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A Shifting America with a New Minority

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In the time since President Barack Obama was elected, the nation has experienced a dramatic shift and, according to new numbers, white Christians are increasingly becoming the minority.

"We've gone, just in the last eight years, from being a majority white Christian country to a minority white Christian country," explained Robert Johns, author of The End of White Christian America.

"I should be really clear here, that means if you take all white Christians - so, Protestants, Orthodox, non-denominational - everyone who identifies as a white non-Hispanic Christian," he added.

In 2008 white Christians made up 54 percent of the population. Today, they make up 45 percent.

White couples aren't having enough babies to keep up with birth rates of other races and immigration rates. There is also an increasing number of whites, especially Millenials, who are leaving the church.

Jones mentions in his book that white Christians are having a kind of identity crisis and a sense of real anxiety of not only what this means for the church but what it means for the country.

During the eight years white Christians have been on the decline, the culture has changed dramatically. Gender identity issues are impacting schools, Christians are facing unprecedented levels of persecution, and gay marriage is the law of the land.

"I do think the issue of gay marriage is a real bell weather issue here," Jones said. "I mean it's an issue that conservative white Christians were pretty much all in opposing from very early on, from the 70s on. And it's an issue...that has kind of been lost - it's been lost in the courts, it's been lost in the court of public opinion."

Eight years ago 40 percent of Americans supported same sex marriage, but today 53 percent support it.

Jones hopes his book serves as a guide to the signs of the times as there is a sense that something different is being felt across America and it is materializing along both racial and political divides.

Although his book isn't about the presidential race, his findings help explain what is fueling the "Trump train."

"I think this anger that we're seeing is rooted more in the sense of anxiety about cultural change and this sense of nostalgia for a time when conservative, white Protestants were more central (to) the American story, more central to American culture and had their hands frankly (on) more levers of power of the American political system," Jones noted.

Nearly 80 percent of white evangelicals feel Christians are being discriminated against in America. More than two thirds believe discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups.

Racial unrest and division are being exposed in a new way and Jones said that one of the challenges white Christians face is how to connect with African Americans on these issues.

For instance, 80 percent of black Christians say recent killings of black men are part of a larger pattern of how police treat African Americans, but only 29 percent of white evangelicals agree.

No matter where you fall along the graph, the fact is America's Christians are still mostly segregated and it explains at least some of the angst that's behind the headlines.

"You know Martin Luther King was famous for saying 11 a.m. on Sunday was the most segregated hour in America. Today, still 90 percent of churches are essentially mono-racial churches so there's not so as much as the connective tissue between those two worlds of Christianity," Jones said.

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About The Author

Jennifer
Wishon

Jennifer Wishon es la corresponsal de CBN News y su trabajo se basa en el Buró ubicado en Washington D.C. Jennifer Wishon es la corresponsal de CBN News en la Casa Blanca y su trabajo se basa en el Buró ubicado en Washington D.C. Jennifer se unió a CBN en Diciembre de 2008 y fue asignada a la Casa Blanca en Enero de 2011. Antes de tomar el ritmo de la Casa Blanca, Jennifer cubrió el Capitolio y otras noticias nacionales, desde la economía hasta el derrame del Golfo de México en 2010. Antes de unirse a CBN News Jennifer trabajó como corresponsal en el Capitolio para WDBJ7, la afiliada de CBS en