So how can America become more Protestant? That project is not mainly political or even cultural but evangelistic, ecclesial, and catechetical. Churches will need to focus on making new converts, reclaiming lost converts, and teaching their own flocks about the Protestant tradition. They will have to be less afraid to identify as “Protestant” or as some particular Protestant tradition. Nondenominational churches, whether they admit to it or not, are part of a tradition, usually Baptist. They should acknowledge it.

Recently the Catholic editor of a religion journal suggested to me that there be an article on how to make America more Protestant. His point was that America was historically Protestant, with even Catholics becoming to some extent Protestantized. So, a spiritually revitalized America will need to be more Protestant.

It’s an interesting point. In recent years there has been a Protestant “ressourcement” of Reformed thinkers who advocate a Protestant America, often with some version of church establishment. Soft versions advocate a return to Blue Laws (mandatory commercial Sunday closings). Harder versions want Christian doctrine inscribed into civil law or even a state church, if only in the local community. Their argument is that establishment is essential to historic magisterial Protestant teaching, which is true prior the late 1700s.

Of course, established churches are not really part of the post-independence American tradition, except a few New England states for a few decades. Arguably Protestantism was established in the United States unofficially through manners and customs. Public schools included prayers and Bibles. Laws included widely Protestant ethical assumptions without citing specific doctrine. American civil religion was mostly a Protestant project but was sufficiently elastic to incorporate Catholics, Jews, and other theists. Hence, “In God We Trust.” The Trinity and Christ were not specified in public documents.

Strong vestiges of civil religion continue, although the newly elected president is the first chief magistrate in our history who does not commonly employ it. Others certainly will. Protestant assumptions remain pervasively embedded in our culture, unstated but still powerful. Our Constitution and laws, premised on republicanism and a division of powers that distrust human nature and centralized power, remain.

We as Americans assume that each person has a sovereignty and political authority, entitled to voice and vote, which is thoroughly Protestant. Our culture similarly assumes a preference for the outsider, the downtrodden, and the dissident. Rules are respected, but not entrenched hierarchies. The powerful are deemed to be corrupt. Our democracy is a constant state of revolution, overthrowing incumbents in favor of successors who also will soon face revolution. The very wealthy and showily indulgent might gain admiration for a season but usually are ultimately discarded. We generally admire the self-made entrepreneur over inherited privilege.

All these Protestant customs and attitudes likely will continue long into America’s future. But how to make America more Protestant? Church establishment or confessionalism by statute of any sort is foreign to our democratic American tradition. It also is increasingly unlikely with declining church participation. One third of Americans are now religiously unaffiliated (though many of them are still “Protestant” in spirit). Protestants have fallen below fifty percent of the U.S. population. And many if not most of them do not self-identify as Protestant. American Christianity has become post-denominational, with fewer American Christians identifying with any denomination or tradition. Yet, without knowing it, they are Protestants, perhaps more Protestant than ever before.

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