Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Finding Common Ground in America's Religious Realignment

Finding Common Ground in America's Religious Realignment

People reading in a religious setting.

Getty Images, Maskot

In a moment defined by fracture and division, a surprising development has emerged in America's religious landscape. The decades-long decline of Christianity is leveling off. According to new research from the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans identifying as Christian has stabilized at around 62%—a dramatic shift from previous trends that saw consistent year-over-year drops in religious affiliation. This "pause" in religious decline offers a unique opportunity to examine whether faith communities might help heal our nation's deep sociopolitical wounds.

The timing of this latest phenomenon could not be more apropos. As America grapples with unprecedented polarization and the fraying of civic bonds, religious institutions—despite their internal struggles—may be uniquely positioned to foster dialogue, understanding, and responsiveness across divides.


Research shows that spirituality remains resilient even as traditional religious participation wanes. A striking 86% of Americans believe that people have souls beyond their physical bodies, while 79% believe in something spiritual beyond the natural world. The emergence of a shared spiritual foundation, transcending political and denominational boundaries, offers a common grounding for meaningful dialogue. More intriguingly, younger Americans, while less traditionally religious, maintain strong spiritual sensibilities. Among adults aged 18-24, 82% believe in the existence of the soul—nearly matching their grandparents' generation. This spiritual continuity amid institutional change hints at possibilities for intergenerational bridge-building that could help ease sociopolitical tensions.

Religious communities remain among the few spaces where Americans of different political persuasions interact regularly. While political segregation increasingly defines our neighborhoods, workplaces, and social circles, houses of worship continue to bring together people across ideological lines—particularly in racially diverse congregations, which have grown significantly in

recent years. However, leveraging these opportunities requires religious institutions to embrace shifts in their approach to civic engagement:

  1. Faith communities must move beyond the polarizing rhetoric that is often characterized by religious political engagement. The data shows that religious Americans span the political spectrum, particularly across racial and ethnic lines. Spiritual leaders who acknowledge and celebrate this diversity, rather than advance partisan agendas, can help model healthy political dialogue.
  2. Religious institutions should focus on their unique capacity to foster what sociologist Robert Putnam calls "bridging social capital"—connections that link different communities. While many churches have become ideologically homogeneous, those that intentionally create spaces for cross-cultural and cross-political relationship building can help rebuild civic trust.
  3. Faith communities must engage rising generations on their terms, recognizing that spiritual seeking often looks different today than in previous eras. Young adults' strong spiritual inclinations and skepticism of institutions suggest an opportunity to reimagine religious communities that resonate with contemporary sensibilities while preserving ancient wisdom about human flourishing and social harmony.

Additional strategies might include:

  • Establishing interfaith and cross-ideological dialogue programs that bring together diverse congregations for relationship-building and standard action on shared concerns.
  • Creating intergenerational initiatives that pair spiritually-minded emergent leaders with "seasoned" religious practitioners in ways that enable mutual learning and understanding.
  • Cultivating new models of spiritual community that combine traditional practices with contemporary approaches to meaning-making and social engagement.
  • Training religious leaders in the art of facilitating difficult conversations across political and cultural divides.

Stabilizing America's religious landscape is crucial for reimagining faith's role in democracy. Despite their imperfections, religious institutions remain repositories of social capital and ethical wisdom that our fractured society desperately needs.

By embracing their potential as guides or facilitators in navigating contemporary realities, they can help weave our tattered civic fabric together. Such work will require humility and creativity from spiritual guides and facilitators of faith. We must remain open to skepticism while exchanging in good faith among all parties. When many traditional sources of social cohesion have eroded, the persistent spiritual longings revealed in this research—and the institutional networks that have historically nurtured them—may offer essential resources for rebuilding American democracy.

No one faithful institution or individual is charged with reversing secularization or restoring religious dominance. Instead, at best, such institutions and their disciples ought to channel spiritual energy toward healing our divisions and respecting plurality. In this light, the pause in religious decline is an invitation to reimagine how faith can serve the common good in an increasingly diverse society.

Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, and scholar-practitioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.

Read More

This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

Children with American flags

This Isn’t My Story. But It’s One I’ll Never Forget.

My colleague, Meghan Monroe, a former teacher and trainer in the Dignity Index, went out to lunch with a friend on the 4th of July. Her friend was late and Meghan found herself waiting outside the restaurant where, to her surprise, a protest march approached. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t immediately clear what the protest was about. There were families and children marching—some flags, and some signs about America being free.

One group of children caught Meghan’s eye as they tugged at their mother while marching down the street. The mom paused and crouched down to speak to the children. Somehow, Meghan could read the situation and realized that the mom was explaining to the children about America—about what it is, about all the different people who make up America, about freedom, about dignity.

“I could just tell that the Mom wanted her children to understand something important, something big. I couldn’t tell anything about her politics. I could just tell that she wanted her children to understand what America can be. I could tell she wanted dignity for her children and for people in this country. It was beautiful.”

As Meghan told me this story, I realized something: that Mom at the protest is a role model for me. The 4th may be over now, but the need to explain to each other what we want for ourselves and our country isn’t.

My wife, Linda, and I celebrated America at the wedding of my godson, Alexander, and his new wife, Hannah. They want America to be a place of love. Dozens of my cousins, siblings, and children celebrated America on Cape Cod.

For them and our extended family, America is a place where families create an enduring link from one generation to the next despite loss and pain.

Thousands of Americans in central Texas confronted the most unimaginable horrors on July 4th. For them, I hope and pray America is a place where we hold on to each other in the face of unbearable pain and inexplicable loss.

Yes. It’s complicated. There were celebrations of all kinds on July 4th—celebrations of gratitude to our military, celebrations of gratitude for nature and her blessings, and sadly, celebrations of hatred too. There are a million more examples of our hopes and fears and visions, and they’re not all happy.

I bet that’s one of the lessons that mom was explaining to her children. I imagine her saying, “America is a place where everyone matters equally. No one’s dignity matters more than anyone else’s. Sometimes we get it wrong. But in our country, we always keep trying and we never give up.”

For the next 12 months as we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we’re going to be hearing a lot about what we want America to be. But maybe the more important question is what we the people are willing to do to fulfill our vision of what we can be. The answer to that question is hiding in plain sight and is as old as the country itself: join with others and do your part, and no part is too small to matter.

At our best, our country is a country of people who serve one another. Some may say that’s out of fashion, but not me. Someone is waiting for each of us—to talk, to share, to join, to care, to lead, to love. And in our time, the superpower we need is the capacity to treat each other with dignity, even when we disagree. Differences of opinion aren’t the problem; in fact, they’re the solution. As we love to say, “There’s no America without democracy and there’s no democracy without healthy debate and there’s no healthy debate without dignity.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Beyond Party Lines
An illustration to symbolize two divided groups.
Getty Images / Andrii Yalanskyi

Beyond Party Lines

The American Experiment tested whether groups with diverse interests could unite under a declaration of common principles. In this moment, we face a critical juncture that tests whether distrust and political fervor could drive Americans to abandon or deny everything that unites us.

Henry Bolingbroke contends that party spirit inspires “Animosity and breeds Rancor.” Talking of his countrymen, he wrote, “We likewise derive, not our Privileges (for they were always ours) but a more full and explicit Declaration”; Whigs and Tories can unite on this alone. That Declaration of Ours was penned by Thomas Jefferson when his colonists repelled the redcoats at the Siege of Charleston and when Washington’s troops were awaiting battle in Manhattan. The American Declaration set out those principles, which united the diverse colonies. And the party system, as Bolingbroke said, brought animosity and weakened the Union. Critics disputed these claims. William Warburton attacked Bolingbroke as an evil-speaker with “dog-eloquence”—claimed his calls for party reform were an aristocratic conspiracy to cement the power of elites. An anonymous critic argued that the government is a union of unrelated people where laws supplant the natural bonds between families. Then, the government of the United States would not exist, or would not exist long.

Keep ReadingShow less
From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship
assorted notepads

From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneur John Marks developed a set of eleven working principles that have become his modus operandi and provide the basic framework for his new book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship," from which a series of three articles is adapted. While Marks applied these principles in nonprofit work, he says they are also applicable to social enterprisesand to life, in general.

PART TWO

PRINCIPLE #4: KEEP SHOWING UP. It has been said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For social entrepreneurs, this means continuing to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, social entrepreneurs should be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds. They must be willing to commit for the long term. I found that this was particularly important when working with Iranians, who tend to view the world in terms of centuries and millennia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

Two coloured pencils one red and one blue drawing a reef knot on a white paper background.

Getty Images, David Malan

Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

It is a common refrain to say that Americans need to find common ground across the political spectrum.

Over the past year, AllSides and More Like US found >700 instances of common ground on political topics, revealed in Similarity Hub. It highlights public opinion data from Gallup, Pew Research, YouGov, and many other reputable polling firms.

Keep ReadingShow less