Key Takeaways
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 37% of Americans believe religion is gaining influence in the nation — the highest share recorded since 2002, and up 19 percentage points in just two years.
Two-thirds of Americans, including majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, say churches should stay out of day-to-day political matters. But 55% view religion’s influence on society positively.
Communio founder J.P. De Gance was quoted in The National Desk’s coverage, arguing that stronger churches — not bigger government — are the answer to America’s deepest social challenges.
De Gance’s core insight: as families fail and churches recede, government has to grow to fill the vacuum. The solution isn’t political. It’s relational.
As America marks its 250th anniversary, the data points to a clear and urgent opportunity for the local church — not to enter the political arena, but to become what communities are desperately looking for: a place where families are strong, faith is lived, and life makes sense.
The Research: Religion Is Gaining Ground — and Americans Notice
A new survey from the Pew Research Center, released just days before thousands gathered on the National Mall for the Rededicate 250 national prayer rally, captured something significant about the current American moment.
The share of Americans who believe religion is gaining influence has jumped 19 percentage points in just two years — now sitting at 37%, the highest level recorded since 2002. And most Americans consider that a good thing: 55% view religion’s growing influence positively, either welcoming its rise or lamenting its past decline.
The National Desk covered the survey in depth this week, asking what the data means for churches navigating an increasingly complex cultural landscape — and reaching out to Communio founder and president J.P. De Gance for perspective.
His answer was direct, grounded, and pointed precisely at the opportunity in front of the local church.
The Core Finding: Americans Want the Church to Lead — Just Not the Way Politicians Do
The Pew data contains an important tension that every pastor needs to understand.
On one hand, Americans are increasingly open to religion’s influence in public life. On the other, two-thirds of Americans — including 61% of Republicans and 71% of Democrats — say churches should stay out of day-to-day political matters. Nearly 80% say churches should not endorse specific candidates.
Read together, those numbers tell a coherent story. Americans are not asking the church to become a political institution. They are asking it to be something far more significant: a moral and relational anchor in a culture that has lost its bearings.
The distinction matters enormously. As De Gance told The National Desk, while most Americans are uncomfortable with overt partisan politics from the pulpit, it is entirely appropriate for churches to form their people — to help them develop the moral framework and convictions needed to evaluate the issues of the day. That is not politics. That is discipleship.
And there is a second, equally important dimension to De Gance’s argument. The survey found that a plurality of Americans — 43% — want the government to promote Christian moral values even without declaring Christianity the official religion. That finding reflects something deep in the American intuition: a sense that the values that have sustained this nation are worth preserving, even by those who don’t attend a church.
The Counterintuitive Angle: The Church Isn’t Competing With the Government. It’s Preventing Its Expansion.
Here is the insight from De Gance’s interview that reframes the entire conversation.
Most of the debate around religion and government gets framed as a competition — church versus state, faith in the public square versus secular liberalism. But De Gance offers a different frame entirely: the local church and the family are not competitors with government. They are the alternatives to its expansion.
His argument, quoted directly in The National Desk, is straightforward: as families fail and churches recede, the government has to grow, because the things that used to be resolved by the family and the church begin to be taken over by the state. More family breakdown means more demand for public services, social programs, crisis intervention, and institutional care. The government doesn’t expand because politicians want it to. It expands because something else has contracted.
That something is the family. And behind the family, the church that was supposed to sustain it.
This reframe carries a powerful implication for how pastors think about their ministry. Strengthening marriages and families isn’t just good pastoral care. It isn’t just good theology. It is, in a very real sense, the most effective civic act a local church can perform — reducing the downstream demand on public systems by building the upstream relational strength that communities run on.
The Church doesn’t need to enter the political arena to shape the culture. It needs to do its actual job — and do it well.
What This Means for Your Church
At Communio, the Pew data and De Gance’s comments point to the same conclusion we’ve reached through years of research and church partnerships across the country: this is the local church’s moment.
Americans are hungry for something the political system cannot provide. They want meaning, stability, and a community that takes human relationships seriously. They want to see faith that is lived, not just declared — faith that shows up in homes, neighborhoods, and congregations in ways that make life measurably better.
That is precisely what a church with a healthy marriage and family culture offers. Not a political program. Not a civic agenda. A community of people who are doing the hard, daily work of covenant love — and who are better equipped to do it because their church has invested in them.
As America marks 250 years this July 4th, Communio is inviting churches across the country to seize this cultural moment. Not by making political statements, but by making a relational one — by becoming the kind of congregation that embodies the answer to the questions the Pew survey reveals Americans are quietly asking.
Strong families are the most powerful witness a local church can offer to a culture in crisis. And they don’t happen by accident. They happen when a pastor decides that marriage and family ministry is a strategic priority — and when a church has the tools, the data, and the community to make it sustainable.
The window is open. The data is on your side. And America is watching.
Take the Next Step
As America turns 250, Communio is equipping churches to lead the relational renewal their communities are looking for — starting with marriages and families.
► Read the full National Desk article → thenationaldesk.com
► Get your free America 250 Church Kit → a250.communio.org
Credit: This post draws on reporting by Cory Smith for The National Desk and data from the Pew Research Center’s May 2026 survey on religion’s influence in American public life. Read the original article here.
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