Former Christians express more progressive political views than lifelong nonbelievers

Americans who leave their Christian faith behind tend to hold more liberal political views than those who were raised entirely without religion. This leftward ideological shift appears closely linked to how threatening these individuals perceive conservative Christian groups to be. The study was published in The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.

The demographic landscape of the United States is changing as the nonreligious population grows rapidly. Demographers project that individuals claiming no religious affiliation will become the largest demographic group in the country within the next two decades. This segment includes atheists, agnostics, and those who simply select a blank option when asked about their faith. Because this group is expanding quickly, studying its internal divisions helps explain broader political trends.

Within this nonreligious umbrella, there are two distinct subcategories. Sociologists and psychologists often refer to people who never identified with a faith as “nones.” Meanwhile, individuals who were raised in a religious household but later abandoned their faith are referred to as “dones.”

As secularization continues, millions of Americans now belong to the second or third generation of nonreligious families. At the same time, millions of others actively leave organized Christian traditions every year. Researchers Ayse Busra Topal of the University of California Riverside and Spencer Kiesel of the University of Cincinnati wanted to know if this path to secularism correlates with a person’s ultimate political beliefs.

Social scientists have proposed several theories to explain why Americans are leaving religion in large numbers. Some argue that basic societal modernization gradually reduces the relevance of religious institutions over time. Others point to institutional failures, such as the numerous efforts by church leaders to cover up sexual abuse.

Topal and Kiesel focused on a different explanation known as political backlash. This theory suggests that the active involvement of conservative Christian organizations in right-wing politics has driven many people to abandon their faith entirely. If this theory holds true, former Christians should demonstrate a stronger alignment with progressive politics than those who were never religious at all.

Previous psychology studies show that a person’s religious past can leave lingering effects on their routine behavior. This phenomenon is known as religious residue. Past religious affiliation can influence everything from moral decision-making processes to everyday consumer habits.

People who leave their faith often experience social alienation and a sense of losing their community. Psychologists note that former believers frequently conceal their lack of faith to avoid social penalties. The researchers suspected that this social pain, combined with the political behavior of conservative churches, might generate a strong ideological backlash.

To investigate this idea, Topal and Kiesel analyzed data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. This national survey questioned tens of thousands of Americans between April and October of 2021 about their social identities and political attitudes. The researchers focused entirely on a subset of just over 3,500 respondents who identified as atheist, agnostic, or currently unaffiliated.

The survey asked these unaffiliated individuals if their family practiced a religion when they were growing up. About 41 percent of the nonreligious respondents were raised in a Christian household. Another 45 percent reported having no religious upbringing, placing them in the lifelong nonreligious category.

The survey also asked respondents to evaluate various societal groups as either supporting or threatening their vision of American society. The researchers isolated the responses regarding conservative Christians to measure the degree of social identity threat that nonreligious individuals felt. Social identity threat occurs when a person feels that their personal standing in society is being devalued or endangered by an outside group.

Topal and Kiesel then looked at how these individuals responded to questions about several contested political issues in the United States. The issues included voting rights, immigration, abortion, same-sex marriage, and criminal justice reform. The researchers converted these survey answers into standardized scales to compare the overall policy preferences of the lifelong nonreligious with those of former Christians.

The statistical models revealed that former Christians were highly likely to support progressive policies compared to lifelong nonbelievers. This ex-Christian group showed elevated support for abortion access and an overhaul of the criminal justice system. They were also more likely to believe the Voting Rights Act remains necessary to protect minority voters today.

On immigration, former Christians expressed greater opposition to the restrictive asylum and deportation policies enacted during the Trump administration. They also indicated that same-sex marriage should remain an active priority rather than treating it as a settled or unimportant issue. Across these varied topics, abandoning a Christian identity strongly correlated with a left-wing political stance.

The data also revealed a rigid link between these liberal views and the perception of conservative Christians as a threat to society. Former Christians consistently reported elevated levels of threat from conservative religious groups compared to lifelong nonbelievers. As a respondent’s perceived threat increased, their tendency to express liberal political views climbed proportionally.

For people raised entirely without religion, their baseline views on conservatism only shifted when their perception of threat was extremely high. In contrast, former Christians showed a sharp decline in conservative ideology exactly in tandem with their rising perception of threat. The researchers suggest that the pain of leaving a faith and the political alignment of many right-wing churches creates a potent reactive attitude.

Identifying as nonreligious is no longer merely an identity associated with young white men. The nonreligious population is racially diverse in the modern era, so the researchers broke down their data by race and ethnicity to see if the trends remained uniform. They examined the political attitudes of White, Black, Latino, and Asian respondents separately.

The data showed that lifelong nonbelievers were most likely to identify as Asian, followed by White, Black, and Latino Americans. Former Christians were most likely to identify as White, followed heavily by Latino and Black individuals. Among White, Black, and Latino respondents, the political trends held up, with former Christians in these demographics expressing highly liberal political views.

While controlling for the threat measure, researchers noticed some variations in baseline preferences across demographic lines. Some Latino respondents exhibited elevated support for restrictive immigration policies and opposition to same-sex marriage when their general threat perception was low. When these same individuals felt a high level of threat from conservative Christians, their views shifted sharply to the political left.

For Asian nonreligious respondents, the results followed a similar directional pattern, but the findings were not statistically significant. The mathematical models could not reliably confirm the former Christian upbringing effect for this specific group. The researchers note that the subgroup sample size for Asian former Christians was small, making it difficult to detect subtle demographic patterns among voters.

While the survey data highlights noticeable differences between lifelong nonbelievers and former Christians, the study design limits what the researchers can claim. The survey provides a snapshot in time from 2021, revealing correlations between a person’s religious past and their political beliefs. The mathematical methodology does not prove that leaving a religion strictly causes a person to adopt progressive views.

The researchers note it is entirely possible that adopting progressive views is the catalyst that prompts people to leave conservative religious institutions. To establish the exact sequence of events, social scientists will need to employ experimental methods rather than relying entirely on correlation surveys. Open-ended questionnaire formats could also help detail the precise individual reasons Americans decide to end their religious affiliation.

Understanding the political leanings of the nonreligious population will likely shape nationwide election strategies in the coming decades. If feelings of social threat motivate former religious individuals to participate in politics, they represent a highly active voting bloc. Political messages that highlight the policy goals of the Christian right could mobilize this growing demographic to turn out and vote.

Distinctions between those raised without religion and those who actively left a faith will become highly relevant as secularism expands across the country. Studying these internal differences helps explain the specific societal mechanisms driving political polarization in the United States.

The study, “Leftward March from Church: Ideology Among Ex-Christian vs Lifelong Nonreligious Americans,” was authored by Ayse Busra Topal and Spencer Kiesel.