The decline of the church in America is posing tremendous cultural problems. And sociologists are beginning to sound the alarm.

Once upon a time, America was a land filled with churches, dotting the leafy streets of small towns and major cities alike. In 1965, churches affiliated with mainline denominations, such as Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, claimed around 50% of the American population. However, by 2020, this number had dwindled to a mere 9%. This dramatic decline is one of the largest sociological changes in American history, impacting institutions that were once central to the nation.

The result is undeniable. We are living in an age of spiritual anxiety. Some mainline Protestants left for Evangelical churches and others for Catholicism. But much of that decline came from the people who simply felt that their politics gave them the moral satisfaction they needed.

As a result, people are desperate for meaning, latching onto fleeting political movements and slogans in search of purpose. And now their children are in the street—without any satisfaction at all. Spiritually anxious, they react to each short-lived bit of political hoopla as though it were the trumpet of Armageddon.

Desperate for meaning, they latch on to anything that gives them the exciting pleasure of seeming revolutionary, no matter how little they understand it or perform actions that meaningfully affect it. Shouting slogans, they ache for the unity of a congregation singing hymns. What Protestantism once gave, they have no more: a nation-defining pattern of marriage and children, a feeling of belonging, a belief in Providence, a sense of patriotism.

The danger in all this comes from the fact that the apocalypse is self-fulfilling. If everything in public life is elevated to world-threatening danger, if there is no meaningful private life to which to retreat, then all manners and even personal morals must be set aside in the name of higher causes—and opponents quickly come to feel they must respond with similarly cataclysmic rhetoric and action.