<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Independence Day, Belinda Kleeberger finally broke free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 66-year-old grandmother had only ever known her American Baptist church in small-town Maine. She had attended services there for six decades and was a leader in the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kleeberger saw right-leaning political rhetoric grow there for the last few years, but the Fourth of July service was too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow it seems Jesus sat down with the Founding Fathers and helped them write the Constitution,\u201d Kleeberger said. \u201cI need a Jesus that transcends all that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She told her pastor that she needed to find another way. The conversation wasn\u2019t easy, considering the pastor is Kleeberger\u2019s sister-in-law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Carolyn Wilkinson departed from her Southern Baptist Convention church in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilkinson had worshipped and studied many Western and Eastern disciplines; she was once a practicing Wiccan. Her fellow churchgoers wouldn\u2019t let go of her past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo matter what, I was always going to be Carolyn the Witch,\u201d the 54-year-old Maryland resident said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kleeberger and Wilkinson are part of a growing exodus from white evangelicalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
White mainline Protestants now outnumber white Evangelicals, according to an extensive\u00a0survey\u00a0released July 8 by the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit polling organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mainline Protestant churches \u2014 such as the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church \u2014 do not consider themselves evangelical or \u201cborn-again.\u201d These groups tend to be more liberal and moderate in their doctrinal interpretations, and especially on social justice topics including same-sex marriage and abortion, compared to their evangelical counterparts, which include the Southern Baptist Convention, the Salvation Army and the Wesleyan Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know when this would have last been the case, at least 70 or 80 years, the percentage of Americans who are white Evangelicals is smaller than the percentage of Americans who are white and more moderate to liberal Protestants,\u201d said Diana Butler Bass, historian of Christianity and author of the 2021 book \u201cFreeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While many factors politically and socially may be fueling this shift, the ramifications for faith and politics may be profound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MORAL MINORITY?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fueled by Jerry Falwell Sr.\u2019s \u201cMoral Majority\u201d organization, the U.S. evangelical movement boomed in the 1980s, tying many American Protestants to the Republican Party. The Christian Right sprang up and became a vital voting base behind conservatives\u2019 political successes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, the number of mainline Protestants dipped, leading to many church closures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Butler Bass, who has a doctorate in religious studies from Duke University, said the numbers started reversing shortly after 9\/11. She believes the conservative evangelicals\u2019 rejection of LGBTQ rights and a growing political disconnect, especially with young people, has fueled the shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou can see that it\u2019s true, because of the way evangelicalism have been acting,\u201d Butler Bass said. \u201cThey\u2019ll say, \u2018Oh, we\u2019re the biggest group around. Liberals are declining. We\u2019re true so you know our churches grow. God blesses us.\u2019 But then, on the other hand, they\u2019re acting in this really paranoid and persecuted way. And they know, internally, and they talk about it, how people are not joining churches anymore. How people are leaving. How young adults are leaving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But not all are convinced that there has been a complete flip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel Williams, author of \u201cThe Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship\u201d and a historian at the University of West Georgia, noted that other studies have shown that, while a significant number has left evangelism, enough new members have joined to keep the numbers relatively stable. He holds that many evangelicals are hesitant to be identified as such because of the \u201cobjectional politics that they see in Evangelicalism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Williams also said statistics can be skewed depending on how the terms \u201cevangelical\u201d and \u201cmainline Protestant\u201d are defined, and also said PRRI\u2019s CEO, Robert Jones, has been arguing for years that evangelicalism is trending downward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Williams agreed that evangelical churches are facing new challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI see evangelicalism experiencing significant divisions,\u201d the professors said. \u201cSo, regardless of whether the numbers are shrinking or whether the numbers are holding steady, it\u2019s certainly the case I think that that Evangelicalism is fragmenting to a greater degree than it has in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n POLITICS AND THE PULPIT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Political polarization had surged in the past four years. That was extended to the pulpit as evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham and Jim Bakker blindly threw their faith behind former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Butler Bass said the numbers first began tilting towards mainline Protestants during George W. Bush\u2019s administration, notably between 2004 and 2006. She Bass believes that U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, coupled with Bush\u2019s anti-LGBTQ policies, sparked the shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that really does point to the fact that the priorities of the Republican Party have been out of step for about 20 years with where most younger adults are,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so, younger evangelicals have a very hard time putting together their parents\u2019 support for the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the rejection of their gay friends with being Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The PRRI study indicates a notable average age difference between older white evangelicals (56) and younger white mainline Protestants (50). The previous president\u2019s harsh rhetoric may also have added fuel to the shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeginning in 2016, a number of people who might have been somewhat uncomfortable with the Republican Party, but before that perhaps thought they could live within a movement that that leans toward conservatism, felt that President Trump was so objectionable, that the people who supported Trump and saw no moral problem with what he was what he was doing and what he stood for, were not people that they wanted to claim as a part of their movement,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThey were not comfortable calling themselves evangelicals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kleeberger, the Maine Baptist, became a member of that group on the Fourth of July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At her former church, the children\u2019s ministry pastor compared immigrants to rats in a speech to the kids after Joe Biden\u2019s election. Kleeberger\u2019s daughter even forbade her from taking the grandchildren to that church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was just another indicator at how her church had changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt was always we should be good and pay our taxes and all that, but it\u2019s never been like, \u2018We have to stand up and make a Christian nation,\u2019\u201d Kleeberger said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n