Is Protestantism Going Extinct?

America is witnessing a massive decline in Christianity. While many are familiar with people leaving their denominations, i.e. “nones” or the “unaffiliated”, the data on Protestant decline is shocking. According to data from Gallup’s religion study, Protestantism dipped below 40% in 2023.

While many would attribute this decline to the rejection of “Biblical Worldview(s)” or some other foundational aspect of Protestantism, I would like to propose another possible reason for this decline. To put it bluntly, they are not having enough kids, and their varied authority structures and competing theological commitments prevent them from establishing and normalizing any viable solution.

Share of Americans who identify as Protestant, Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, another religion, or no religion in the United States from 1948 to 2023.

Given the nationwide decline in birthrate, it’s not surprising that we would also see a drop in religious affiliation as well. While the factors for this decline are multiple, there is historical evidence to suggest that Protestantism’s decline is related to their rejection of traditional Christian teaching in favor of Margret Sanger’s teachings on contraception and abortion.

In the early 1920s, Margaret Sanger and her American Birth Control League (which later became Planned Parenthood) challenged [contraceptive taboos] and quickly won widespread acceptance among middle-class Protestants for the use of contraceptive devices…In less than a generation, a once-taboo (and often illegal) practice had become a positive good that was now used by most middle-class Protestant couples, prescribed by their doctors, and endorsed by their pastors.¹

Is it any wonder that as contraception and abortion became more mainstream, we would also see a correlation to the Protestant decline in the country? Margret Sanger was brilliant in targeting the liberal denominations first. By the end of the 1930s, “the overwhelming body of Protestant opinion in the United States was in favor of birth control use, with 85 percent of Americans in 1943 believing that married women should have access to contraceptives…”²

Sins of The Fathers

Scripture says that God sends wrath for generational sin, but it also talks about God showing love to the thousandth generation when they do what is right (Ex. 20:5-6). Christian tradition has always condemned abortion, sterilization, and acts that prevent the conception of a child (i.e. coitus interuptus). But in the 1930s, everything changed when the Anglican Communion permitted the use of contraception for its members. This ushered in a new kind of Protestantism that was based more on modernity than it was traditional morals and principles. One by one, the denominations, including the theologically conservative ones, began to shake off their traditional foundations in favor of a more relevant and modern philosophical approach.

Assuming that Protestantism prefers to be “in the world and not of it”, it is hard to see how they reverse this trend without adopting some kind of Catholic social teaching on marriage and fertility. At the moment, there is very little difference between the moral dogmas of a “good atheist” and a “good protestant”, which essentially amounts to “You do you.” To prove this point, here is a thought experiment called “The Baby Maker 3000.”

The Baby Maker 3000

Economists frequently talk about technological disruption in the public square, but many ignore its disruption in the Church. In short, the chaotic evolution of technology and the moral questions it is raising expose Protestantism’s inability to judge the moral “dos” and “don’ts” of individual Christians.

For example, suppose the year is 2055, and IVF doctors and engineers have now produced a “Baby Maker 3000” — no sexual intercourse required. You can use your own “biological materials” or use a donor’s. Whenever you're ready to have your first child, you just turn the machine on, and it goes to work creating your child. The question for Protestants is, “Is it a sin for a Christian to use this machine to start a family?”

While individuals may have their vociferous opinions, individual opinions do not matter on this sort of thing. Without authority, no opinion can become normative behavior. To be sure, there is a morally right answer and a morally wrong answer to this question, but people will search the scriptures in vain to find a Bible verse that says “You can’t use the Baby Maker 3000”. One may think this is a silly example, but Protestantism has already demonstrated it lacks the moral tools within itself to establish objective moral prescriptions, that is moral truths that are true for all Christians. One of the most obvious examples is contraception and abortion.

The moral confusion on this issue is even more evident when we look at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In 1971, at the height of the abortion debate, they encouraged their members to,

…work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother…³

The fact that Protestants have been a cultural surrogate for contraception and abortion ethics is a serious mark on their credibility, not because their members failed to live up to their doctrines and morals, but because they had exchanged the ideas of religious authority for religious subjectivism. One thinker believed that this leads only to one of two places, paganism or Catholicism. His name was Alexis de Tocqueville, also known as “America’s Philosopher.”

Is the Future Pagan?

During his travels in the 1830s, the Catholic Frenchman and political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville made several prophetic observations about America’s social, political, and religious future. One of these is around the nature of religious pluralism in America and man’s need for it to stabilize. Tocqueville observed that men need the “fixed ideas” of life to be settled for them or else they would fall into a nihilistic confusion.

Men have, therefore, a huge interest in creating fixed ideas about God, their soul, their general duties toward their creator and fellow men; for any doubt about these first concerns would put all their actions at risk and would condemn them in some way to confusion and impotence.⁴

When the ideas about God and morality are no longer fixed, man descends into moral and theological chaos. When you convert to Catholicism, this becomes crystal clear as each Protestant’s reason for you not to convert contradicts the next Protestant’s reason for you not to convert.

Tocqueville recognized that the teaching of the Church was necessary for a nation to remain Christian, otherwise it would revert to paganism.

I am drawn to the belief that the number of those people will be smaller in democratic times than in others and that our descendants will tend increasingly to divide into only two parts, some leaving Christianity entirely and the others embracing the Church of Rome.⁵

This is one of the miracles of the Catholic faith, and it testifies to its truth. While it may have its wolves within it, the teachings of the Church on morality and dogmas remain a beacon of light to destroy the darkness of a technological dark age where morality is obscured and our most base desires satisfied on demand. Contraception and abortion were the straw that broke the “camel’s back”, and the fruits of this decision are being observed in real-time as we witness, not just the decline of Protestantism, but the decline of all groups that seek to avoid “religion” in favor of a worldview made in their own image.

For the moment, Catholicism appears to be remaining consistent relative to the rest of the religious trends. But as Protestantism continues to decline and technology continues to introduce new moral dilemmas, the nation is likely to become a more techno-pagan culture and one less friendly to Catholics. Regardless of how dark the times get, we should continue to use this time to help our fellow Christians see the error of this transhumanist ideology and the ways it’s infected their ranks.

The Blessed Mother, when she appeared to St. Bernadette, said “I do not promise to make you happy in this life but the next.” If we are to serve Christ to the fullest, we too must remember that these words are not just for Bernadette but for all of us. This is something we should all remember as we enter these dark woods.

— DR.

1. Williams, Daniel K. Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade (p. 13). (Function). Kindle Edition.

2. Ibid. 14.

3. Southern Baptist Convention Resolutions on Abortion, accessed Feb. 15, 2025.

4. Tocqueville, A. de, & Bevan, G. E. (2003). Democracy in America: And Two Essays on America (I. Kramnick, Trans.). Penguin. 510.

5. Ibid. 519-520