Ryan Burge is a unique person. He’s a political scientist by training. For about seventeen years, he was also the preacher for a small church in Illinois. When that church closed, he entered into academia full-time. As a Christian pastor, he is deeply concerned about the vitality of the church in North America. As a political scientist, his concern is shaped by cold, hard data and statistics. In fact, Burge’s commitment to data-informed analysis might be a turn off for some readers. If you decide to read his new book The Vanishing Church, be prepared to wade through a lot of numbers and graphs. We are living in a time of hot takes and anecdotes, so I appreciate a book like this that is grounded in quantitative research.
Burge is best known for his book from several years ago called The Nones. In that book, he introduced us to a large and growing segment of the population who identify with no religion at all. These aren’t atheists or agnostics. Many of these people do possess some sort of belief in God, but they don’t consider themselves in belief or practice to be affiliated with any religion. This group doubled in size between 2004 and 2021. It grew by at least 40 million in seventeen years and is now over 20% of the population, roughly the same size as the largest religious groups in the United States.
The Church in America
In The Vanishing Church, Burge expands his analysis beyond the nones and offers a detailed picture of church in the United States. As the title of the book forecasts, it is not a good picture.
The first part of the book includes chapters on three of the largest Christian groups: evangelicals, the Catholic Church, and the Protestant mainline denominations. He concludes this part of the book with a chapter updating his research on the nones.
One small criticism I had reading this first part is that Burge’s analysis of evangelicals lacked some important nuance. This is an issue with a lot of books that talk about evangelicalism. “Evangelical” is a broad descriptor that captures a diverse group of denominations and congregations. For instance, there are some important differences between groups like the Southern Baptists, the Assemblies of God, and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ—all of which would be categorized as evangelical. These churches don’t necessarily agree on all issues related to culture, theology, and biblical interpretation. They also aren’t experiencing the same rates of growth or decline. Burge also left me wondering about distinctions between predominantly white evangelical churches and evangelical churches among other ethnic communities.
I understand the limitations of a book like this. An author must draw lines somewhere. I just found myself wanting some more granular analysis.
“In The Vanishing Church, Burge expands his analysis beyond the nones and offers a detailed picture of church in the United States.”
The Political Divide
The broader issue that this book explores is that religion in America has become less of a theological and more of a political identifier. In other words, being religious is less about a person or church’s commitment to a set of theological beliefs and is now more about a political orientation.
I think it’s fair to say that politics, not theology, is Burge’s dominant focus throughout the book because that is how many Americans have come to see religion.
“Now, an increasing number of Americans began to see religion as primarily political. It wasn’t about one’s theological beliefs about Jesus, the Bible, or the atonement. It wasn’t about wrestling with big existential questions, such as why people suffer or how to forgive those who have wronged us. Instead, religious identification became more strongly linked to whom one voted for on Election Day. It became a type of shorthand for political views, not theological positions.”
We may justifiably wish that this wasn’t the case, and we may argue that this isn’t true for us or for our churches, but we should begrudgingly admit that for many Americans, religion and politics have been worryingly confused.
We live in an era of political polarization that is unprecedented. It used to be the case that people of different political orientations would still interact socially in communities—and especially in churches. This social interaction encouraged a more moderate politics where the way that a person voted was nowhere near the most important thing about them.
“We should begrudgingly admit that for many Americans, religion and politics have been worryingly confused.”
Those interactions don’t happen as much anymore. The picture that Burge paints is of an evangelical church that has become much more politically conservative and a Catholic Church which has also become more conservative (at least among the priesthood). Meanwhile, the mainline churches, which Burge argues used to be models of political moderation and social diversity, are going extinct. The result is that in America, if you are left-of-center politically, you are much more likely to be non-religious. The church is simply not for people like you. Even political moderates are having a hard time with religion.
Burge recognizes that evangelicalism is not in decline in the United States. Attendance rates among evangelicals have never been as high as they are right now. But among the general population, religion is on the decline, and Burge attributes much of this to political polarization. He observes,
“The vibrant religious marketplace that was pervasive for most of U.S. history has been replaced by a type of faith that certainly appeals to a subset of the country but is objectionable, if not downright repulsive, to a significant number of Americans.”
Another Explanation
I have no problems with Burge’s observations in the first part of the book. After all, they are driven by survey data and statistics. I did at times disagree with his explanations of the data. It seems that Burge is no fan of right-wing politics. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but I do think that this colored his assessment. 
This is most evident in his discussion on mainline Protestant denominations. In Burge’s view, one reason why these denominations are dying is that they are too politically moderate in a time where it doesn’t pay to be moderate. In another chapter, he is critical of the Catholic Church whose leadership is more conservative than the laity, but he doesn’t have the same criticism for the mainline denominations whose leadership is far to the political left of their laity.
To be fair, Burge doesn’t completely dismiss the idea that liberalism (political or theological) has helped to hasten the decline of the mainlines, but this is only one cause among many. The problem with this assessment is that evangelicals have faced the same demographic and cultural issues facing the mainline churches, but they are growing. The biggest difference between the mainlines and evangelical churches is liberalism. It’s reasonable to suspect, then, that this is the major contributing factor to their decline.
“The biggest difference between the mainlines and evangelical churches is liberalism. It’s reasonable to suspect, then, that this is the major contributing factor to their decline.”
The unfortunate reality is that progressivism has become increasingly incompatible with and even hostile toward traditions and institutions in this century. As institutions, denominations that position themselves as progressive in their politics and theology should expect to gradually disappear. We should also expect the concurrent rise in conservativism among evangelical churches.
It never seems to dawn on Burge that the average conservative would not at all feel welcome at the local ELCA Lutheran Church where the pastor dons rainbow-colored vestments every June and rails about the troubling rise of fascism among those who hold typical conservative positions.
Beyond Politics
The second and third parts of the book were helpful, but I will have less to say about them. In the second part, he looks into issues beyond politics that are defining the American church. Some of these issues include education level, socioeconomic status, and marriage and family status.
His conclusions are sobering. Increasingly, the church is just not for large swaths of our population. They see our buildings and are bewildered about what even goes on inside. This includes people with liberal politics, but it also includes the undereducated, the poor, and the single.
For anyone with a well-developed theology of the church, this is dispiriting. We of course believe that the church is for everyone. Everyone—especially those who might be perceived to be on the margins of society—is welcome. In practice, this isn’t what our churches look like. Religious and nonreligious people are increasingly living in two separate worlds barely interacting with each other.
“Religious and nonreligious people are increasingly living in two separate worlds barely interacting with each other.”
In the third part of the book, Burge offers some hope which is good in a book with such an ominous title. In this section, he includes some guiding principles to push back against the polarization of our day and recapture moderation in our communities.
In short, I do recommend this book especially if you are a pastor or someone interested in religion in America. You will have to wade through a lot of data, but there are important insights to be gained regarding the present and the future state of the American church. I imagine that if pastors were to read this book together, they would find a great deal to talk about.
