2020, the Barna Group estimated up to one-third of practicing Christians had stopped participating in worship services (even digital ones) during the pandemic. By October a majority of churches had opened for at least a few in-person services. Conservative White churches, in line with their continued support for President Trump, were the most likely to have resumed gatherings (fewer than half of Black congregations had resumed in-person worship). But even among this disproportionately lockdown-skeptical group, many chose to stay away when the doors reopened. LifeWay Research found that only 15% of churches reported attendance at or above 90% of their pre-Covid numbers, and a majority of ministers reported losing a third or more of their regular congregations.
In part, this aversion may reflect the ongoing gray-shift happening in every major Christian denomination. The Southern Baptist Convention again provides a useful measuring stick — in 2016, according to Pew, it fell close to the center of the pack, with a median congregant age of 54. Older people are particularly susceptible to Covid-19, so it would make sense for them to stay away even when church reopens (and they are correct to do so, given outbreaks in places like San Diego, Charlotte, and everywhere in between.
Still, we all know the truth: participating in any group or discipline is a habit — you do it in part because you did it last week — and unpracticed habits get broken. Some percentage of people who are staying away purely for safety reasons are likely not to come back, which brings us full-circle back to the claim at the beginning of this piece. White conservative Christians will end the Trump years in big trouble — measurably worse off than they were in 2016. Trump did not help their fortunes in normal years, and his administration’s inability to manage the pandemic has been disastrous for churches, including his allies’ congregations.
That assessment, however, makes it hard not to wonder about some additional questions. Why did conservative White Christians stake their churches’ collective reputations on a boorish, secular huckster in the first place? Does their support for Trump even matter? Why did they stick with him even as things went downhill? And what about the Republican “wins” of the Trump years? For White conservative Christians, will the benefits of Trump’s judicial appointments and tax cuts make up for their losses?