Public Religion Research Institute

Whether it was Jerry Falwell Sr. in the 1980s clamoring for a return to traditional values, or Fox News hosts in the Obama era griping that we can't say Merry Christmas anymore, or MAGA pastors during Trump's first term proclaiming the return of American greatness— The call for Christian nationhood has been a call to a return, a going back to our supposed origins as a new Israel chosen by God to play an exceptional role in human history.

A 2016 study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 7 out of 10 Trump voters believed that the country had changed for the worse since the 1950s.

74% of white evangelicals agreed with this statement.

One of the ways to read Trump's first election was as a mission to restore the country to its pre-1960s contours.

We have men in the churches and families will follow.

Every time there's a statistic, like in April, PRRI came out with their data that showed the move away from religion is slowing down.

That's something else we could talk about.

But among Gen Z women, it's still declining.

And I thought, I mean, as someone with a book coming out on this, I thought, wow.

What happened? And so I looked at the survey methodology.

And for those two surveys, PRRI surveyed like 3,000 people.

And Gallup, if you go to the breakdown, was mostly young conservative men.

Well, you know, in my day job, I'm a sociologist.

I'm the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute here in Washington, D.C. And so I'm looking at numbers all the time, public opinion, research numbers, demographic numbers.

about the shifting public opinions, and we at PRRI are always paying attention to what's happening in the religious landscape.

So this book is really about my own reflections, looking at those numbers, but it's also a very personal book.

So I grew up in that white evangelical world in Jackson, Mississippi.

Kristin Kobes Dumais is professor of history at Calvin University.

She is currently a senior democracy fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute, and she's written for The New York Times and The Washington Post.

She's been interviewed on NPR, PBS, the BBC, and of course here at The Holy Post.

Here's my conversation with Kristen Kobes-Dumé.

On the B side of our two, Deidre Malone, president of the National Women's Political Caucus, on the enduring legacy of the organization's co-founder, Gloria Steinem.

In our third hour, Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute and New York Times bestselling author, talks about his latest text, Backslide, Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turned, against democracy.

We'll talk about how we reckon with the moral collapse of white Christianity and the call to protect American democracy.

All that said, in this first hour, let's talk politics and more with the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and director of the Center for Urban Journalism at Morgan State University, Leonard Pitts Jr. Leonard, how are you today, sir? I am blessed.

But, you know, all these polls come out every year.

The Pew Research Center, the Public Religion Research Institute, they all do these polls of religion and politics.

And it's a longstanding data point where we can sort of see Americans' views shifting on this question.

And they have evolved quite a bit.