Most discussion of religious freedom focuses on legal rules, but other factors have an enormous impact. Political alignment, the nature of specific conflicts, and the degree of public knowledge about religious groups and their beliefs can all contribute to outcomes in disputes over religious practices.

Another important factor is the demographics of religious belief and affiliation, particularly as it interacts with these others.

Sociologist Ryan Burge, a professor at Eastern Illinois University and pastor in the American Baptist Church, explains that we now have data on religious beliefs, practice and affiliation – particularly about minority religions – that has never been available before in the nation’s history.

Dr. Burge is a prolific scholar, sharing insights about the practice of religion on Twitter and in books like The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They are Going and the new 20 Myths About Religion and Politics in America.

In a recent interview, Burge discussed some of the findings in his 20 Myths book.

He notes that, contrary to some commentary, “[t]here’s just no statistical evidence that there are fewer evangelicals in America today than there were 30 or 40 years ago.” The evidence for declines comes from using 1994 as the baseline, but using an earlier baseline of 1972, there has been growth in the number of evangelicals, both in numbers and as a percentage of the population.

He also discussed the somewhat surprising data that shows evangelicals supported Donald Trump for president over candidates who shared the faith commitments of evangelical Christians. He describes how actual participation in worship services was more telling than just general affiliation: “if you look at the data, [Sen. Ted] Cruz only won among evangelicals who go to church more than once a week, which is a very small sliver of evangelicals. Trump won among weekly attenders. He won among monthly attenders and yearly attenders and those who never attended.”

Burge notes that membership in these groups is correlated with opposition to immigration and suggests Trump’s strong message on that issue was probably more significant than perceived closeness to voters’ religious beliefs.

Burge’s predictions for the future are particularly interesting. When asked what he thinks will happen in the next five to 10 years, he responds: “More polarization.” Specifically, he observes, “White Catholics are very quickly moving to the right.” He also predicts

more secularization … secular life is going to get bigger and stronger, and the very religious right is going to grow stronger. And in the middle, I think we are going to see the closure of several mainline denominations over the next 10 or 20 years. The ELCA, PC (USA), the Episcopal Church — they are all doing very poorly in terms of membership, especially as the average mainline Protestant is now 60 years old.

This latter point is displayed in an interesting Tweet from a few weeks ago:

So, what does this interesting data all mean for religious freedom?

It could mean that discussions of religious freedom going forward could become more contentious. If personal religious commitment and belief and secular beliefs play a larger role, there is likely to be greater risk of misunderstandings of or even opposition to people who ask for accommodations for their beliefs.

This raises a concern that religious freedom will be more widely understood to be a partisan issue and one party may feel little interest in accommodating religious beliefs, particularly of minority religions when this is perceived as an issue of concern only to the other party.

Another Tweet from Burge points to this challenge:

On the more encouraging side, some type of religious belief is still common among Americans. In the interview, Burge notes:

Honest-to-goodness atheists and agnostics are still a very small portion of the population. By belief, it’s only about 10% of Americans. Here’s an interesting statistic: Among people who never attend church, if you ask what they believe about God, a bigger share says they believe in God without a doubt than don’t believe in God at all.

This could provide an important source of hope for understanding of the importance of religious practice and identity even across partisan divides.

This important data, at any rate, can be a very helpful resource for predicting, and preparing for, potential conflicts for religious freedom in the future.