WELCOME, RYAN BURGE!
Sunday, March 1 | 4-5:30 PM | Tab Sanctuary
The Last 50 Years of American Religion: What Changed, What Didn’t, and Why It Matters
Over the past half-century, American religion has undergone profound transformation—from declining church attendance to the rapid rise of the religiously unaffiliated. Drawing on five decades of data from several data sources, this talk traces how belief, belonging, and practice have shifted across generations, identifies the key inflection points driving change, and explains what these trends reveal about the future of religion in the United States.
Ryan Burge is professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Before that he was an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, and was also the graduate coordinator. He has authored over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside four books about religion and politics in the United States. He has written for the New York Times, POLITICO, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared in an NBC Documentary, on the CBS Evening News, as well as 60 Minutes which called him, “one of the country’s leading data analysts on religion and politics.” He served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years, leading First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, IL for 17.5 years until its closure in July 2024. He has been married to his wife Jacqueline for over eighteen years. They have two boys.