The Cost of Losing Religion

By any measure, the US is becoming less religious.

According to a 2024 Gallup survey, 78% of Americans identify with any religion, down from 98% in 1948. Less than one third of Americans attend religious services in a given week. And only 45% of Americans are formal members of a church or other religious group, down from 73% in 1937.¹

A common refrain is: good! Religion has been party to many of the world’s troubles, from inquisitions, to witch trials, to child molestation, to fundamentalism, and terrorism. These examples only scratch the surface.

But a closer look reveals a different story.

Separation of church and state and religious freedom were built into the US, most notably via the first Amendment to the Constitution. However, the US was established with a vibrant religious foundation. Not intermediated by the government, but as a social contract between citizens.

It is worth examining what role religion played in the country’s beginning, and what is lost when Americans turn from religion.

Self-Restraint Preserves a Free Society

In 1798, President John Adams made a simple but bold declaration that laid bare the enduring challenge of democracy: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”²

Adams was trying to solve a dilemma: if a democracy by definition affords each individual great freedoms — and if as a result everyone only acts in his or her own self interest — what is to prevent society from falling apart?

This point would be later emphasized by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 sprawling examination of America’s young democracy, who stated, “Thus, while the law allows the American people to do everything, religion prevents their imagining everything and forbids them from daring to do everything.”³

In the early days of America, religion was the glue to hold society together, the guardrails to prevent it from spiraling into chaos.

The role of religion in a free society, as presented by Adams and Tocqueville, offered citizens an exchange: limited government oversight and all the freedoms that it entailed — privacy, freedom of expression, etc. — could only work if in turn citizens agreed to self-regulate. Religion was a means to do this.

Failure to uphold this exchange would result in a corrupt society. The founders feared that an overbearing government would then step in to fill the void.⁴

This exchange still holds today. The price of personal liberty is the need to practice restraint and be mindful of obligation to the community.

Put differently, living with limited government affords not only freedom, but also responsibility.

A popular notion today is that America is successful because it is an individualistic society, and that attention to the community reeks of socialism. But that view is entirely inconsistent with the foundations of our country.

The founding fathers make another, more subtle point, which is that laws enforced by courts and the justice system are alone insufficient to maintain the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. They also require citizens to act in good faith and with obligation toward one another. George Washington emphasized this idea in his farewell address when he stated, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?”⁵

Living in a democracy creates grave responsibilities, indeed.

Religion Creates Shared Values

Many Americans reconcile their faith by noting that while they are not religious, they are spiritual and abide by personal codes of morality.

Our founding fathers warned against this, fearing that without religion, morality would be too difficult to uphold. Again turning to George Washington, who stated, “And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion… reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”⁶

But there is something else here at play.

Washington was trying to solve for a very practical challenge that faced the young country: how to maintain national unity and cohesion, and prevent the country from falling into tribalism and factionalism.

Every society is built on shared myths and values. Common religion — or at least common values upheld by religion — can be one source of these.

And thus religion also plays the role of creating community. The difference between religion and morality is that whereas adherence to personal morality codes causes us to look internally, adherence to religion creates bonds across us.

Carson Holloway, writing for the Heritage Foundation, stresses the role of religion in creating common values to bring Americans together in its early days.⁷ He refers to Tocqueville, who stated:⁸

One consequence of society turning away from religion is to therefore diminish a bond that held it together — a set of shared values, experiences, and membership — causing communities to fragment.

Moving Forward

All this said, the US continues to be an enormously generous society. It routinely ranks near the top of world measures of giving, in terms of the percentage of Americans who help strangers, or donate money and / or time.⁹ Your author lives in New York City and regularly sees the best of humanity when New Yorkers help strangers navigate the subway system or cross busy streets.

But at the same time, there is fraying around the edges. Public debate has become coarser, media coverage more extreme¹⁰ — with studies showing that negative headlines get more coverageolicy decisions more drastic.

Our communities are also breaking down, with polls showing 30% of American adults feeling lonely in a given week.¹¹

Americans are also less likely to feel close to their country and community than do people in other countries. 66% of Americans surveyed reported feeling close to their country, versus a median of 83% across 24 countries. The difference is starker at the local community level, with 54% of Americans feeling close to their local community, versus a global median of 78%.¹²

None of this signals the imminent end of democracy. But we are caretakers of our country and democracy, each with a solemn duty to protect and uphold it.

It is therefore valuable to remember the role that religion has played in enabling and supporting our democratic foundations, as seen by the founding fathers.

As the country continues to leave religion, it is worth Americans asking themselves what is lost, not just personally, but for their country, too.

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1  Gallup. "Religious Americans." Accessed January 21, 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx?.

2  Adams, John. "Letter to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811." Founders Online. National Archives. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.

3  Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. Volume I, Part II, Chapter 9. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838.

4  McNulty, Paul. "The Main Causes Which Tend to Maintain a Democratic Republic in the United States (Vol. 1, Pt. 2, Ch. 9, Subchs. 4-5)." Constituting America. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://constitutingamerica.org/90day-dt-essay-38-the-main-causes-which-tend-to-maintain-a-democratic-republic-in-the-united-states-vol-1-pt-2-ch-9-subchs-4-5-guest-essayist-paul-mcnulty/.

5  U.S. Government Publishing Office. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 1999. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc21.pdf.

6  Ibid.

7  Holloway, Carson. "Tocqueville, Christianity, and American Democracy." The Heritage Foundation. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/tocqueville-christianity-and-american-democracy#_ftn16.

8  Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. Volume II, Part I, Chapter 2. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1838.

9  Charities Aid Foundation. World Giving Index 2024: A Global View of Giving Trends.Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/inside-giving/wgi/wgi_2024_report.pdf.

10  Dwoskin, Elizabeth. "Negativity Bias and Online News Consumption." The Atlantic, March 2023. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/negativity-bias-online-news-consumption/673499/.

11  American Psychiatric Association. "New APA Poll: One in Three Americans Feels Lonely." Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/new-apa-poll-one-in-three-americans-feels-lonely-e.

12  Pew Research Center. "Americans Are Less Likely Than Others Around the World to Feel Close to People in Their Country or Community." May 8, 2024. Accessed January 21, 2025. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/05/08/americans-are-less-likely-than-others-around-the-world-to-feel-close-to-people-in-their-country-or-community/.