Top Religion News 2024: NYT Reporter Ruth Graham

In 2024 America, almost every major news story was a religion story in some way. Important stories call for compelling storytelling, and we take a look back at 2024 in the company of a leading religion journalist who’s expert at telling those stories.

Host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush is joined by Ruth Graham, New York Times National Reporter covering religion, faith, and values. Together they review some of Ruth’s favorite stories of the past year, and highlight important work by other journalists. From surprising gender shifts among church-going young Americans to the support of many religious immigrants for anti-immigrant policies and challenges of increasingly diverse religious diaspora; from the ongoing spread of Christian Nationalism as a force in American politics to the evolution of evangelical Christianity toward core MAGA values, they mark the highlights of 2024 – and what themes are likely to emerge in 2025.

Ruth's recent work for The New York Times includes Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade; In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women; and America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservative. She expands on the complexities of religious reporting, the challenges of capturing the diverse and evolving nature of faith in the U.S., and the personal stakes of writing these stories with empathy and understanding.

Ruth Graham is a national reporter based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. She is the recipient of awards from the Religion News Association and the American Academy of Religion.

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REV. PAUL BRANDEIS RAUSHENBUSH, HOST:

Ruth Graham is a New York Times national reporter covering religion, faith and values. She is the recipient of awards from the Religion News Association and the American Academy of Religion, and she has had a busy year with amazing headlines like: Pete Hegseth and His Battle Cry For A New Christian Crusade; First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women; Piety and Profanity: The Raunchy Christians Are Here… I mean all of these headlines. So Ruth is the perfect person to have with us to review not just this changing religion landscape and culture, but also the big stories of 2024. It was a major year for religion stories.

So, Ruth Graham, welcome to the State of Belief.

RUTH GRAHAM, GUEST:

Thank you so much for having me.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

There's so much to talk about 2024. But first let's just talk about you. No reporter just is kind of produced in a box and then all of a sudden… AI, I guess maybe, unfortunately. But what's your background? How do you come at this, specifically writing about religion, which is such a particular beat?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, it's the best beat in my opinion. I think it’s never-endingly fascinating. But I was raised in an evangelical home and community and church in the Midwest, in Illinois. I went to Christian schools, kindergarten to eighth grade, and then again to an evangelical college, I went to Wheaton.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

They must be very proud of you.

RUTH GRAHAM:

I don't know, maybe.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, they should be.

RUTH GRAHAM:

I had a great experience there, I really did. And I learned a lot, and I graduated, moved to New York City, got into journalism. I think I was like the last, very end of the last generation of people who could just sort of fall backwards into it without going to get my journalism degree and all that. So I just went straight out of college, and really, initially, it was that, because I had this evangelical background and this was the Bush administration, there was a lot of curiosity and anxiety in the mainstream media about kind of realizing, we don't understand these people.

I think all of that has gotten actually a lot better, but at the time, there, it was a little bit exotic to have come from this background, and so initially, I was able to start pitching ideas based on just having some kind of special insight there. And then, honestly, over the years, it has just - I won't go over my whole LinkedIn - but it has just continued to be a really, really fascinating beat to me.

And, of course, in 2016, with Trump winning, that kind of overturned the whole evangelical landscape - it just meant everything was upside down, and there was a whole bunch of new, different stuff to report on then. So it felt like just sort of remaking the whole beat in a lot of ways since then. So I've been at The Times, now, for more than four years and have far from run out of interesting things to report on.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

For sure. Obviously politics was a big story, but you already hinted at this: there's things going on. A lot of your stories - but not exclusively about evangelicals, because you write about a lot of different things - but you do have some really interesting insight into evangelicals. One of the stories that I read with fascination that I think actually kind of dovetails with politics is a little bit, that there's more young men going to church than young women - and that really not only flips a 20th century narrative, but it flips a longstanding narrative. I mean, women are the backbone of the Church. Women attend more, women are more religious. Those are all almost truisms, and yet you turn that upside down in this really interesting piece. Can you talk a little bit about how you came upon it, and then what you discovered while you reported it?

RUTH GRAHAM:

That was one of my favorites from last year; and in hindsight, especially sort of post-election, it felt like maybe the most important story I wrote last year. Like you said, it's nearly a universal human truth, not even particular to Christianity, that women are almost always, in almost every context around the world, particularly in Christianity too, that women are a little bit more religious than men. And so this switch of that in Gen Z started to appear a couple of years ago.

I read about it first in Christianity Today. Ryan Burge, who may have been on your show, wrote a little item about it for Christianity Today, and I was really struck by it. Then I kind of tucked it away in the back of my head and kind of just kept an eye on it. And there's further research since then, even in just those last few years that yeah, young men are more religious - and it's particularly clear with Christian young men in the US, just because there's so much more data there, because it's such a bigger set - but they attend services more often, they're more likely to identify as religious, and that tracks with just a gender gap in this generation on a lot of stuff, including support for Trump. There's a huge gap there where young women have moved notably left in their politics, and young men have tacked right. So not only there's this interesting thing happening with young men that are becoming more conservative by some measures, but it's also a widening gap with young women - which raises some sort of alarming possibilities for the future.

But I went to Waco, Texas, to do the reporting, and attended a couple of church services there, and met with a bunch of young guys and also young women. It's just a really fascinating scene. And not every young man has the same set of concerns or background or all of this, but just sort of a yearning for something firmer. One of the young guys told me, men are attracted to hard truths. So he went to kind of a more conservative church, was being drawn into this more conservative church with this search for hard truths. So a lot of different, you know… Everything from pornography addiction came up, but just sort of searching for something more rooted, and a lot of times that's expressed in more traditionalist and more conservative religious communities. So I think, it's a really, really fascinating divide.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, and I think there is something for men who are like, well, wait, it's almost this - well, this is my speculation - it's almost a response to the kind of oh, you know, men are under attack, you know, and in these conservative churches there is a reassertion of kind of patriarchal norms. You know, like men are the leaders of the Church, women have a role, an important role, but it's in relationship to men's leadership. And I think for some men who have been feeling estranged, it feels good to be like, okay, we're back in a place where this is respected. And yet, you know, what was interesting about that article that you wrote is you also interviewed women who kind of were seeing the same things, but almost a mirror image of it.

RUTH GRAHAM:

That's right. And these women, some of whom had stayed in the Church - one woman who was in in a seminary and hoping to be ordained who had, you know, were raised Christian in some form but were seeing a lot of, yes, exactly, seeing the same things in the Church and really wanting to get away from it.

I think, the closer that the Republican Party and Trump, specifically - that those brands are kind of intertwined with evangelical Christianity specifically, but for a lot of people, just Christianity - that that is causing a lot of young women, again, who have moved left in their politics for a variety of reasons: you think about the sort of post-Roe era that we're in, maybe attuned to gender, sexuality stuff in different ways, a lot more young women identify as not straight in some ways. So there's this big exodus among women. And then that has a compounding effect, right? Because then it's like, well, my girlfriends aren't there, you know. So it's a sort of snowball effect.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Have you followed Kristin Du Mez’s effort? She was on the show talking about, and she did this documentary, not too long, For Our Daughters, that was an offshoot of her John Wayne book. And I'm just hearing echoes of that. I'm not grafting that onto your piece, but it just makes me think of that, these realizations of women - and then men, also - being like, you know, we're not going to take it. And that just feels like it's a real dynamic in a lot of the more conservative churches, especially, kind of doubling down on who gets to run the church. We're in a very interesting moment when a lot of change is happening; and at the same time a lot of change is happening, there are reactions to that change. And of course in religion that is really huge.

I do want to make a little bit of a jump into how you saw religion play out. You wrote a couple different kinds of stories, several different stories, about how religion was playing out in both the Trump sphere, but also in the Harris sphere. How did you see that dynamic? Because that was such a big part, of course, of 2024 in our national reporting.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, it's funny. I think the last time you and I spoke, maybe, it was for a story about Kamala Harris's faith and faith background, and got a little bit into Democratic outreach. She didn't speak that much about faith or that often to church audiences, faith audiences, until really near the end of the campaign. Neither she nor Donald Trump are perceived by voters as particularly religious. She has a really fascinating story to tell, she just didn't tell it that often, but really kind of embodies this like multi-faith pluralist moment that, in a lot of ways, the United States is in. Certainly that's the direction the Democratic Party is increasingly headed in, really becoming a more secular party over time.

It's tricky. I sympathize with the difficulty of figuring out, as a Democratic candidate, how to speak that language in the appropriate moment, but also realize that some people are really turned off by the language of the Church. It’s a real tightrope act. And then of course Trump, who a lot of conservative Christians who are happy to vote for him, are pretty clear-eyed that he's not exactly one of them. You know it's kind of like bringing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on and then forcing him to eat the McDonald's hamburger. Like, there's a little sense of, you know, this guy is on our side, he doesn't exactly live our values, necessarily. So that's interesting too.

I do think this cycle that conservative evangelicals have kind of moved on from having to be in perpetual explanation and excuse mode. And I talked to a pretty prominent Trump pastor-supporter who just said, like, we're kind of done. I mean, he talked to me; but he's like, internally, we've kind of just made our peace with the fact that this guy is on our side, getting things done on our behalf, and it's not a character contest.

I'm personally really curious how that plays out the next time there's a question of character or not. Have they sort of given up their ability to criticize the next person who comes along? But that's the sort of peace they've made for now. So there's a lot less sort of internal dissent and drama on the conservative Christian right over that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

How did you see that playing out – you know, you mentioned, like, he's on their side. What were the articulated values that you felt were really motivating MAGA Christians or however you would… It's tough, because there's a lot of evangelical Christians - not a lot, 20%, maybe - but some very prominent ones who never bought into the Trump train, but many did. For those who did, what were the most important issues, and how are those going to be delivered on, or potentially delivered on, in the coming administration?

RUTH GRAHAM:

You hear people talk a lot about abortion. Trump bills himself as the most pro-life president in history, or at least he did. He didn't talk much about it this cycle, but people certainly remember his remaking of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. So he still gets a lot of credit for that. A lot of evangelicals are really keyed in to transgender issues, gender issues, more broadly. There's a lot of anxiety around that, and especially how it intersects with schools. So that's a big one. I hear they are really concerned about immigration. There's a lot of, of course, overlap just with Republican voters in general. So immigration is a big issue.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

So immigration is tricky, because a lot of immigration… The only reason that the evangelical Church writ large hasn't cratered completely is a lot of immigration of evangelicals.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Or immigration of Catholics who become Evangelical in the US.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Were you ever to sort that out? Because that seems to be still a lingering question mark: where do those immigrants who turned anti-immigration and who also are identifying with the more evangelical Trumpist movement?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, I, too find that sort of hard to parse out. I think there's a lot of people who would say they're not opposed to it overall, but they associate it with other concerns about disorder and volume and all of this, so that it's not necessarily wanting fully closed borders. I mean, there's such a rich, kind of mainstream evangelical history of welcoming the strangers and refugees and so that really is…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

 Because Jesus talked about it and so did the prophets. I mean, it's like actually a pretty prominent idea in the scriptures. So to me - and this is speaking as Paul Raushenbush, it feels much more about… I know you've reported some on this, but, like more of a Christian nationalist adoption, like, this is a Christian nation. We're worried about other people who are corrupting that idea. But if you can come in here and be totally exactly like us, great. And so I'm wondering: immigration is one element, but how does Christian nationalism and how was your reporting? I know it wasn't the only thing you reported on by a long stretch, but you did touch on it in some of your work. How have you seen that evolve as even a category of identity in America?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Christian nationalism. I still find that term, honestly… I shouldn't say not that useful, but people use it in such different ways, now. You'll see people on the right really embrace it openly. It's also become, in some ways, sort of a - certainly not a slur, but it's not used in a flattering way on the left. I like to think more about the separation of Church and State, and people who do or do not accept that. That's where it feels like that it's like a little bit easier for me to pinpoint change.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Now that Trump is president-elect and he's beginning to nominate people who have been kind of broadly lumped in with this Christian Nationalist title, however blunt that that term might be, you had an article, Pete Hegseth and His Battle Cry For a New Christian Crusade. That's a very powerful title. Can you unpack that for our listeners?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, so I did this reporting with Mike Baker, my colleague on the national desk at The Times. It was right after the Hegseth nomination, and so all of us on the desk and the other desks too, looking into sort of every aspect of his background and what he said. He's talked and written a lot, and apparently had some kind of major… I don't want to call it a conversion experience, but an intensification of his faith a couple of years ago, the way that he described it, where he and his family, his third wife and their blended family - I think they have seven kids - moved to outside of Nashville specifically for this classical Christian school.

They started going to this church there that is connected to Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, which is a denomination that was co-founded by this pastor out in Moscow, Idaho, named Doug Wilson, who is very conservative. He's Reformed, which means he's sort of Presbyterian-ish, we don't have to get all deep into the theology. And he has this sort of empire out in Moscow, Idaho, where a lot of people have actually moved over the years to be a part of his church. There's a college there, there's classical schools there. He also has this network of classical schools. A conservative pastor who has really become increasingly influential over the course of the Trump era. He's a real kind of provocateur, I guess is one way to put it, and again, very, very conservative. So it was interesting to us to see Pete Hegseth come into this church. He has spoken highly of Doug Wilson. They have never met, or at least that's what Wilson told me, that they've never met.

Hegseth has never sort of been out to Moscow, but you can still kind of trace his thinking about some of this stuff, or this is one of his influences, I would say. And so Wilson describes himself as a Christian Nationalist, and he has his own kind of precise definition of that which is related to, basically, the idea of well, if the opposite of that is secular nationalism, that's something that doesn't work, and he frames it in terms of wanting to limit the power of the government against Christians. Again, that's his description of it.

But I always think it's interesting to look at, here are people that are going to have immense power, and how do they think about, really, the most fundamental… Like the meaning of life, the uses of power, all of these things? So we dug into that, and you know Hegsath had done a lot of his own writing, where he's really speaking warmly of the Crusades and kind of wanting to revive the reputation of the Crusades, suggesting that, well, if it comes to that again, you know you'll want a Crusader on your side. I'm very much paraphrasing there, but kind of bringing back some of this language and ideas of the medieval Crusades - which is, again, really remarkable, since that's something that's something that a lot of contemporary Christians have tried to reckon with and saying like, wow, that was a really dark period of Christian history. So it's remarkable to see him kind of want to resurrect that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, and the fact that he might be in charge of the military. It's one thing for some random person in their basement to be thinking that way; it's another thing for someone who has the keys to the most powerful military in the world.

I am curious how you understand movements, and if you did any stories about other faith traditions and the diversifying of the religious landscape in America, because even as there's been kind of upheaval and shifts in the evangelical community and in the wider Christian community, there's also so much going on in broader religious landscape. What were some of the stories that, even if you didn't write one, you were watching something going, oh, that's interesting, that's going to mean something.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Well, certainly, the long and really distinct rise of the nones, n-o-n-e-s, is, arguably, going to be sort of the story of the next five, ten years, maybe more. Because, yes, there are these fascinating movements on the Christian right, the right more broadly; but we're becoming a more secular country. So even some of those nones, or “nothing in particular”, people who just really don't think of themselves as religious people, who don't go to a house of worship, have those beliefs. You know, a lot of them are conservative. So what does the secular right look like? I mean, I think we're sort of getting a flavor of that already. But also the secular left - and again, what are the implications of the Democratic Party becoming a more and more secular party? That's really fascinating to me.

We're still in the long fallout of October 7. So there's big stories, I think, about Judaism in America; some Jews kind of turning inward, realizing, we need to really hone in and turn back to our traditions. Maybe some political realignments going on there. I think that's some really fascinating stuff.

RUTH GRAHAM:

What about you, Paul? Can I ask you what you think I should be writing about next year?

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, you know, I'm really interested in how diaspora from other parts of the world plays out here. I think South Asian diaspora, and the broader kind of realities, political realities of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, all of that, among different Hindus, among the Sikh community, Indian Muslim communities. Everything is complicated, and in some places where some communities where there are high concentrations of South Asians, you can't predict how the religion will play out unless you dig into it. And so I think that that's going to be a really, as part of the interfaith movement, and the constant effort to not just have it be Muslim, Jew, Christian. But then how does that factor into the complicated… I hired the first Hindu chaplain in the country when I was at Princeton, and I think we did a really great job, really good guy. And he was from one positionality in a really big ecosystem that he had to then balance.

And that's true for every religious leader. I also hired one of the first Muslim chaplains before, and you know, are you hiring a Sunni? What about the Shiite? You know, can everybody come together? How does this work in the diaspora? But then how do tensions come over here. And certainly, October 7th we saw that play out. But I do think there's going to be more and more of that happening, and it's already happening, in some ways, in the South Asian community. So, I think that's really an interesting area.

You mentioned Hegseth talking about classical schools and this question of schools, talking about classical schools, and this question of schools and question of what is the public contract? And how does religion and education come together? And what is public education? What's the future of public education, as you have people who really want to dissolve it. I mean, one way to do that is cuts, school vouchers, or putting more religion into public schools.

You're in Texas, the Chaplains Bill happened there. There's probably going to be Ten Commandments that will come back up; school vouchers… What does that mean for a public school, which really is meant to be for everyone, given the rising diversification and also less religious people? Have you seen any trends in that area? Did you see any reporting that you thought was particularly interesting?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, there was a fantastic piece in the New Yorker by Emma Green about the classical schools movement that really captured… Because of course, yes, it is a favorite of Pete Hegseth types, but there's all different kinds of people who are drawn to classical schools right now, and that was a really fascinating, nuanced piece about that movement. Because I think some of that comes from sort of across the spectrum, some dissatisfaction with testing and these other elements of public schools, not necessarily culture war stuff.

I'm doing a story right now that's connected to homeschooling, which has also risen tremendously over the years. You're seeing some percentage of kids not in the public school system because of homeschooling, and so all these things do kind of chip away at that system and raise questions about like, well, what is public education for? What is education for? What do we owe our kids? It's big, really complicated stuff.

And yeah, you know some of the Ten Commandments, the Bible mandate in Oklahoma. You're also seeing kind of empowered legislators in red states. You know, throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks, knowing that, depending on how far this stuff makes it, that they'll have a receptive Supreme Court, or at least a decent chance of that. So it's an interesting time. Just trying to keep track of everything happening in these states is a big job.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Well, it's a big job for those of us who are also in the religion and democracy space, just watching what's happening and being like, okay, this is going to be an interesting legislative session, for sure. Without divulging secrets, but because I was in that world for about six or seven years and close to it for a decade or more, the question of, what do we cover? What do we put our resources towards to cover, versus, nice to have but not necessary to have.

I think a lot of it is our antenna, and also what really is, you can see, oh, this has all the ingredients of a rich story, and it's an important story. If you don't mind divulging the secrets, how do you go through kind of soup to nuts? How do you, like, I heard about this, oh, that that sticks with me. I'm curious what your process is, because you're at, arguably, the most important paper; you're telling stories that mean something to people. You're in a really interesting moment, and have an important role.

RUTH GRAHAM:

It's definitely not a formula. The question that I will get from my editor when I bring a story that might seem sort of small or odd or not necessarily the next day's top of A1, is, well what does this have to say about American religion, or about the country, more broadly? As long as I can answer that, I do a lot of – and actually, I love doing -quote-unquote “small” stories that not necessarily every reporter is chasing it and it's the obvious big story about the intersection of politics and religion. But a story that kind of comes in through a particular religious culture and captures people's enthusiasms, excitement, fears, anxieties, like all of this. Because I think it's my job to help people understand the country. So I think of myself, as more often covering the pews versus the pulpit or versus Washington.

The week after the election, I went to the National Bible Bee in Orlando, which is all these little homeschooling kids reciting incredibly long passages of the Bible. And that's a story that is like it's not directly a politics story. In fact, in some ways it's like the direct opposite of that, and it was sort of refreshing to be in Orlando that week instead of Washington. But I hope that it was also a window into this particular conservative Christian culture and how they were talking and thinking about shaping their kids, and priorities for the future and all of that. So it's very much not a formula, and I kind of do of course I do the straight, Pete Hegseth, story, too, but there's a lot of other stories to be told that you know still have some kind of window into the American religious landscape.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Part of the interesting moment we're in is that we can certainly bemoan it, the internet, just the proliferation of, frankly, garbage. But there is also the opportunity to learn more about stories that you might not have heard about, if you're kind of open to it. Because people are telling their stories. There's a lot of witnessing going on, actually, and a lot of sharing, and I just want to let you know that this is what's going on with me. Having been involved in the religion journalism beat for a while, and there's a lot of lamenting about like, how many papers have gotten rid of religion reporters, but there's also hopeful signs of people still being able to learn about one another, hopefully, and also being aware of some of the impact some of these stories have on real lives. How are you seeing colleagues in your field deal with this new reality around religion and media, or maybe that's not something you're really paying as much attention to? Are we telling the stories that need to get told?  

RUTH GRAHAM:

We can always do better, but I totally agree with you. So traditional media, the declines there have been really devastating. I do find it really sad how few places now have dedicated religion reporters - or even sort of religion-literate reporters who sort of bring that literacy to reporting on other topics. I always think that that could be better, although I will say I also think it's sort of not as bad as we sometimes have a reputation for among some believers.

But I totally agree with you, also, about social media and just all the different ways that people have of sharing their own stories - and I'm grateful for that. Even as a reporter, I did a story about LDS women last year sort of sharing all of their stories around sexism in the LDS Church last year, and that was an Instagram phenomenon. All these women are extremely Instagram savvy, and kind of got together and it snowballed and became a real sharing and connecting space for them, to the point where it did rise to, you know, that was a story in The Times.

And so I don't know how or whether that would have happened. It certainly wouldn't have happened sort of as quickly 30, 40, 50 years ago. Those voices just would have been much, much, much harder to hear and access and put all of that together. So there are certainly pluses and minuses, but in some ways, there's religion everywhere you look. If anything, it's winnowing down and sifting through and deciding - not overweighting the social media desktop. Right, you don't want to just have Twitter be your assignment desk. So it's being judicious there, too. But boy, it is so fascinating

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

That was something that, certainly, what I was doing was watching on social media, finding stories and stories that started on social media but then very much grew because of social media; but then all of a sudden, you needed a broader picture of it.

So if you had a headline for 2024 in reigion. I know, this is impossible, but it's meant to be a fun exercise. I'm not holding you to it. But what would you say is the headline, and then maybe the tag that goes underneath, of 2024 religion in America?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Oh, 24. Okay, I thought you said 25 and I was like oh no…

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Oh, we're going to get to that, so get ready. Oh yeah, if that stressed you out… Your stress was not unwarranted or wasted. We will get to that. But 2024,looking back, what's the headline of 2024 for religion in the United States?

RUTH GRAHAM:

Oh man. Well, there's a reason I'm not a headline writer.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

That's so funny. People forget that reporters rarely decide headlines. That's a really important media literacy thing. So if you're mad at a headline, yelling at the reporter is generally not your best move.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Exactly. Read the whole story and then yell at me.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah, read the whole story and then yell at Ruth. If you take anything away from it, that's what I want you to do. You know, headines: there's all sorts of calculations that go into headlines, and not all of them are, how does it serve the story? But for a headline of the United States in 2024, for religion?

RUTH GRAHAM:

I do think the most important story, and maybe it's recency bias, but it's just the tremendous comeback of Donald Trump, and the realization that you know, boy, yeah, that consolidation of sort of Christian power of men. I think it is the comeback of Trump and what that means for Christian power in the US. And also for the Church itself. I don't know if that's the number one most important story, but it’s the one I find myself most interested in, is just the ways that Trump is also reshaping the Church.

This is very much not a headline, but you know, if the first Trump administration was sort of, that was a populist movement where you saw people, churchgoers and Christians sort of being more conservative than their pastors, often - and I reported that story a few years ago, of these kind of mainstream evangelical pastors being like, whoa, like my church is actually like really gung ho for, you know, Trump and the Trump agenda, like how do I kind of shepherd them? I think now, a couple of years have passed since then, the pulpits are getting remade, so you have a whole movement on the right for pastors to quote unquote “speak their minds” and speak truth - which, in this context, means being much more direct in preaching directly on political and culture war topics. And that's going to have a long impact. You know, an administration is only four years, but that's reshaping the American Church for the next generation.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think like how the Trump election is shaping the American evangelical movement - and then, underneath, almost the return of the power of man.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, there you go.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

We used to have so much fun with headline writing when I was at HuffPost, because you know it's all about like how do you get people to click? I know you're above that at The Times, but yeah, I really do think that that's a huge story. I mean, it's analogous to the Republican Party, the way people talked about the Republican Party. It used to be that senators and many of the quote-unquote “elites” of the Republican Party were very adverse to Trump and very reluctant, but went along with it because the rank and file… That's all gone. Everybody's fully behind it, and it's really interesting to see how this, whatever it is, this cult of personality and - well, again, I'm not ascribing this to Ruth at all, but, kind of a reversal, his is Make America Great Again, a reversal of much of what has happened over the past 30 years. And how do we push all of that back - whether it's women's rights, LGBT rights, you know, Black people. It's rooted in a lot of that very conservative, and going back to that time. 

And it's going to be fascinating how that, ultimately, impacts the Church, because I do think you're going to find the Church will continue to shrink. I don't think this is going to mean a rapid expansion of the Church. I think there's another thing that's happening at the same time: people like the Proud Boys are identifying as Christian, because it's become a different kind of identification than “I'm following Jesus. I'm really interested in, what Jesus said in Sermon on the Mount.” It's a different identity. Then, from my point of view - because I stand on the other side of the Christian community - how what is happening on the Christian right will impact what is happening in mainline churches, many of whom have been drawn into the Trumposphere. But then there's another part of it which is very much positioning, and I'll speak for myself, positioning myself as oppositional to it. And so it's an interesting moment.

And then, all around that, you have people who are not religious. You have Jews, you have Muslims, who are trying to figure out where they fit, now. And, of course, as I mentioned, South Asians. It's really interesting.

Okay, the thing that caused you to have a panic attack. I do want to ask you, I promised to to stress you out; not a crystal ball, but, as you think about these dynamics and you think about what lays ahead, what are some of the dynamics that you see that may invite a lot of storytelling around.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, okay, that's better than having to come up with one headline. Because if the headline of this year really is just from November, then that's absolutely going to flow into next year. So, just the continuation of how Trump is changing Christian culture. You’re absolutely right about what this means for the Christian left and for the mainline; those aren’t exactly the same thing, but you’ve got some overlap there. I think right-wing Christian power, in general, and kind of how that's expressed under a very friendly administration.

I am totally fascinated by what's happening in the Catholic Church, and of course, we don't know exactly what will happen next year with the Pope and all of that. But in the US there's a really energetic kind of traditionalist wing on the right. Women seem to be leaving the Catholic Church - I was just reading a little bit about that; women leaving conservative Christianity more broadly. And yeah, those are a couple of the things, sort of the dynamics next year.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

You know, one of the big themes is how politics is shaping religion, rather than religion shaping politics, in a way. I mean, that's very reductive, but the dynamics that are drawing people into the Church and forcing people out of the Church have a lot more to do with the political questions facing us than: I'm compelled by the spiritual wisdom and practice. Maybe I'm misrepresenting that, maybe it goes hand in hand for people. But it's really interesting, and honestly, it feels dangerous and sad to me, but at the same time, I'm not making big statements about it, but I fear for religion.

RUTH GRAHAM:

I think that's right, and I mean I literally just framed it that way myself; and I do think, broadly, religion right now in American culture is downstream of politics. I will also say, as a reporter who talks to people and travels all over the country and talks to all different kinds of people, you know most people don't talk about or see their faith through the lens of national politics. So it is one thing to observe these big trends; and that's real: the exodus of women and all of that, that's real. That is connected to what's happening in national politics.

But individual people are, are so individual, and so religion is not dead, spirituality is not dead, faith is not dead, and a lot of people just don't view their faith lives through this prism at all, and are finding deep spiritual wisdom in all different kinds of places, finding beauty, finding spiritual truths. I think it's easy to despair, thinking that it's this kind of one-to-one relationship - and people are more complicated than that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think that's a really good corrective. I mean, my family goes to church and ,you know, there's generally some politics, but there's all sorts of other things about personal life and deep connection to the faith, and so it is important. If you look at these big stories and big trends, it's really hard to miss. But it's really important, and I think a lot of our listeners are people of faith - but not all, but a lot of our listeners are - and I know that.

We're not automation reacting to politics, for sure, people are going and getting all kinds of things out of there. And we all have very complicated lives, with loss and love and all kinds of stuff going on at the same time, and so it's just really important to… Thank you for pulling us back from that brink. And somehow, that almost seems like it could be a story: in the face of all this politics swirling around, people still do have to bury their loved ones, you know, and people still are bringing their kids and having them baptized or christened, and bar mitzvahs are still happening, bat mitzvahs are still happening.

RUTH GRAHAM:

People need potlucks. It's a core human need.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

I think this is great, and I really appreciate the role of journalists, of storytellers; and when you get a story and you feel like you've done it justice. There's something really beautiful about that. I remember when we first started HuffPost Religion and Javed Kaleem, he’s a really great guy and he was our senior religion reporter. And there was a story that everybody was just laugh, laugh, laughing at, and it was kind of laughable, but the end of the world was coming. Do you remember this?

RUTH GRAHAM:

I remember it was like 2012, maybe?

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Yeah. That's exactly right, and we were just like, let's try to embed with someone who really believes this and why, and like what it felt like. I was so moved by that story, because, of course, the 80 percent of me that's very just like, oh, come on, you know, this is like ridiculous. But for the person who's was going through a lot of difficult things and really just like, oh, we're gonna be free of that, like something really good is gonna happen. And that's how they understood it, and they understood it as something they could do as a family and they were going to make sacrifices for it and all of this. And then it didn't happen, and telling that kind of the whole arc of it, but not painting people as terrible or stupid, but somehow trying to find good and trying to tell the story in a way that's generous. And I think that your stories have that generosity, and so I really want to commend you for the way you tell stories, and the care that you take with people's stories. So, thank you for that.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Yeah, thank you, I appreciate that.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

And thank you directly predicting everything that will happen in 2025.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Hold me to it.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

Journalist Ruth Graham covers religion, faith and values as national reporter for The New York Times. Her writing is compelling and insightful, and her social media accounts are well worth following. So find them. What are your social media accounts? Tell us.

RUTH GRAHAM:

Oh, I'm @publicroad on Twitter; now I'm more active on Blue Sky, it’s @RuthGraham.

PAUL RAUSHENBUSH:

@RuthGraham on Blue Sky, and so definitely follow on social media. Happy holidays, Ruth, and thank you for being with us today on The State of Belief.

RUTH GRAHAM:

You too! Great conversation, thank you.

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