(ANALYSIS) If there’s a quote from the last 10 years that lives in my orbit it’s this one from Ross Douthat from the New York Times.

In February of 2016, he tweeted:

That statement has sort of taken on a life of its own at this point. The Week published an analysis of it back in 2017. And The American Conservative did the same that year with the title, “The Douthat Scenario is Coming True.” In fact, just a few months ago, Ross titled one of his regular New York Times columns, “Is There a Post-Religious Right?”

The debate over a potentially less religious future for the Republican Party took center stage during discussions surrounding the Republican National Convention in July. On the first day of the festivities, Amber Rose was given a speaking slot. Ms. Rose is an OnlyFans model, and her appearance drew the ire of a lot of conservative commentators on Twitter, including Matt Walsh, and many others who believed that Rose should not be platformed by the RNC. He wrote,

The RNC gives a primetime speaking slot to a pro-abortion feminist and self-proclaimed slut with a face tattoo whose only claim to fame is having sex with rappers. Truly an embarrassment. Not a single voter will be mobilized by this person.

The undercurrent from this is that some socially conservative Republicans (the religious right) are being supplanted in the GOP by a younger crop of Trump supporters who tend to be less religious. That’s troublesome for more traditional Republicans.

Is there a rising number of nonreligious Republicans that are going to take the party in a less socially conservative direction? Let’s see what the data has to say about that.

I broke the modern GOP down into five age brackets ranging from 18-35 years old to 65 and older; then I calculated the religious composition of each of those age categories. I only used five categories of religion for ease of interpretation.

The share of younger Republicans who identify as Protestants has clearly declined significantly among the youngest adults. Among 18-35 year old Republicans, just 38% are Protestants.

Among retired members of the GOP, it’s 20 points higher. The Catholic share is basically unchanged, though. In every age category, 22-24% of Republicans indicate that they are Roman Catholic.

To read the rest of Ryan Burge’s column, click here.

Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.