America is still full of churches, but increasingly empty of Christians.
For the first time in our nation’s history, fewer than half of U.S. adults claim membership in a house of worship. The number of Americans identifying as Christian has fallen sharply over the past two decades, from nearly 80% in 2007 to just over 60% today. At the same time, the religiously unaffiliated, commonly referred to as “nones”, have surged to nearly one-third of the population.
The cultural implications are as significant as the numbers. Church attendance has cratered. Baptisms have declined. Christian marriages and large families, once hallmarks of American life, are increasingly rare. And yet, paradoxically, some churches seem to be growing. Megachurches have multiplied, their parking lots full and their branding slick. Worship is louder. Pastors are better dressed. The production value rivals a Netflix special.
But the growth is deceptive. It is not revival. It is consolidation. A remnant continues to seek spiritual depth, but the culture that once sustained that pursuit has fractured under the weight of something deeper. Something economic, civilizational, and largely undiagnosed by the church itself.
To understand why Christianity is declining, even as a handful of churches boom, we need to look beyond theology and into the structure of modern civilization. Specifically, we need to consider the economic concept of time preference.
In Democracy: The God That Failed, Hans-Hermann Hoppe makes the provocative claim that the shift from monarchy to democracy leads inevitably to a rise in societal time preference. Put simply, time preference is the degree to which people favor present consumption over future reward. A low time preference culture is one that defers gratification, saves and invests, prioritizes long-term outcomes, and values legacy. A high time preference culture, by contrast, is impulsive, short-sighted, and driven by immediate gratification.
Hoppe argues that democracy elevates time preference because it severs responsibility from authority. Monarchs think generationally, they own the kingdom and want it to endure. Democratically elected officials, by contrast, operate on short election cycles and have every incentive to consume future capital to win present votes. They mortgage the long-term well-being of a society for short-term gain. Over time, this filters down into the culture, raising time preference across every domain of life, from politics to economics to morality.
In the last two decades, America has undergone a time preference supernova. We have experienced unprecedented manipulation of our economic foundations. Zero percent interest rates, quantitative easing, and unlimited consumer credit have all conspired to eliminate the incentives for saving, planning, or sacrificing. The cost of capital was distorted. Discipline was punished. The result is a civilization unmoored from time.
Fiat money doesn’t just distort markets, it distorts moral formation. It conditions people to expect reward without effort and consequence without cost. When time preference rises, the institutions that depend on long-term thinking begin to fail. And Christianity is the first casualty.
The Christian faith is inherently low-time-preference. It teaches restraint, suffering, patience, and eternal reward. It commands believers to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth. It asks them to walk by faith, not by sight. It imposes moral standards that make no sense unless viewed through the lens of eternity. It frames marriage as covenant, parenting as discipleship, and vocation as stewardship. In short, Christianity requires a people who are willing to deny themselves now for something they cannot fully see or receive until later.
But such a posture is incomprehensible in a high-time-preference culture.
When the average person has been trained to think in terms of likes, instant deliveries, and monthly payment plans, the idea of self-denial becomes foreign. When inflation erodes the value of savings, why would anyone invest in a child? When technology trains the mind for novelty, why would anyone persist in the long obedience of prayer, study, and covenant community?
The visible results of this shift are everywhere. Marriage has collapsed. Fertility has fallen below replacement levels. Children are viewed as economic burdens. Family is delayed or abandoned altogether. Churches lose younger generations not just because of bad doctrine or lack of relevance, but because the very premise of Christian life, delayed gratification for eternal reward, has become alien to the modern mind.
Even among the churches that appear to be growing, there is a hollowing out. Megachurches have absorbed the faithful from smaller congregations, but the long-term metrics continue to decline. Baptisms are down. Volunteerism is down. Discipleship is superficial. The Sunday show remains, but the slow work of sanctification has been replaced by spectacle. This is not the fruit of revival. It is a consequence of market consolidation, consumer dynamics shaping ecclesial form.
Christianity cannot flourish in a high-time-preference environment. It is fragile in prosperity. It withers in decadence. It survives, indeed thrives, under persecution and hardship because those conditions reintroduce what abundance tends to erase: the reality of future consequence and the necessity of enduring truth.
This is not simply a matter of cultural strategy. The crisis is deeper than that. The problem is not that our sermons aren’t relevant enough or that our branding isn’t fresh enough. The problem is civilizational. We are living in a fiat democracy that rewards short-term thinking and penalizes every behavior associated with long-term virtue. In that environment, Christianity becomes unintelligible to the masses. Not because it is false, but because it is too costly.
What then is to be done?
If Hoppe is right, then the way forward is not to fight for control of the current system, but to defect from it. The church must rediscover its role as a parallel society, an alternative kingdom living within, but not of, this one. The family must become once again the basic unit of production, education, and discipleship. Localism must replace globalism. Craft must replace consumption. Savings must replace speculation. Children must be seen not as burdens, but as the most profound form of legacy-building available to man.
This will not happen through national campaigns or celebrity revivals. It will happen slowly, quietly, and locally, until it doesn’t. Because sometimes, providence breaks through history in moments we don’t expect. And sometimes a man’s death can become the spark for a cultural reawakening.
In the days following Charlie Kirk’s death, something extraordinary happened. For the first time in my life, I witnessed media figures, political leaders, pastors, and influencers speak not in hollow platitudes or partisan soundbites, but with spiritual clarity. They spoke of legacy. Of eternity. Of covenant marriage, fatherhood, and the kingdom of God. They spoke of Charlie not as a brand, but as a believer. A man who modeled conviction in an age of compromise. Who built platforms not for his ego, but for the movement.
And for a moment, however brief, it felt like the veil lifted.
What emerged in that moment was not just grief, but a glimpse of the parallel society we’ve been longing for: a culture of low time preference. A people willing to sacrifice for truth. Men and women who fear God more than algorithms. Institutions built not for scale, but for faithfulness. I believe we saw, however faintly, the beginning of the remnant.
Charlie’s life and legacy testify to the possibility of what can happen when Christianity is lived, not branded. When eternity shapes ambition. When discipline is greater than charisma. And when the long arc of history is trusted over the fickle churn of headlines.
If we want to reverse the decline of faith, family, and culture, we must lower our time preference. And that begins not with economic policy or political reform, but with spiritual resolve.
The church of tomorrow will be formed by men and women like Charlie. Willing to stand apart, live intentionally, build slowly, and give everything to something they will not live to see.
That is how civilizations are reborn.
