What Religion Is the Christian Right?

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge… would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Demographer Joel Kotkin has enumerated many of the benefits of a religious society in a recent article in Unherd, “Why G-d came back: Faith supports education, family and growth.” One surprise, for instance, was the finding over the last 15 years that religiously engaged people are more likely to be well-educated, while atheists are less so. The analysis of the 2022–23 Cooperative Election Study, which surveyed 85,000 Americans, found that attendance at religious services rises from 23% among high school graduates to 30% among those with graduate degrees. Another researcher, Phillip Schwadel, found that each additional year of education is associated with 15% greater likelihood of attending religious services.

Another uncontested correlation with religion is family formation, which is plummeting in the West. The states with the highest birthrates are primarily located in the South, Plains states, and parts of the Intermountain West, which are the centers of conservative Christianity. And a 2022 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology found a link between religious participation on the one hand, and greater financial generosity and stable families on the other. Nearly 20% of those without faith say that they have no close friends, as opposed to 10% for those who are religious.

The epicenter of religious revival, writes Kotkin, is in sub-Saharan Africa, driven in large part by Pentecostalism, which promotes individualism and a strong work ethic. Nearly 57% of Africans are Christian adherents, and 11 of the 20 fastest-growing economies in the world today are in Africa.