Americans Split on Religion's Influence, but Most Reject Politics From the Pulpit, Pew Finds

A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that most Americans don't want to hear about politics from the pulpit. Two-thirds of those surveyed, including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, said churches should stay out of political matters. Among Republicans the figure was 61%, among Democrats 71%. An even larger share, 79%, said churches should not endorse candidates during elections.

The survey was conducted last month, and the results were published days before a large prayer rally on the National Mall in Washington. They also showed a shift in how people see religion's place in public life. Thirty-seven percent said religion is gaining influence in the country, the highest share to say so since 2002. That share has climbed 19 percentage points in two years.

Most people who see a change view it favorably. Overall, 55% expressed a positive view of religion's influence. That group includes 21% who said its influence is growing and that this is good, and 34% who said it is declining and that this is bad.

The parties diverge sharply on that question even while agreeing about the pulpit. Three-quarters of Republicans viewed religion's influence positively, against 38% of Democrats. White evangelical Protestants stood out among religious groups, with 87% expressing a positive view of religion's role in society.

Pew also found a small rise in support for the federal government declaring Christianity the nation's official religion: 17% now, up from 13% in 2024. A plurality, 43%, opposed an official religion but wanted the government to promote Christian moral values. Another 38% opposed both. Pew reported greater familiarity with the term "Christian nationalism" and more people holding opinions on it. Unfavorable views outnumber favorable ones by about 3 to 1, though most Americans still have no opinion.

Todd Belt, who directs the Political Management program at George Washington University, said the term has recently picked up a different connotation, increasingly conflated with white nationalism. He defined Christian nationalism as the belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and that biblical values should shape government. He pushed back on that founding claim, citing deist founders such as Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution's emphasis on separating church and state. Belt said the line between church and state is becoming more blurred and that churches may be getting more political. "It's hard to know, but we're hearing more about it," he said.

Belt traced the political side to the 1980s, saying Republicans have organized within the Christian community far more effectively since then. He said Donald Trump, whom he described as not a religious man, won over Christian voters in 2016, with abortion as a mobilizing issue, by assembling a list of conservative Supreme Court judges. Trump, Belt said, had the political savvy to become the "instrument of what they wanted."

J.P. De Gance, founder of the nonprofit ministry Communio, which works to strengthen marriages and churches, offered a different reading. He said progressives sometimes use "Christian nationalism" as a vague label to cast patriotism and public expressions of Christianity in a negative light. America may not have been officially founded as a Christian nation, he said, but it has never been secular, and its culture has historically been broadly Christian and Protestant in particular. Christians, he said, do not separate faith from the rest of life, politics included. He acknowledged most Americans are uncomfortable with overt partisan politics from the pulpit but called it appropriate for churches to help people weigh the issues of the day through a moral lens. He also argued that as families fail and churches recede, government has to grow to fill the gap, "and that's a problem."

The public is divided over who has overreached. Fifty-two percent said conservative Christians push religious values too far in government and schools, while 48% said secular liberals go too far in trying to keep religion out. Eighteen percent said both sides have gone too far.