Bill Donohue

We often get complaints from members who live in apartment complexes or condominiums that homeowners association managers are too restrictive in dealing with religious symbols at Christmas. We decided to do something about it.

We have spent weeks putting together an email list of over 2,000 Homeowners Association managers. We are contacting them today. Here is the text of the letter.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, it is important that the religious rights of owners be observed. The Federal Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 prohibits discrimination by housing providers on the basis of seven characteristics, one of which is religion. Before 1968, HOA managers had a lot of leeway in enforcing policies that restricted religious practices, but that changed when the FHA was passed.

As interpreted by the U.S. Department of Justice, the FHA permits religious decorations on doors and in common areas. This would include a Jewish mezuzah and a cross. “Similarly, when condominiums or apartments have a common room that can be reserved by residents for private activities like parties or book studies, residents seeking to hold a Bible study or other private religious activity may not be discriminated against.”

It should be noted that the Eleventh Circuit has stated, “the Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed us to give the Fair Housing Act a ‘broad and inclusive’ interpretation.’” In other words, the religious rights of residents are presumptively protected.

What the courts take seriously is any selective enforcement of HOA rules. For example, to allow a menorah but not a nativity scene, or vice versa, is a clear violation of the FHA. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ruled that a menorah is a religious symbol (even if it is not solely religious in nature). The crèche is also religious, but a Christmas tree is not—it is a secular symbol. This needs to be said because every year there are instances where these kinds of violations occur.

HOA managers have greater latitude in adopting restrictive rules for balconies. Balconies can be kept clear from displaying religious symbols; they are not analogous to doors or common areas. However, even if the rule is “facially neutral,” there can be a violation of the law if there is evidence of an underlying intent to discriminate.

In conclusion, there should be no attempt to favor one religion over the other, nor should there be any intent to discriminate.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season.

William Donohue, Ph.D.
President
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
450 7^th Ave.
NY, NY 10123

We often get complaints from members who live in apartment complexes or condominiums that homeowners association managers are too restrictive in dealing with religious symbols at Christmas. We decided to do something about it. On November 19, we contacted over 2,000 of these officials, alerting them to the rights of their residents. Here is the text of the letter.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, it is important that the religious rights of owners be observed. The Federal Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 prohibits discrimination by housing providers on the basis of seven characteristics, one of which is religion. Before 1968, HOA managers had a lot of leeway in enforcing policies that restricted religious practices, but that changed when the FHA was passed.

As interpreted by the U.S. Department of Justice, the FHA permits religious decorations on doors and in common areas. This would include a Jewish mezuzah and a cross. “Similarly, when condominiums or apartments have a common room that can be reserved by residents for private activities like parties or book studies, residents seeking to hold a Bible study or other private religious activity may not be discriminated against.”

It should be noted that the Eleventh Circuit has stated, “the Supreme Court has repeatedly instructed us to give the Fair Housing Act a ‘broad and inclusive’ interpretation.'” In other words, the religious rights of residents are presumptively protected.

What the courts take seriously is any selective enforcement of HOA rules. For example, to allow a menorah but not a nativity scene, or vice versa, is a clear violation of the FHA. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ruled that a menorah is a religious symbol (even if it is not solely religious in nature). The crèche is also religious, but a Christmas tree is not—it is a secular symbol. This needs to be said because every year there are instances where these kinds of violations occur.

HOA managers have greater latitude in adopting restrictive rules for balconies. Balconies can be kept clear from displaying religious symbols; they are not analogous to doors or common areas. However, even if the rule is “facially neutral,” there can be a violation of the law if there is evidence of an underlying intent to discriminate.

In conclusion, there should be no attempt to favor one religion over the other, nor should there be any intent to discriminate.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season.

William Donohue, Ph.D.

President

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

We hope this will minimize these problems this year. They now have no more excuses.

We wanted to display a Christmas message on billboards, but we got shot down. So we came up with a new idea—alerting Homeowners Association Managers to the religious rights of residents. Here’s what happened to our billboard idea.

In September, we contacted a company that deals with outdoor marketing in Washington, D.C., hoping to run a Christmas message on billboards, the back of buses, bus shelters, etc. We wanted to take advantage of the new religious-friendly atmosphere in the nation’s Capitol.

Unlike the Biden administration, which allowed the FBI to spy on faithful Catholics, the Trump team has not only put an end to this tyrannical scheme, it has promoted a host of religion-friendly policies. We wanted to capitalize on this without being too partisan, which is why we never mentioned anything specifically about the current administration. Here was our proposed message:

Christians Take Note. Religious Liberty is Thriving Again. Celebrate Christmas Like Never Before!

The woman we spoke to thought it would be okay, but knowing that we were dealing with D.C. officials, we asked for it to be cleared with their lawyers first. She got back to us, saying, “It looks like that messaging is about 50/50 in terms of being approved. I think if you took out ‘Christian’ in the ‘Christians Take Note’ and just had ‘Take Note’ it would have a better chance.”

We refused to bend to these anti-Christian bureaucrats. They really do fear us.

The greatest child abuse scandal of our day is the exploitation of minors who want to “transition” to the opposite sex. Genital mutilation, chemical castration, hormonal manipulation—the very stuff of sex-reassignment surgery—are being promoted and carried out by adults who are in it for ideological or financial profit, or both. Seeking to normalize abnormal conditions is cruel and needs to end.

There are lots of parties to this problem, but no one is more responsible for seeking to normalize transgender abnormalities than the Biden administration. To pave the way for acceptance of abnormal sexual expressions, his minions decided to pan normal sexual expressions.

For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs initially banned the iconic photo of a World War II sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square; the couple were celebrating the end of the war with Japan in 1945. The Biden folks branded it “inappropriate behavior,” claiming it no longer fits the “values” of the VA.

The “values” that the Biden team embraced were not the values that most Americans wanted. To take one example, consider Biden’s choice for Assistant Secretary for Health.

Biden chose a man who falsely claimed to be a woman, Richard Levine. He went by the name Rachel, dressed like a woman, and looked like one too. But he could never change his XY chromosomes. So he lived a fictional existence, and the “Catholic” president was proud to promote it.

Policy wise, the Biden team reinterpreted “sex” discrimination in Title IX to include “gender identity.” This meant that it was okay for boys to compete against girls in sports and to use the same locker rooms and shower facilities. In a more sane time, this would be called misogynistic, but now it was being heralded by modern-day feminists.

Kamala Harris was so enthusiastic about this issue that she said illegal immigrants who were imprisoned, and wanted to “transition” to the opposite sex, should have their procedures funded by the American people. She said that in 2019. When asked in 2025 if she still held to that position, she said yes. In fact, she dedicated a whole chapter to this in her new book.

Everyone knows that only women can get pregnant, but to admit this is to ratify what nature has ordained. There’s the rub: the LGBTQ crowd is angry at nature, and at nature’s God, so they pretend that men can also get pregnant.

The 2024 Democratic Party Platform referred to pregnant women in prison as “pregnant inmates.” The legal and medical elite were already on board: the ACLU and the AMA both referred to “pregnant” people. The same logic led failed VP candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to put tampons in the boys’ bathrooms.

A Rasmussen survey found that 70 percent of Americans are concerned about school-age children being exposed to sexual material that is not age appropriate. But it is an uphill battle.

“LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts have been assigned to kindergarten students in some schools. Another storybook for the little ones that is being used is about a transgender child who is shown in a sex-neutral or sex-ambiguous bathroom. She boasts, “My friends defend my choices and place.” She makes it plain that she prefers to be referred to as “they/their/them.” Gay marriage is not just discussed in these books—it is celebrated.

Why do homosexual men dressed as women—so-called drag queens—demand that they perform before children?

They went to court over this “right.” Their performances include sexually explicit acts. They sued Tennessee after the state restricted drag performances when children were present (the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law). The drag queens said they were defending free speech, but what they were really defending was the right to engage in lewd acts in front of children. Why is this so important to them? This is one step away from pedophilia. It is not speech.

Harvard used to be a university where serious learning took place. No more. In the spring semester, a class will be offered on drag queens, and next fall there will be one on “Queer Ethnology.” They will be taught by a visiting professor, LaWhore Vagistan, a drag queen star.

The Emmy Awards are given each year to the best TV programming. This year the show featured several drag queens who crashed the red carpet. It had nothing to do with the purpose of the event, but it did have much to do with the kind of moral destitution that Hollywood is known for. The goal was to normalize abnormal behavior.

Those promoting this sick agenda are among the most intolerant people in America. In a recent study of free speech on college campuses, it was revealed that discussions about transgender issues are not welcome; students are afraid to speak about them. That’s because defending normalcy is considered taboo by the guardians of higher education.

Normalizing transgender abnormalities is a dangerous and despicable enterprise. It leads to the sexual exploitation of children, ruining them physically and psychologically. Indeed, it is evil.

The Catholic League has launched a new project, “Mamdani Watch,” that will track the words and deeds of Zohran Mamdani, the left-wing extremist who will become mayor of New York City on January 1. It is posted on our website. So who voted for this 34- year-old inexperienced left-wing radical? His only true competitor was Andrew Cuomo, the former state governor.

Mamdani won 50.4 percent of the vote; Andrew Cuomo received 41.6 percent; and Curtis Sliwa picked up 7.1 percent.

The two most important demographic segments who voted against him were Jews and Catholics. Jews voted for Cuomo over Mamdani by a margin of 63 percent to 33 percent; Catholics split the vote 53 to 33 percent, respectively. Among those with no religious affiliation—who are second in size to Catholics—Mamdani won 52 percent of them.

Mamdani walloped Cuomo with the two least sophisticated segments of the voting population, namely first-time voters and young people. He won 65 percent of the former and 62 percent of voters under 30. The older the voter the more likely he was to vote for Cuomo. No matter, seniors were outdone not only among the youngest voters, middle-age voters also broke for Mamdani.

The socialist led the field among those of every race and ethnicity, save for white voters (Cuomo won by 1 percent). An impressive 62 percent of Asians voted for the man of mixed African and South Asian ancestry. Blacks voted for Mamdani over Cuomo 57 percent to 38 percent, and the split for Latinos was 52 to 39 percent.

Men did not turn out to vote (they are 48 percent of the New York City population but they made up only 44 percent of voters) and they chose Mamdani (50 percent) to Cuomo (41 percent). Women are 52 percent of the NYC population, but they accounted for 55 percent of the voters; 50 percent voted for Mamdani, and 43 percent went for Cuomo. Mamdani creamed the field among young women voters—they are the most radical segment of the electorate— winning an astonishing 84 percent of them.

Mamdani tapped into a lot of economic fears. For example, New Yorkers said that their number-one issue was the cost-of-living, and Mamdani ran on a campaign to make New York “affordable.” Yet it was the affluent— upper-middle class voters not pinched by living expenses—who voted for him in high numbers (some polls said he lost those in the highest income bracket but others called it a dead heat).

Ironically, low income voters wanted nothing to do with him— they voted for Cuomo. Did they sense that Mamdani was a phony who could not deliver on his Alice-in-Wonderland economic policies? If so, perhaps they can give the rest of New Yorkers a reality check and explain why socialism always cripples the poor.

More ironies. Mamdani’s basket of goodies—free bus fare, free child care, a rent freeze—cannot be done without raising taxes. Yet 60 percent of voters said raising taxes will “hurt the economy.”

So is Mamdani being realistic when he sports his budget-busting policies? No. Only 44 percent of voters said his polices are realistic. Cuomo, by contrast, was believable—58 percent said his policies were realistic.

In other words, a majority of New Yorkers voted for a man whom they believe (a) can’t do the job (b) will pursue measures that will hurt the economy, and (c) will promote policies that are unrealistic. Hard to find more irrational voters.

We know from survey data that the poor are more patriotic than middle class and upper-class Americans. Maybe they can run another tutorial for them on this subject. Consider what happened on Veterans Day.

New Yorkers voted for a man who has a very hard time celebrating America’s greatness. He did not march in the New York City Veterans Day Parade, as did the current mayor, Eric Adams. Virtually every mayor in NYC has marched in this parade, but Mamdani did not want to be seen honoring our veterans. His base would not like that. So he shared a meal with veterans in the Bronx.

Patriotic Americans will always be horrified by what happened on 9/11. For Mamdani, the nearly 3,000 who were killed by Islamists are a footnote to what this day means. He sees “Islamophobia” as the number-one problem. “Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, I have known what it means to live with an undercurrent of suspicion in this city.”

More recently he has said that his aunt was too afraid to wear her hijab in public after 9/11. Besides the fact that she is his cousin, not his aunt, it is striking what really bothers him about that fateful day. To be exact, what radical Muslims did to innocent Americans seems not to bother him as much as alleged incidents of anti-Muslim bias.

Let’s face it. Mamdani is more at home smiling with his friend, Siraj Wahhaj, the Islamist linked to terrorist activity in the U.S. than he is smiling with veterans marching up Fifth Avenue. That says it all.

Our “Mamdani Watch” is being launched because the Marxist Muslim Millionaire is now the new face of the most radical members of the Democratic Party. But don’t worry about him becoming president—he was born in Uganda.

On November 9, California Governor Gavin Newsom called out Vice President JD Vance for allowing the poor to go hungry. He invoked the Bible to make his case. He made his comments to Jake Tapper on the CNN show, “State of the Union.”

The Daily Beast, a left-wing media outlet, said, “Newsom Rips New Catholic Vance for Denying Food to Poor.” It noted that Newsom was a “Tried-and-tested Catholic,” and Vance was a “newbie” Catholic.

What prompted Newsom to lash out at Vance was the suspension of SNAP benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. He never mentioned that SNAP has run out of money. With good reason: for 15 consecutive times, the Democrats in Congress voted to keep the government closed. Only now are they back in the game.

This kind of bickering is commonplace among politicians, but what is different this time is that Newsom brought religion into the mix, essentially saying he is the model Catholic, not Vance.

“I mean, Old Testament, New Testament,” he told Tapper. “What’s the fundamental thing that connects every—I mean, from John to Matthew to Proverbs? It’s this notion of hunger, feeding the poor, the sick, the tired…it’s not an option, it’s central to advancing God’s will.”

The Daily Beast is wrong. Newsom is not a “Tried-and-tested Catholic.” Even he admits he is not. In fact, he calls himself a “secular Catholic.” Those must be the type who play bingo in a Church basement while rarely going upstairs.

There is good reason why Newsom is not a real Catholic. Real Catholics do not pretend to be interested in the welfare of children, as Newsom does, and then champion child abuse in the womb. Mr. “Cultural Catholic” has never found an abortion he couldn’t justify, and loves to brag how he is the strongest advocate of abortion in the nation. In October, he took $140 million of California taxpayer’s money and gave it to Planned Parenthood, the behemoth abortion mill.

Newsom is shameless. He even invokes God’s name to justify the killing of innocent unborn children. In 2022, after Mississippi and Oklahoma passed restrictive abortion laws, he promoted billboards in those states that wrapped his support for abortion in Scripture. “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.” Mark 12:31.

Other children who are not safe from Newsom’s policies are those who are sexually confused and seek to undergo sex-reassignment surgery—the governor argues that these minors should be allowed to go through with this madness over the objections of their parents. Removing the genitals of children is something he finds humane.

Was it also humane when he killed his own mother? The night before he and a few others put her down in 2002, Newsom was so kind as to make her dinner. He gave her hard-boiled eggs. He finished her knowing that assisted suicide was against Californian law (it wasn’t legalized until 2016).

Now, of course, Newsom is lecturing Vance about what the Bible has to say about caring for the “sick.” Evidently, in his book caring for the sick includes killing them.

If Newsom had any guts, he would tell us what he really thinks about Catholicism and stop repairing to it to justify his passion for killing the innocent. But he is not man enough to do so. That’s what we would expect from a “cultural Catholic.” Bingo anyone?

Transgenderism, the pernicious ideology that holds that sex is a social construction and the sexes are interchangeable, was formally rejected again by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on November 12 at their biannual meeting in Baltimore. On the same day—this is not a coincidence—ten “progressive” religious bodies, consisting of some Protestants and Jews, signed a statement affirming everything the Catholic bishops rejected.

The USCCB made it clear that Catholic medical care will do what it can to serve those who are suffering from gender dysphoria, but it cannot approve operations that deny what God has ordained. The directive explicitly says that “Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function.”

In other words, Catholic health services do not include sex-reassignment surgery, genital mutilation, chemical castration, puberty blockers and all procedures that are inimical to our God-given nature.

By contrast, the “landmark” statement signed by ten “progressive” religious groups, which include the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Union for Reform Judaism, embraces “transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people.”

It would be more accurate to say that they embrace those who identify as such, because in reality sex is binary. Gender ideology, or transgenderism, is anti-science and should therefore not be given a mantle of legitimacy. The Catholic Church has its share of problems, but given the contrast between what the USCCB has reaffirmed about nature and nature’s God—as compared to what these anti-science religions teach—we are delighted to stand with the bishops.

On November 4, at New York’s Plaza Hotel, Glamour magazine held its 2025 “Women of the Year” ceremony. But no one really cared about the celebrities being honored, and that’s because all of them were women. It’s just too mundane to matter.

What sells is honoring men who falsely claim to be a woman. That is what the November U.K. Glamour did: on the cover are photos of men who pretend to be women; they are being honored as “Women of the Year.”

Why do those who work at the U.K. offices at Glamour hate women? It cries out for an honest answer.

If there were a cover story recognizing the achievements of blacks, featuring “African Americans of the Year,” and every one of the honorees was white, wouldn’t this be labeled racist? Why, then, is it not misogynistic to honor men who are deemed to be “Women of the Year”?

Aside from J.K. Rowling in the U.K., and Megyn Kelly and Allie Beth Stuckey in the U.S., there has been little pushback against this attack on women. Where are all the feminists who for years have been telling us that men occupy positions of privilege, denying women equal rights? In a perverse shift, it is now feminists who are championing the evisceration of women’s rights, promoting the interests of men who are out to destroy them. These are the new misogynists.

This fall, Glamour writer Stephanie McNeal blasted the men who harassed Irish golfer Rory McIlroy, and his wife Erica Stoll, at the Ryder Cup golf tournament held on Long Island. Many of them were rude beyond belief. McNeal didn’t hold back. “Let’s call a spade a spade: The behaviour was pure misogynistic abuse, and it’s a growing movement in American culture right now.”

Yes, it is time to call a spade a spade. We can begin by explaining why it is misogynistic to mistreat McIlroy’s wife, but it is not misogynistic to mistreat women who would make splendid candidates for “Women of the Year,” instead recognizing men who falsely claim to be a woman. What’s worse—catcalls or discriminating against women?

It is not as though McNeal hasn’t thought about this subject. Back in January she wrote a piece for Glamour titled, “Misogyny Is 2025’s Biggest Trend.” She gave as an example Mark Zuckerberg telling Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy.” Another example of misogyny is removing tampons from men’s bathrooms (she did not say why the guys never complained). Abortion restrictions, which protect females in the womb as well as males, are also labeled misogynistic.

“Masculine energy” shows contempt for women. Removing tampons from men’s bathrooms shows contempt for women. Protecting the unborn shows contempt for women. But denying high-achieving women the right to be considered “Women of the Year”—awarding that right exclusively to men—does not show contempt for women.

Mainstreaming delusion has never been more chic.

Kara Dansky is a left-wing feminist activist of the old school, meaning she does not suffer from delusion. She is the author of The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls. She maintains that transgender is “a made-up concept,” one that it is really a “men’s rights movement.” Indeed, she says, “It is left-wing misogyny on steroids.”

She agrees with J.K. Rowling that we are living in the one of the most misogynistic times in recent history. That the biggest misogynists are feminists, working to promote men’s rights at the expense of women’s rights, is something previous feminists never fathomed.

On the cover of the October edition of Ebony magazine, the prominent black publication, eight young men and women were featured in a story on “The Next Wave of HBCU Leaders in Beauty.” HBCU stands for “Historically Black Colleges & Universities.” All of the young men and women were black. Had they been white, Ebony would fold.

But Glamour will survive, and that’s because the new misogynists have proven to be triumphant. To put it differently, if the savants who work there can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman, then how can they be sure they are right when they complain that women are being mistreated? How do they know they’re a woman?

The divide between Americans who are religious and who are secular (religiously unaffiliated) is dramatic: it is evident in all aspects of the culture. That is one conclusion that can easily be drawn by the data provided by the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study. This is the third such national study, the earlier ones being in 2014 and 2007.

Demographic Profile

Christians comprise 62% of the population; 40% Protestant, 19% Catholic and 3% other Christians. Another 7% belong to a religion other than Christianity, and 29% are religiously unaffiliated.

While the share of those who are Christian has declined since 2014, it has slowed and may even have leveled off.

Among the 7% who belong to a non-Christian religion, approximately 2% are Jewish and 1% each are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

Among the religiously unaffiliated, 5% are atheist, 6% are agnostic and 19% identify as “nothing in particular.”

Here are some of the findings that detail the secular-religious divide.

Political Ideology

Consistent with other surveys, this study found that “The most highly religious Americans are also the most Republican, conservative.” Conversely, secularists are overwhelmingly Democrats.

When it comes to Americans who identify as conservative, moderate and liberal, overall 33% are conservative, 38% are moderate and 24% are liberal. The only groups with a majority who identify as liberal are atheists (67%) and agnostics (57%). As we shall see, this has significant consequences.

Science and Religion

Is there a conflict between science and religion, as is often portrayed by the media and those in education? Religious Americans do not see it that way—it is those without a religious affiliation who believe there is. “Among Americans with low levels of religious engagement, 73% say science and religion are mostly in conflict, roughly twice the share of highly religious Americans who take the same position (35%).”

While the authors of this study do not say why, from a Catholic perspective there is no inherent tension between believing what God has created and a scientific understanding of the universe. Indeed, it was Catholic scientists during the Scientific Revolution who sought to appreciate the scientific basis of God’s creation.

But for atheists and agnostics, who discount the existence of God, all they have to fall back on is science, which they believe has nothing in common with God’s creation of the universe. This belief is central to their dogma.

Government and Helping the Poor

Do secularists care more about the poor than religious Americans? Many of those in the chattering class, who tend to be secularists, believe this is the case. They point to reports like this Pew study as proof.

It is true that this study shows that “Highly religious Americans are less likely to say the government should give more help to people in need.” It is also true that “Two-thirds of U.S. adults with low levels of religious engagement favor a bigger government that provides more services.” In fact, “72% of atheists say the government should provide more assistance to those in need.”

Not so fast. As Bill Donohue pointed out in his book, The Catholic Advantage: How Happiness, Health and Heaven Await the Faithful, the social science evidence is clear: religious Americans are the most charitable and altruistic; secularists are the least generous and the least altruistic.

The reason why secularists score so poorly on these variables has much to do with their belief that government—not private individuals or religious organizations—should provide for the poor. So of course they appear to be more concerned about the poor when they say government should do more to help them. They are the least likely to write a check or volunteer their services.

Morality

On moral issues, the religious-secular divide is astounding. Is it better for one parent to stay at home to focus on the family? Most Americans (55%) say it is, and the more religious someone is the more likely he is to agree. The only ones who disagree are those who score “low” on this variable. So telling.

Should homosexuality, transgender people and abortion be accepted by society? Christians are the most likely to disagree. It is secularists who are the most accepting. This speaks to the premium which secularists put on individual autonomy, in contrast to the premium which religious Americans put on traditional moral values.

The more religious someone is, the more likely he is to say there are “clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong.” Secularists are naturally moral relativists: to admit there are clear moral standards is to beg the question— according to whom? By definition, they cannot answer, “God.”

Religious Americans are the most likely to believe that public school teachers should lead their classes in nonsectarian prayers; secularists, of course, disagree. Secularists also oppose religious displays on public property. It’s too bad respondents weren’t asked if they opposed them on private property.

A strong majority of Americans believe that churches and religious organizations enhance community bonds, help the poor and strengthen morality in society. That says a great deal.

We are a divided country, and much of it is reflected, if not caused, by the religious-secular divide.

The divide between Americans who are religious and who are secular (religiously unaffiliated) is dramatic: it is evident in all aspects of the culture. That is one conclusion that can easily be drawn by the data provided by the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study. This is the third such national study, the earlier ones being in 2014 and 2007.

Demographic Profile

Christians comprise 62% of the population; 40% Protestant, 19% Catholic and 3% other Christians. Another 7% belong to a religion other than Christianity, and 29% are religiously unaffiliated.

While the share of those who are Christian has declined since 2014, it has slowed and may even have leveled off.

Among the 7% who belong to a non-Christian religion, approximately 2% are Jewish and 1% each are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

Among the religiously unaffiliated, 5% are atheist, 6% are agnostic and 19% identify as “nothing in particular.”

Here are some of the findings that detail the secular-religious divide.

Political Ideology

Consistent with other surveys, this study found that “The most highly religious Americans are also the most Republican, conservative.” Conversely, secularists are overwhelmingly Democrats.

When it comes to Americans who identify as conservative, moderate and liberal, overall 33% are conservative, 38% are moderate and 24% are liberal. The only groups with a majority who identify as liberal are atheists (67%) and agnostics (57%). As we shall see, this has significant consequences.

Science and Religion

Is there a conflict between science and religion, as is often portrayed by the media and those in education? Religious Americans do not see it that way—it is those without a religious affiliation who believe there is. “Among Americans with low levels of religious engagement, 73% say science and religion are mostly in conflict, roughly twice the share of highly religious Americans who take the same position (35%).”

While the authors of this study do not say why, from a Catholic perspective there is no inherent tension between believing what God has created and a scientific understanding of the universe. Indeed, it was Catholic scientists during the Scientific Revolution who sought to appreciate the scientific basis of God’s creation.

But for atheists and agnostics, who discount the existence of God, all they have to fall back on is science, which they believe has nothing in common with God’s creation of the universe. This belief is central to their dogma.

Government and Helping the Poor

Do secularists care more about the poor than religious Americans? Many of those in the chattering class, who tend to be secularists, believe this is the case. They point to reports like this Pew study as proof.

It is true that this study shows that “Highly religious Americans are less likely to say the government should give more help to people in need.” It is also true that “Two-thirds of U.S. adults with low levels of religious engagement favor a bigger government that provides more services.” In fact, “72% of atheists say the government should provide more assistance to those in need.”

Not so fast. As Bill Donohue pointed out in his book, The Catholic Advantage: How Happiness, Health and Heaven Await the Faithful, the social science evidence is clear: religious Americans are the most charitable and altruistic; secularists are the least generous and the least altruistic.

The reason why secularists score so poorly on these variables has much to do with their belief that government—not private individuals or religious organizations—should provide for the poor. So of course they appear to be more concerned about the poor when they say government should do more to help them. They are the least likely to write a check or volunteer their services.

Morality

On moral issues, the religious-secular divide is astounding. Is it better for one parent to stay at home to focus on the family? Most Americans (55%) say it is, and the more religious someone is the more likely he is to agree. The only ones who disagree are those who score “low” on this variable. So telling.

Should homosexuality, transgender people and abortion be accepted by society? Christians are the most likely to disagree. It is secularists who are the most accepting. This speaks to the premium which secularists put on individual autonomy, in contrast to the premium which religious Americans put on traditional moral values.

The more religious someone is, the more likely he is to say there are “clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong.” Secularists are naturally moral relativists: to admit there are clear moral standards is to beg the question— according to whom? By definition, they cannot answer, “God.”

Religious Americans are the most likely to believe that public school teachers should lead their classes in nonsectarian prayers; secularists, of course, disagree. Secularists also oppose religious displays on public property. It’s too bad respondents weren’t asked if they opposed them on private property.

A strong majority of Americans believe that churches and religious organizations enhance community bonds, help the poor and strengthen morality in society. That says a great deal.

We are a divided country, and much of it is reflected, if not caused, by the religious-secular divide.