America's Vanishing Protestant Majority: What Does it Mean?
Albert Mohler
This article originally appeared on August 9, 2004. It is reissued in light of the recent actions of the Episcopal Church USA and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Writing in 1927, French observer Andre Siegfried described Protestantism as America's "only national religion." To miss this, Siegfried advised, is "to view the country from a false angle." Now, less than a century later, a major research report provides proof that Protestantism no longer represents a clear majority of Americans.

Researchers Tom W. Smith and Seokho Kim of the National Opinion Research Center [NORC] at the University of Chicago have released "The Vanishing Protestant Majority," a report documenting the declining membership of Protestant churches in the nation.

The decline of American Protestantism will come as a shock to many observers, whose understanding of American religion was well summarized by sociologist Will Herberg in his classic 1955 study, Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Herberg characterized America at the midpoint of the twentieth century as a population settled into a tripartite religious identification made up of three great "denominations" -- Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism. Celebrating this renegotiation of the American religious establishment, Herberg observed: "In net effect, Protestantism today no longer regards itself either as a religious movement sweeping the continent or as a national church representing the religious life of the people; Protestantism understands itself today primarily as one of the three religious communities in which twentieth century America has come to be divided. The 'denominational' system -- the word 'denomination' here referring both to the religious community and to the denomination in its more restricted sense -- has become part of the basic assumptions of Protestants about America, as it has become part of the basic assumptions of all Americans."

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