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America Without God

theatlantic.com · 2,454 words · saved by 1 readers

As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen. Will the quest for secular redemption through politics doom the American idea?

Illustration by Paul Spella / Rendering by Patrick White This article was published online on March 10, 2021. T he United States had long been a holdout among Western democracies, uniquely and perhaps even suspiciously devout. From 1937 to 1998, church membership remained relatively constant, hovering at about 70 percent. Then something happened. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history. Meanwhile, the “nones”—atheists, agnostics, and those claiming no religion— have grown rapidly and today represent a quarter

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