Chart of the Day: God Is Dead—to Millennials, Anyway

Evangelical Christians have long been the foot soldiers of the Republican Party. In 2010, they made up about 36 percent of Republican voters.

But the GOP’s reliance on religious voters isn’t necessarily a formula for long-term success—especially since the next generation of Americans has serious reservations not just about organized religion, but about the very existence of God. For the past 25 years, the Pew Research Center has been asking voters whether they ever question the existence of God. The numbers have been pretty stable. Older voters are pretty set on God, with 86 percent of baby boomers saying they never question His existence.

But Millennials, defined as Americans born after 1981, are bending the curve. This year, only 68 percent of Millennials surveyed said they never questioned God’s existence, the lowest number of any group in 25 years. That’s down from 76 percent only five years ago. The numbers suggest Millennials are going to be a generation of skeptics. No other generation has seen such a dramatic crisis of faith in such a short time. 

Pew Research CenterPew Research Center

The trend lines join other bad polling news for evangelicals, namely that younger Christians are turned off by attacks on gays and lesbians. Such trends don’t bode well for the Republican Party. By 2020, Millennials will make up the largest single voting bloc in the country, some 90 million strong, and they are already showing a distaste for GOP politics.

Evangelical political activists like Ralph Reed have contended that these sorts of numbers don’t mean the movement is in a death spiral. Reed has scoffed at polling data showing younger people fleeing the religious right. “Young people may start out liberal, but once they start getting married, having babies, and paying taxes, we got ’em,” he told me after the 2010 midterm election.

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate