Ryan Burge 📊

Some personal news. Starting August 1, I will be joining the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at WashU (@CtrRelPol) as a Professor of Practice. I think it's a perfect step for my career as Senator Danforth envisioned the Center to be a place for public engagement around religion and politics. That's where I see myself headed in the next stage of my career.

There are a couple of groups who are always overrepresented in my mentions. One is folks fishing for information on the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). There's a narrative out there that they are growing rapidly. According to their own records....that's not true.

Here's the full switching table. And I swear to all that is good and holy that if some weird hacky 'news' site reads this table and runs a headline like, " saw a MASSIVE surge in converts between 2020-2024, new data claims" I am going to fire myself into the sun. Any cell that has N < 50 should be almost completely ignored as just a weird quirk in the data.

This survey contacted 6175 people in 2020 and then followed up with the same people in 2022 and 2024. 85% of folks made no change in affiliation. Protestant --> Catholic: 14 people. Cath. --> Prot.: 15 Prot. --> None: 125 Cath. --> None: 72 None --> Christian: 157

@JkrGuidoSSO27 62% of the "others" were people who indicated that they were Jewish in 2020 and indicated the same affiliation in 2024.

@ryanburge What is the majority of other?

Dr. Ryan Burge on the surge in the number of theologically conservative men being ordained to the Catholic priesthood: "Only 2% of priests ordained in America in the last 5 years describe themselves as progressive or liberal politically or theologically.”

@revdrmeg Publishing on May 28th.

@ryanburge Please, did you track Unitarian Universalists?

A couple of years ago, I compared the change in seminary students to the change in membership in a bunch of denominations. PCUSA had a 50% dip in members and a 55% drop in seminarians. One outlier? The Southern Baptist Convention. Members are down 16% Seminarians up 14%.

A pretty good representation of the denominations that embrace the evangelical/born-again identification and those that don't. Assemblies of God is most likely to ID as evangelical: 92%. The mainline is all below 40%. Episcopalians are the lowest: 13%.

For all the anti-immigrant rhetoric that floats around out there: Americans are much more likely to agree that "Immigrants are generally good for America's economy" today than they were 30 years ago. Evangelicals up 16 pts. Catholics up 21 pts.

Both these statements are empirically true: Attendance in the Episcopal Church is up 41% between 2021 and 2024! Attendance in the Episcopal Church is down 43% between 2009 and 2024! As a general rule: COVID year(s) can't be a baseline for comparison. Ever.

@lymanstoneky Yeah, good point. They define it as monthly. Deleting the post and redoing the analysis.

@ryanburge Is Gallup reporting weekly or more-than-monthly? "Regular" is usually defined as "more than monthly."

Is a growing population of immigrants a change for the better? Is greater acceptance of transgender people a positive change? Here's how a bunch of religious groups answered those. Notice the outliers: Muslims - high on immigrants, not on trans Mainline - the opposite

A bit of background on Adam Hamilton. He pastors a United Methodist megachurch. That's incredibly rare. There are less than 50 United Methodist mega churches in the United States. Almost all of them are from the evangelical or Black Church traditions.

Weird little data point to consider. Gen Z atheists are WAY less angry about religion compared to older atheists. Only 30% of Gen Z atheists say that religion has no place in the modern world. It's 55% of Boomer atheists.

Among a Democrat who never attends religious services, 70% say religion is not at all important to them. Among Republican never attenders -- it's just 38%.

@KRVSoc @jessesmithsoc That's just the three Baylor waves stacked. There's movement there for sure, but I wouldn't describe it as dramatic. But to see a huge shift in the other direction in three years is odd.

@jessesmithsoc @ryanburge That's what I was looking into and just came away more perplexed. This is around the same time. The "declare Christianity the official religion" language was extremely unpopular.

You guys want to see how a small language tweak can make a huge difference in a result? Of course you do. In 2021, a survey from Baylor posed this statement: "The federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation." Response options range from Strongly disagree to Strongly Agree. In 2023-2024, Pew had this one: "Do you favor or oppose the federal government declaring the U.S. a Christian nation?" Response options range from Strongly favor to Strongly oppose. In 2021, 46% of respondents strongly disagreed with that statement. in 2024, only 26% strongly opposed it.

I've got a paid post today that tries to answer the question that I get asked a whole lot: What factors make someone feel antagonistic toward religion? It's some of the usual suspects: being liberal, being an atheist. But some real surprises, too: graphsaboutreligion.com/p/do-the-nones…

You know all those folks online who tell you that religious people are idiots because they believe in "sky daddy" and that they are morally superior because "they don't need fairy tales to live a good life"? That's not the average none. Most nones don't hate religion.

In 2007, 33% of Americans strongly disagreed with the statement: "The Federal Government Should Declare the U.S. a Christian Nation." In 2021, strong disagreement was 46%. Strong agreement held steady at 10-11%.

It's always great to talk to @ryanburge. Check out my interview with him about his new book in my interview in Commonweal: