Is Religion Dying in America?

Yesterday, I read this article by Liz Bucar, about a quote she heard from Trevor Noah. She said:

A month ago, I heard something I can’t shake.

Trevor Noah’s December 2025 interview with Zohran Mamdani—NYC’s new mayor, the democratic socialist who actually won—on his “What Now?” podcast was circulating again. I heard a clip where they were talking about why Democrats can’t seem to sell people on, well, anything hopeful. Mamdani was being characteristically blunt about how Republicans dream big while progressives have been busy lowering everyone’s expectations.

Then Trevor tossed THIS out there.

“I sometimes think it’s because of the decline of religion on the left.”

This hit me pretty hard, because it touches on something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Like millions of other Americans (particularly women) I walked away from the church more than a decade ago. I spent most of that time not just deconstructing my faith, but deconstructing all of the many structures and systems I had been indoctrinated into as a white American woman. Patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy and grind culture are just a few of the mindsets I had been indoctrinated into that I had to spend years of my life deconstructing my way out of.

And I’m not gonna lie, in spite of everything happening in the world, for me, these last five years have been pretty blissful. It’s mostly just been me and my dog and my biggest worries and concerns have been keeping a roof over our heads and putting food on the table. Which, in this economy is no small thing, but what I haven’t had to worry much about is other people’s opinions. Which, it turns out, is a much, much heavier weight than you might expect. It’s crazy how light my load has become since (mostly) setting myself free of them.

But, something has also been missing. I think perhaps I’ve always known deep down what that thing was, but honestly, the cost of having it has always seemed a lot higher than not having it. As I’ve chosen to watch what is happening in America right now, however, I have begun to realize just how I have been complicit, by kind of purposefully choosing to not pursue that thing that was missing. That thing was community.

And then I stumbled on this second article of Liz’s and something clicked into place. So many of us love being spiritual wanderers and spiritual explorers. When things get too messy or heavy, we are free to flit lightly on our way. And, for a time, that is likely a valuable thing. But, much like a gap year between high school and college, eventually the time comes when perhaps we must reengage and take up the mantle of responsibility again. And perhaps that time has come.

Like many, if not most, people, I was raised having the importance of community hammered into me. And while community can be life-giving, it can also be toxic, draining and exhausting. As certain toxic doctrines took deeper and deeper root in our churches, life within them became ever more draining and exhausting rather than life-giving and affirming. And, as much as progressives want to point fingers at conservatives, it’s interesting that Noah pointed out the decline of religion on the left. Athough he’s not necessarily wrong about that, it’s also maybe not the whole story. Church attendance on the right has not just remained steady in spite of millions leaving the church, it’s actually grown. Which is why religion seems to be alive and well on the right.

But is it really?

I suspect it’s actually more fair to say that this is also evidence of the decline of religion in America. Bodies in seats is not the same thing as engaged hearts and minds. As more and more “true believers” streamed out of churches, it created a culture that non-believers were suddenly eager to be a part of. While many churches have preached the importance of accepting people where they are, they have also claimed to “love you too much to let you stay there.” Now, however, it seems as if many right-wing churches not only accept you exactly as you are, they don’t seem to think anyone needs to change. Just because people are going to church, does not automatically mean that what they are hearing, learning or living is the gospel of Jesus.

While millions of us walked away from toxic churches, we never replaced it with something better.

Although some people left and immediately started new churches, what they don’t realize is that most of them are taking the same toxic values they learned in conservative religion, repackaging it in the same old wineskins and calling it “new and improved." Only it’s not. And it’s never going to be as long as we refuse to look at what is so toxic about the American church in the first place. Because the thing that none of us want to admit is that the most toxic parts are the ones we want most to keep.

Over the next few days, I’m going to be writing about the rise of evangelicalism, what it is, why it is so alluring, and how it led to where we find ourselves today.

And then, I’m going to reveal a plan I hatched more than ten years ago. Not aplan for something new, as it turns out, but a return to something ancient. Something that we, in America, have strayed very far away from. 'It’s something Liz touched on in her second article. When we left our churches, we freed ourselves from the toxicity, but in the process, we also set ourselves loose from some of the most tedious, but possibly most important, aspects of religion.

The disciplines.