Thread by @DKThomp

For the past century, Americans prayed far more than every other large rich country.

But in 1990, religious non-affiliation in the U.S. took a sudden turn, which has re-shaped American politics, marriage, and identity.

I wrote about what happened.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

There are three big-picture historical causes:

1) The rise of the Christian Right in the 1970s and 80s, which accelerated Evangelical sorting into the GOP but turned off young liberals.

2) The end of the Cold War, which severed the association btw godlessness and "Evil Empire"

3) As the rise of radical Islam gave New Atheists grist to argue for religion's inherent violence, young liberals also continued to reject the church as a proxy for the illiberal politics, and the perceived theocratic overreach, of GWB administration

Of course, there are some important non-geopolitical causes, too: overall decline in institutional trust, the compounding trauma of so many church scandals, the rise of the Internet.

But the most surprising social cause I heard about was related to delayed adulthood -->