Make Religion Great Again

America’s God has been ailing of late. According to the Pew Research Center—whose statistics on belief are a cardiogram of religion in the United States—the number of Americans claiming religious affiliation has declined steadily over the past two decades. The percentage of those who identify as Christian has dropped more than sixteen points since 2007 (from 78 to 62 percent), while in the same period the religiously unaffiliated or “nones” have risen thirteen points (from 16 to 29 percent). Among those eighteen to twenty-nine years old, 45 percent consider themselves Christians, followed closely by the 44 percent who would describe themselves as “nones.” Although some observers have recently claimed that these trends now seem to have decelerated, if the statistics are accurate, religious membership is at its lowest since the middle of the nineteenth century.