White Christians are now a minority — but they’re getting more isolated and less tolerant

By Amanda Marcotte

Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) put out a new report on religion in America that measured a truly remarkable shift: For the first time, almost certainly in the country’s history, people who identify as white Christians are a minority of Americans. Four out of every five Americans were self-described white Christians in 1976, but now that group only constitutes 43 percent of the U.S. population.

There are a lot of reasons for this shift, study author Robert P. Jones, who heads PRRI and is the author of “The End of White Christian America,” explained to Salon in an interview. To a large extent, Jones said, it’s the trend of “young, white people leaving Christian churches that is driving up the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans.”

This reflects, he added, “a culture clash between particularly conservative white churches and denominations and younger Americans” over issues like science, particularly climate change and evolution, and especially the rights of LGBT people.

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