Trump Christians claim religious revival is sweeping America — but scholars say otherwise

Christian conservatives, including but not limited to supporters of President Donald Trump, like to claim that there is a Christian revival occurring right now in America, but The New York Times’ Lauren Jackson pointed out Sunday that the truth is much more complicated.

“But anecdotes don’t make a national trend,” Jackson wrote. “And experts have urged caution: ‘These stories are a very small drop in a very large ocean, whose currents have for decades been taking people away from religion,’ said David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame who researches secularization. ‘For us to call this a true revival, we would need to see a level of conversion that we have never seen in the history of the United States.’ And Pew Research refuted claims of a Gen Z revival, writing that there is ‘no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway.’

Jackson observed that people have stopped leaving churches altogether, and the pausing of this symptom of secularization is “a big deal. It upends decades of assumptions that the U.S. was on an inevitable march toward godlessness.” At the same time, “that doesn’t mean a revival is underway, that suddenly the country is rushing back to the pews. Religious change doesn’t happen that quickly.”

Yet Trump supporters have a motive to oversimplify the narrative.

“It excites people,” Jackson wrote. “After years of losing status in American life, Christians are eager to claim ground. Ranjeet Guptara, a financier from Tennessee I met on a plane recently, told me a new church he’s worked with has ‘grown fast.’ Even cloistered Catholic canonesses I met in the Tehachapi Mountains of California were talking about it, as was one of their visiting families. ‘Universities are starting to see a revival,’ said Tom Huckins, a 64-year-old Catholic rancher and the father of one of the new canonesses.”

She added, “It’s politically advantageous. Republicans in the Trump administration and in Congress have allied themselves with conservative Christianity. ‘For a party that has staked its political prominence on defending a certain vision of America that is Christian,’ Campbell, the Notre Dame professor, told me, ‘this helps them.’ It’s a sign they are delivering on that promise.”

For this reason, misrepresenting the trend is potentially dangerous. As this author observed on Sunday, the new wide-released film “A Great Awakening” is part of the Christian Right’s agenda to spread the idea that America is inherently a Christian country. By contrast Steve Schmidt, a former Republican who advised President George W. Bush, said on his Substack last month that he is appalled by how the Trump administration uses Christianity to push its policy goals.

“The separation of church and state is foundational to American civilization,” Schmidt said on his Substack. “In fact, on the list of the greatest American inventions, the two at the top — competing for gold and silver — are the peaceful transition of power and the separation of church and state. These are brilliant ideas, the greatest in all of history.”