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Contribution to Book
Religious Non-Affiliation: Expelled by the Right
Empty Churches: Non-Affiliation in America
  • William Vance Trollinger, University of Dayton
Description

For the past century, the bulk of white evangelicalism has been tightly linked to very conservative politics. But in response to social and cultural changes in the 1960s and 1970s, conservative white evangelicalism organized itself into the Christian Right, in the process attaching itself to and making itself indispensable to the Republican Party. While the Christian Right has enjoyed significant political success, its fusion of evangelicalism/Christianity with right-wing politics—which includes white nationalism, hostility to immigrants, unfettered capitalism, and intense homophobia—has driven many Americans (particularly, young Americans) to disaffiliate from religion altogether. In fact, the quantitative and qualitative evidence make it clear that the Christian Right has been a (perhaps the) primary reason for the remarkable rise of the religious “nones” in the past three decades. More than this, the Christian Right is, in itself, a sign of secularization.

ISBN
9780197529317
Publication Date
1-1-2021
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Keywords
  • atheists,
  • Conservative Christians,
  • identity,
  • Liberal Christians,
  • non-affiliation,
  • parents,
  • prayer,
  • Religion,
  • Religiosity,
  • secular,
  • spiritual,
  • Vatican II,
  • youth,
  • Christian Right,
  • disaffiliate,
  • Republican Party,
  • secularization,
  • white evangelicalism
Comments

Note: This is a pre-publication draft of a chapter that has been accepted for publication by Oxford University Press in the forthcoming book Empty Churches: Non-Affiliation in America, edited by James L. Heft and Jan E. Stets, due for publication in 2021. It is provided in compliance with the publisher's policy on self-archiving. Permission documentation is on file. To view the version of record, use the "Buy" link on this page.

Citation Information
William Vance Trollinger. "Religious Non-Affiliation: Expelled by the Right" Empty Churches: Non-Affiliation in America (2021)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/54/