TPM has a long form examination of millennials and their religious affiliation, or more importantly lack thereof.

As we had a very speedy change of collective heart on gay marriage from the 90s to now, religion is poised to have another another massive sea change as one generation expires and newer ones take their seat at the table.

Millennials will have to save us.  Thankfully there’s some evidence they will.  I hope, hope, hope they don’t disappoint me as much as my generation has.  Growing up in the 60s and 70s it seemed to me that my peers were as irreligious and dedicated to progressive values as I was.  But as they got older many of them got old.  By that I mean they became more like their parents and got religion and even became politically conservative, which to me is just crazy.

25% of the population are religiously unaffiliated.  That’s up from 5% in 1972.

They are now the largest “religious” group in the country and the only one growing in all fifty states...

In the 2016 election, the religiously unaffiliated voted 68 to 26 percent for Hillary Clinton and those who never attend church favored Clinton by 62 to 31 percent…

According to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 39 percent of Millennials are religiously unaffiliated. In contrast, 13 percent of seniors said they were religiously unaffiliated…

According to a Pew study in 2015, 70 percent of Millennial Nones who were born between 1990 and 1996 say religion is not important to their lives; and they say they rarely or never pray. And 42 percent of the Millennial Nones say they do not believe in God. These are all larger shares than those for Nones of older generational cohorts.

That’s nearly 4 in 10 without religion, and growing.

It’s hard to see the kind of power grab the Trumpistas are contemplating, trying to cynically reinstate religious values by law as having any effect but a further degradation of religious belief.  Trying to take away choice or attacking marriage equality will only cause a backlash and hopefully finally kill the zombie that is religion as a political force in America.

The article posits that the growth of religion in the 70s and 80s was in response to the 60s, and by the same token the religious right co-option of religion has caused the backlash. That pendulum keeps aswingin’ don’ it?