Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in prepared remarks Thursday: “We need to think about what is truly the most important thing. Is it the worship or the building? For me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers.”
On one level, Northam is obviously right: God can always hear our prayers. On another level, it seemed like Northam was giving his own, possibly sectarian, theology (he is a Baptist) from the governor’s pulpit, implying that buildings and communal gatherings don’t matter. This upset plenty of people, including me. Catholic churches are consecrated places. The Mass is the center of Catholic worship, and Holy Communion, which must be administered physically, is the center of Mass.
For Jews and Muslims, praying together, physically in the same place, is central to worship. Pushing an individualistic theology, as governor, seemed an inappropriate use of his power, even if his actual policies and requests to battle the coronavirus surge (suggesting that churches require masks or meet outdoors or online, but still allowing Christmas and Hanukkah services in person) were reasonable.
But there’s a deeper cultural story buried in here. Increasingly, Americans see themselves as believers but not belongers. Religion in America is receding, but even among the religious, faith is becoming deinstitutionalized.
It wasn’t just Northam that made me think of this; it was also J.D. Vance. Talking with Ben Shapiro about Hillbilly Elegy, Vance spoke about his grandmother’s deep faith being nonetheless detached from organized religion. It wasn’t that she was non-denominational — it was that her faith was private and didn’t involve belonging to an institution or gathering with groups. And this is a defining trait of the white working class in Appalachia.
In a very material way, these are Christians who do not go to church. And numbers suggest there’s a lot of them.
About 12% of self-described evangelical Protestants seldom or never go to church, along with 24% of mainline Protestants, according to Pew Research Center. About 17% of those who believe in God as a certainty nevertheless seldom or never attend church, along with 37% of those who are fairly certain God exists. Similarly, 11% of those who say religion is very important still don’t go to church.
The people who seldom or never go to church are disproportionately white, male, native-born, unmarried, and childless. Many of these are young, liberal, college educated atheists, but many of them are the prototypical working-class, white, Middle America President Trump voter.
When you look at the early, core Trump supporters, the folks who didn’t typically vote in GOP primaries but came out and helped Trump win the nomination in 2016, very many of them were white evangelicals who do not go to church. In my book, Alienated America, I published research showing that the more a GOP voter attended church, the less likely he was to support Trump in the GOP primaries.
It’s all part of the growing deinstitutionalization and alienation of American life. COVID-19 lockdowns, of course, will make this worse. People are losing the habit of going to church and losing the personal connections that bring them back. I bet that when we have data, we will see a big, permanent drop in church attendance from 2019 to 2021.
