The latest Pew polling of people who claim to be supporters of either Biden or Trump was released on June 6, 2024. In the extensive report, there are the predictable points of disagreement over issues like immigration, gender, race, gun ownership, and other hot button social issues.

However, there is one point on which the majority of both camps agree: religion. Specifically, the importance of religion not being too deeply embedded in American politics. The following tables are telling on this point. The top table shows that the majority of supporters of both candidates agree that government policies should neither support religious values and beliefs nor be greatly influenced by the Bible. The bottom table shows that the majority of supporters of both candidates agree that belief in God is not necessary for someone to be morally good.

On the bottom table, while there are some groups that have a majority that think belief in God is necessary for morality, almost all of these groups identify as being religious. And, even among these groups, the majority is not large: only between 52 – 59% among white Evangelical Protestants and 57 – 59% among Black Protestants. This suggests that even a large portion of those who identify most as religious are still heavily persuaded by the idea that religion, and specifically the Christian religion, should not have preferential political treatment.

This agreement is especially stark given how significantly different Biden and Trump supporters are on all other issues. This leads to a couple of possible conclusions:

First, Americans have largely bought into the logic of secularism being impartial, especially in a pluralistic culture. This idea suggests that religious thinking is necessarily partisan toward a specific religion and therefore is something that must be avoided in favor of a secular government that will treat all religious groups equally. There is much to be considered here, but a short response to this is that, if we have concluded that color-blindness is not an effective way to deal with race issues in the United States, why would we think that “religion-blindness” in the form of a secular approach to religion would be better? Like the former, the latter tends to lump all religions together without consideration for their uniqueness or the way they form people. The result is an even worse misunderstanding than at the outset.

Second, even religious adherents are divorcing their understanding of the political and social issues of the day from their religious beliefs. To put this another way, rather than religious convictions being the controlling beliefs that form how people think about all other issues, religious convictions are a secondary set of belief controlled by how people align themselves politically. So, how a person plans to vote and thinks about immigration, gun control, and other issues will determine the kind of religion that person claims to have rather than the religion determining how a person will think about various issues. This is not surprising given the rise of people who are claiming to be Christians but who are not practicing (see research done in The Great Dechurching on this, especially among Evangelical Protestants).

Regardless of whether the above two ideas are accurate, what is true is that Americans backing both candidates have found a point they agree on, and it is one that should give Christian leaders across the theological spectrum in the United States pause. If nothing else, it lets them know that, when it comes to the real world work of running a country, most Americans think that neither their teachings nor their God are necessary.