Compton: Rising secularism is problematic for democracy

Story from BJC staff reports and reporting by Baptist News Global

An increase in the secularization of society does not minimize religious and political tensions; instead it contributes to the growth of political extremism, xenophobia and anti-democratic values, says Dr. John Compton.

He laid out these arguments and more during three lectures on the theme of the “politics of secularization,” presented for the 20th annual Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State. The 20th iteration of the annual BJC event was held Nov. 13-14 on the campuses of Mercer University in Atlanta and Macon, Ga.

Dr. Compton is professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and the author of several books, including The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution and The End of Empathy: Why White Protestants Stopped Loving Their Neighbors.

Dr. Compton’s first presentation examined how declining rates of religious belief and participation are likely to impact support for democratic values, such as tolerance of diversity, protection of civil liberties and the renunciation of political violence. Most would assume that secularization increases respect for democratic values.

“If religious believers are duty-bound to follow a set of divine commands, it may be difficult for them to compromise with, or even tolerate, fellow citizens who believe differently,” Dr. Compton said. “From this it follows that a decline in religiosity should open the door to greater tolerance and understanding.”

But, that has not been the case. In fact, declining religiosity has in recent years been accompanied by an alarming rise in anti-democratic values, and there has been a spike in polarization, too, where Americans who identify with a political party dislike opposing partisans more intensely than in previous years, often for reasons that are only loosely related to policy disagreements, he noted.

While rates of individual belief remain high, religious authority has collapsed. Dr. Compton presented research showing that more than 30% of self-described “religious” Americans say they “never” attend worship services, as opposed to less than 10% in 1980. He shared that self-reported religiosity tends to be negatively correlated with democratic commitment, but organized religious participation seems to be positively correlated with a range of pro-democratic values and behaviors.

“All else being equal, believers who are active in religious congregations are more civically engaged than other citizens, and some studies have found that they are also more tolerant and more supportive of democratic norms,” Dr. Compton said.

He noted that the rise of untethered belief is often causing the rise in opposition to democratic norms. A growing number of Americans lack the structure of a real-world religious community, leaving them free to channel their moral indignation in whatever direction their preexisting political commitments or prejudices may suggest.

“It is the process of secularization itself that is fueling threats to liberal democracy and church-state separation,” he said.

Dr. Compton’s second presentation focused on the relationship between religiosity, secularization and right-wing extremism, as well as what that means about our discussions of Christian nationalism.

He presented research from the 2024 Chapman Survey of American Fears, which — when examined for various factors — undercuts the theory that organized religious participation promotes political extremism.

Instead, the numbers show that, at least among Republicans, an increase in the population of “nones” — people who do not subscribe to a particular religious belief — seems more likely to promote extremism than to reduce it. In fact, the data provides reasons to suspect that believers are being driven to the far right by media and social media consumption more so than Sunday morning sermons.

“In recent years, hundreds of academic and popular articles and dozens of best-selling books have advanced the theory that a loosely connected set of beliefs or doctrines, collectively labeled ‘Christian nationalism,’ is fueling a rise in authoritarian and intolerant attitudes among white Christians,” Dr. Compton said. But, he noted that 56% of white Republicans who never attend religious services score high on the Christian nationalism scale, which should give someone pause before concluding that Christian nationalism is typically transmitted through organized religious participation.

“I am convinced that any successful effort to slow the growth of anti-democratic beliefs must begin by acknowledging that what we face is not so much a crisis of theology or democratic theory as much as a crisis of civil society,” Dr. Compton declared, sharing that untethered believers are the most likely Americans to hold extremist views on questions about immigration, religious minorities, racial and ethnic inclusion, and political violence.

He also noted the impact of this research on discourse about Christian nationalism, pointing out that many of the articles on and preaching about the dangers of Christian nationalism are mostly just reaching those who already know the dangers.

Dr. Compton suggested a new path: instead of publishing more material on the threats, perhaps there should be a focus on ways to rebuild our broken civil society.

“Those of us blessed with ample opportunities for civic engagement might ask hard questions about why the same opportunities are not available to those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder,” he said. “We might even consider whether popular framings of the current crisis of democratic authority are not alienating precisely the people they are supposed to reach.”

In the final of his three lectures, Dr. Compton laid out a case for how rising secularism contributes to the growth of political extremism, pointing out how flagging participation in faith traditions correlates to diminishing civic engagement. That finding holds significant consequences for the Democratic Party and progressive causes.

Dr. Compton cited a 2017 New York Times column by Ross Douthat urging liberals to return to Mainline churches as a step toward addressing the problem, which received a negative reaction online. Dr. Compton noted that Douthat “pointed out that many of liberalism’s foundational tenets — its commitment to human equality, its concern for the marginalized, its faith in progress — were inherited from the nation’s rapidly fading Mainline Protestant denominations.”

Douthat’s column and the reaction itself illustrate the “religious blind spot” of American liberalism, Dr. Compton said.

“As left-leaning elites have become more secular, they have lost sight of religion’s critical supporting role in the major egalitarian reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries,” Dr. Compton noted, sharing examples that include the abolition of slavery, the eradication of child labor, the creation of child and maternal health programs, and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. None of those reforms would have succeeded without grassroots ecumenical and denominational religious networks as well as biblical mandates to help the marginalized and oppressed in society, he assessed.

Dr. Compton said progressive elites tend to be oblivious to the fact that many non-white Democrats continue to view politics and party affiliation through a religious lens.

“Millions of Black Americans identify with the Democratic Party at least in part because they believe it embodies, or once embodied, core principles of the Black Protestant tradition,” Dr. Compton said. “If current secularizing trends continue, there is a real risk that the same Black Americans who are drifting away from organized religion will simultaneously drift away from the Democratic party.”

Dr. Compton noted that there is scant discussion of the fact that secularization is beginning to drive a wedge through the Democratic coalition. “Non-white Democrats are, on average, far more religious than white Democrats, and — perhaps for this reason — they tend to hold more conservative views on so-called culture war issues than white Democrats,” Dr. Compton shared.

While power and influence are increasingly concentrated in a handful of top-heavy interest groups, Dr. Compton said there is one group in American society where religion continues to provide support for progressive causes: Black Protestant churches.

“Those who identify with a traditional Black Protestant tradition, such as the AME [Church], are far more likely to be exposed to theological perspectives that link biblical values to egalitarian political projects and which stress the Democratic Party’s role as the traditional vehicle of progressive change in the U.S.”

Dr. Compton noted that Black voters’ levels of civic and political engagement are also influenced by religious participation and Protestant affiliation, but the problem for the Democratic Party is that traditional Black Protestant identification is trending downwards.

“Religion is threatening to drive a wedge through the Democratic coalition, as the party’s primarily white ‘donor class’ continues to secularize at a much faster rate than rank-and-file and nonwhite Democrats,” Dr. Compton said.

He cited research that shows Black and Hispanic Democrats register more conservative attitudes than white Democrats on a wide range of social and cultural issues.

The internal divide on religion and social issues is not new, and — until very recently — political scientists generally said it was unlikely to affect voting behavior, Dr. Compton continued. While there is no data available yet to see how far Republicans have cut into the traditionally Democratic share of the Black and Hispanic vote, there does appear to be meaningful movement in that direction during the most recent election.

“And in a closely divided, deeply polarized country, even small shifts in group voting patterns can have enormous repercussions,” Dr. Compton said.

When looking for hope and a better way forward, Dr. Compton pointed to the work of Eboo Patel. Patel delivered the 2020 Shurden Lectures, and he is the founder of Interfaith America, a nonprofit developing networks of religious communities capable of pursuing social justice reforms and delivering social services.

“Historically speaking, he points out religious groups are among the only social institutions that have succeeded, at least on occasion, in prompting citizens to sacrifice immediate gratification in the service of aiding the less fortunate, caring for the environment and promoting the well-being of future generations.”

While acknowledging the decline of progressive faith groups means fewer volunteers, lower morale and less money, Patel notes religious communities have proved capable of reinventing themselves in the face of insurmountable odds, Dr. Compton said.
“In short, he’s enough of an optimist not to scoff at the idea that American liberals might one day go back to church.”

Two professors at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology offered their responses and insight after Dr. Compton’s third lecture.

The Rev. Dr. David Gushee, distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, said his own research and writing confirm the negative effect a lack of religious belief and belonging can have on democracy.

The Rev. Dr. Gushee noted that Dr. Compton is engaging the question about the relationship of religion to the erosion of democracy. “But, rather than accepting the paradigm that the problem is primarily what has been called ‘white Christian nationalism,’ you are at least pursuing the hypothesis that the problem is secularization,” he said, noting that secularization is both an erosion of a belief in God and the decline of religious participation in churches.

In his book Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies, the Rev. Dr. Gushee said he found those who have “fallen for the authoritarian, reactionary politics of the MAGA type” are “very thinly connected, if at all, to anything resembling practicing Christian communities or orthodox Christian belief.”

That conclusion “dovetails very nicely with your finding that people who still actually participate in organized religious communities are less rather than more likely to fall prey to anti-democratic, extremist or pro-violence politics,” he said. “In other words, they have a tradition that sets some boundaries on how they think about politics, whereas I think the true believers on the MAGA side oftentimes are building a religion on the fly.”

Rather than dissecting the voting patterns or declining religious participation of Black Americans, Dr. Compton and other scholars should focus more closely on the influence of white supremacy and white privilege in undermining democracy and dividing progressive movements, said the Rev. Dr. Angela Parker, associate professor of New Testament and Greek at McAfee.

“The concept of church has been hijacked by white Christian nationalism in the Republican Party,” the Rev. Dr. Parker said. “Instead of looking at the small shifts in polling data, we should be looking at the larger shifts toward white supremacy that we have seen in this election.”

She also discussed the data and popular assumptions that nonwhite Democrats who are religious are automatically more conservative, but she said that’s not true.

“I’m standing right here in front of you: nonwhite Democrat, religious and progressive,” she said.

The Rev. Dr. Parker noted that 93% of Black women and 81% of Black men voted for Kamala Harris, the two highest demographics that turned out for the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket, but they only represent 13.6% of the country as a whole.

“I argue that it is unfair to focus attention on the population that represents 13.6% of the nation when we represent very little of the power dynamics of this nation,” the Rev. Dr. Parker declared. “Which is why I focus on whiteness and white supremacy in the first place. In my conversations with Black men and Black women over this past week, we’ve tapped out. We’re not coming to your marches anymore. We’re tired of you focusing on us. You need to get your own houses in order.”

The Rev. Dr. Parker suggested that, if liberals and progressives want to return to church, she suggested going to the Black Church, where white Christians can encounter their privilege and racism and develop the empathy that white Christianity is missing.

The Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State were established in 2004. Learn more and watch the full presentations online at BJConline.org/ShurdenLectures.

This article originally appeared in the winter 2024 edition of Report from the Capital. You can view it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.