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The future is conservative
March 05, 2025
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Last week, The New York Times ran an intriguing headline: “Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halted, Major Study Shows”.
The research in view was Pew’s newly released Religious Landscape Study. Almost 37,000 American adults took part, making it the largest single survey conducted by Pew Research.
The findings? After decades of steady decline, the percentage of US adults identifying as Christians has finally levelled off, and may even be on the increase.
When the study began in 2007, 78 percent of Americans regarded themselves as Christians, a number that dropped to 71 percent in 2014, and further to 63 percent by 2019. But in the five years since, that number has held steady.
“Young people contributed to the shift,” the paper of record noted, in a second revelation that upturned decades of troubling trends for the faithful.
In the Times article was a third surprising insight: America’s reevaluation of faith is occurring on the backdrop of a profound political shift.
Political scientist Dr David Campbell of the University of Notre Dame told the Times, “If you’re a young white male these days and you think of yourself as conservative, then being religious is a part of that.”
Dr Campbell was not speaking anecdotally. There is plenty of data to back up his claim.
According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll, the youngest voters in America today (ages 18-24) are more conservative than the cohort that came before them.
Likewise, Gallup found that Gen Z teenagers identify as more conservative than their parents at twice the rate Millennials did.
To be sure, younger Americans generally hold more progressive social views than their forebears. But Gen Z is shaping up as a fulcrum generation that could rewrite the future of the country.
Just look at last year’s election, where the youth vote swung 10 percent for Donald Trump compared to 2020. Among young men, the shift was even more pronounced, with 56 percent voting for Trump compared to 41 percent at the previous election.
Nor was that a ballot box blip. Just this week, Rasmussen found that Trump’s favourability rating sits at 60 percent among voters aged 18-39, compared to just 45 percent for older demographics.
To those who feed on a steady diet of press propaganda, these statistics defy logic and decency. But to the rest of us, they make perfect sense.
For one, America’s youngest voters are inheriting a train-wreck economy, where even basic housing is beyond reach while they bear the burden of repaying mountains of foolish debt piled up by previous generations.
But social factors are just as significant as economic. Gen Z is coming of age at a time when sensible opinions are being banned under the guise of “misinformation”. Unlike older Americans, who saw political correctness (1990s) slowly ossify into cancel culture (2010s) and finally DEI (2020s), the youngest voters are ripening politically in world where conformity to a narrow set of beliefs is suddenly being enforced by law, beginning in Europe but spreading quickly.
And the narrow set of beliefs is increasingly absurd — from “men can get pregnant” to “racism against white people is good”, and “obesity is beautiful” to “children should be castrated”.
Truth has become a forbidden fruit, and Gen Z is starving. In their search for sanity in a world gone mad, conservatism holds refreshing appeal. Reality tends to be attractive like that.
For increasing numbers, that search turns into a yearning for first principles, leading many to conclude that human dignity, objective truth and even civilisation itself depend for their very existence on Christianity.
These, I believe, are the hidden mechanics that result in a New York Times headline like the one above.
It may pain the average punter to realise the future is conservative, but the writing’s on the wall, I’m afraid.
Progressive ideas aren’t just logical cul-de-sacs, but demographic dead ends too. It turns out that if you value marriage and family, you tend to have more kids.
A 2020 analysis by the American Enterprise Institute found that counties with higher birth rates mostly voted for Trump in 2016, while pro-Biden counties had fertility rates nearly 25 percent lower than pro-Trump ones.
A more recent 2024 analysis by the Institute for Family Studies titled ‘The Trump Bump’ found that for every 10 percent increase in Trump votes in a given county, there is an expected increase of 0.09 babies per woman.
City Journal has likewise noted that the 17 states with the highest general fertility rates are all Republican or GOP-leaning, while nine of the ten states with the lowest fertility rates are Democratic or Democratic-leaning.
Failing to outbreed conservatives, progressives have spent the last few decades trying to recruit their children — but by overplaying their hand, they have failed in that endeavour too.
Indeed, the suppression waged by the woke Left has apparently become the very catalyst for political and spiritual renewal.
In hindsight, these trends seem obvious. And as usual, I’ll probably get in trouble for noticing.
But, as J.D. Vance snapped back at a CBS journalist, I don’t really care, Margaret, because the future is bright.
What do you think of Kurt's analysis? Is the future full of young fogies?
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.
Image credit: Bigstock
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Anon Emouse commented 2025-03-08 09:22:11 +1100“ Elon deceptively prates that he’s pronatalist, but doesn’t let slip that he thinks children should be concocted (by crony gov) in the test tube.”
Judging by elons example he also doesn’t think the father should be involved in the life of his children (majority of them, at least) -
mrscracker commented 2025-03-08 06:31:15 +1100Thank you Miss Susan. I know the plot of Brave New World but I don’t believe that’s our future. Perhaps parts of it may be.
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Susan Rohrbach commented 2025-03-08 05:19:18 +1100“Mrs Cracker”, read “Brave New World”, a dystopia too euphemistically titled. The world’s natural families were banished to some dedicated canyon in the southwest. So far, we’re following the script of that book with the sex revolution. (And note current script writer DOGE’s dozen procured children were conceived in the franken tube, sundry mamas tossed aside). Elon deceptively prates that he’s pronatalist, but doesn’t let slip that he thinks children should be concocted (by crony gov) in the test tube.
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mrscracker commented 2025-03-08 04:04:25 +1100To be fair Miss Susan, I believe that the marital embrace will still be a thing with or without IVF.
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Susan Rohrbach commented 2025-03-08 00:51:54 +1100’Failing to outbreed conservatives"
Ah but that won’t be for long if Elon musk has his way with the franken tube new world. Babies can be conceived by government and placed with pseudo parents as a matter of course, relegating the marital embrace to the dust bin. -
Anon Emouse commented 2025-03-08 00:18:27 +1100I’m confused by the cartoon – is the snake (Satan) saying that DEI is a “fake truth”…implying that we should be against what the snake is saying?
Also – in the Bible isn’t it the the of knowledge of good and evil? And therefore Eve biting into an apple that gave her knowledge and saying “yuck” – implying she’d rather remain ignorant of unpleasant truths? -
Emberson Fedders commented 2025-03-06 18:42:18 +1100The ‘Christians’ that Kurt speaks of are not attending any church. They don’t follow the teachings of Jesus Christ – in fact, they think he is a woke commie.
They are internet Christians, who use the label as a way of justifying their bigoted behaviour. Do you really think, Kurt, that Christians are celebrating the mass firings of thousands of Americans like you are? Do you really think that followers of Christ would be cutting help to the poorest and most needy? What a joke.
Indeed, there would be a close intersection between performative Christians, right-wing evangelicals and the bro-sphere.
Young men aren’t becoming Christians, they are being indoctrinated by an ideology that oppresses women and puts them back ‘in charge of the family’. No wonder they’re falling for it.
Kurt, Kurt, Kurt. Too much straw-clutching to be believable. -
Julian Cheslow commented 2025-03-06 12:38:51 +1100Yes, religious fundamentalists always seem to end up hating LGBT people. Also statistically abstinence only education ends up in more teen pregnancy and higher rates of STD’s.
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mrscracker commented 2025-03-06 08:07:08 +1100Orthodox members of Christianity, Islam, & Judaism hold similar core beliefs on marriage & family. Islam varies on the number of spouses but all agree on the biological requirements necessary.
Recently Muslim parents joined Christians protesting public school courses related to sexual education.
Whether people of faith should engage in the public sphere or vote is a question that Anabaptists have asked themselves & most have declined. But either way, faith isn’t defined by political categories. -
Anon Emouse commented 2025-03-06 07:43:01 +1100“But Christianity is not political. Nor is it defined as conservative or liberal.”
There were a large number of Christians who actively campaigned for Prop 8 in California, and who are continuing to work to undo gay marriage in the United States, mrscracker. So while “Christianity is not political” there are a large number of Christians who seek to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the country. -
Anon Emouse commented 2025-03-06 02:46:44 +1100More and more adults are identifying as LGBTQ; the future is queer, Kurt. And I’m glad to see you embracing it – fighting against traditional gender norms that say men should have shorter hair.
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mrscracker commented 2025-03-05 23:15:47 +1100I think if you define conservative values as those embracing biblical beliefs about marriage and family then yes, those are the populations growing demographically. But Christianity is not political. Nor is it defined as conservative or liberal.
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Paul Bunyan commented 2025-03-05 19:17:56 +1100Conservative policies have only increase human misery whereever they’ve been implemented.
The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among all developed countries. Adult literacy is appalling, as is their life expectancy. -
Emberson Fedders commented 2025-03-05 18:00:10 +1100If only they ACTED like Christians.
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