Having appeared as an Op-Ed in the Meadville Tribune recently (October 1, 2026), this post coincides with Reformation Day (October 31) and the upcoming election (November 3). See my previous blog post for a more detailed discussion of the idea that we are experiencing another religious reformation.
Several religious leaders are running for national office as Democrats, including Texas senate candidate and seminarian James Talarico and United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton, who is running for the senate in Kansas. These candidates speak openly about their faith, challenging the Religious Right’s domination of the public narrative. They also represent the variety of views on social issues that are held by Christians, suggesting that the church is as divided as other institutions are these days.
Scholars believe, in fact, that Christianity is undergoing a transformation on the scale of the Protestant Reformation. Phyllis Tickle suggests that the church undergoes significant change every 500 years, which she compares to a giant rummage sale to get rid of the things that are no longer working.
Occurring at times when society itself is transforming, past shifts include liturgical reforms as the Dark Ages began, the Great Schism of 1054, and the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. At these times, some people pushed for change, while others sought to preserve the status quo. Given the current division within Christianity, the church seems to be in the middle of another clearing out.
Protestant Christianity was the dominant force in American life for more than two centuries, although divided by race for most of that time. In the 1960s, the church’s influence on the rest of society was a target of social protest movements that questioned everything. More serious challenges came from within, as the church’s views on gender and sexuality made many conservative members uncomfortable.
Most Protestant denominations approved the ordination of women around this time, but abortion and gay rights proved more divisive. The marriage and ordination of LGBTQ+ persons eventually fractured the largest Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches. The conservative bodies that split off contributed to the rise of the Religious Right, which also spoke out more strongly against abortion than most mainline Protestant churches.
The evangelical movement has also fractured. Some align with conservative politics to form the base of Christian nationalism; others reject the church’s hard swing to the right and remain more moderate; and a growing movement is theologically conservative but holds progressive views on social issues like sexuality, environmentalism, and economic inequality.
With such turmoil in the church, it’s not surprising that many people have left it altogether. In the last fifty years, the percent of Americans who identify as Christian has declined from 90% to 62%. At same time those who identify as unaffiliated has surged from 5% to 28%.
Despite these declines, the church will survive, but we do not know what forms the future church might take, any more than sixteenth-century Germans understood the significance of Martin Luther posting ninety-five condemnations of the Catholic Church on a church door in Wittenberg in 1517. We regard that now as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, but it was a crystalizing event in the midst of decades of change. Those who follow us will see where current changes lead, which events push change forward, and which ones hold it back.
