"For years, headlines have declared the death of religion. But what if we''ve been misreading the data? In The Death of Religion? , Byron Johnson and Thomas Kidd dismantle the myth of decline. Drawing on the largest-ever Global Flourishing Study, which tracked 200,000 people across 22 countries, they show how faith continues to shape lives, communities, and nations--even in places where belief seems to be fading. Their research reveals a different story: that faith still steadies people and communities in ways often overlooked. And yet this is not a book about nostalgia or loss. It is a clear-eyed look at the evidence and a reminder that human flourishing depends not on the survival of old institutions but on the spiritual vitality that keeps renewing them. In a time when cynicism has become a kind of creed, Johnson and Kidd bring an uncommon mix of clear thinking and moral seriousness to a story too often misunderstood." --Jon Clifton, CEO, Gallup "At a time when both major media and many church leaders believe, as gospel, that American Christianity is in decline in the West, two scholars offer a compelling and fact-filled counter-narrative.

In The Death of Religion? , a historian and a sociologist examine both the data and the history of religious movements. Kidd and Johnson''s compelling and groundbreaking work offers hope that not only is decline not inevitable, but the movement breathed out by the Holy Spirit 2,000 years ago is flourishing in many places. If you are a Christian leader and/or you write about religion, you will want this important book." --Daniel Darling, director, The Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary "Drawing on a dazzling range of disciplines and data, Byron Johnson and Thomas Kidd demonstrate that much of what we''ve heard about the demise of religion is unfounded. There are causes for worry, but there are also strong reasons to think that religion remains firmly rooted in American life, let alone around the globe, and that religious people are thriving. They resist both despair and complacence and instead call us toward hope." --Yuval Levin, director of social, cultural, and constitutional studies, The American Enterprise Institute "American religion''s demise has been prophesied by religious and nonreligious naysayers since the beginning of America, as Johnson and Kidd ably recount. The prophecies are never quite vindicated.

But American religion is quixotic and constantly churning, dying, mutating, and growing all at the same time, making its future always hard to predict. The ebbing of America''s once paramount mainline denominations is part of the story, but so too is the emergence of sometimes chaotic and hard to calculate nondenominational churches, many of them out of sight, often founded by immigrants. The story of American religion is never over but always changing." --Mark D. Tooley, president, The Institute on Religion & Democracy "Mark Twain once quipped that ''rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.'' Byron Johnson and Thomas Kidd show that the same can be said for religion. The Death of Religion? is a sharp, data-rich rebuttal to the now-routine funeral dirges for faith in the modern world. Far from withering away, Christianity continues to pulse with social, moral, and spiritual vitality--binding communities, building families, and supplying the moral architecture that secularism cannot replace.

Johnson and Kidd demonstrate that where faith declines, isolation and despair rise; where it flourishes, so too does human life. This is not nostalgia--it''s empirical reality. Religion isn''t dying. It''s doing what it always has: anchoring civilization in a moral order the modern world still desperately needs." -- Andrew T. Walker, associate professor of Christian ethics and public theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and fellow, The Ethics and Public Policy Center.