Will the End of Protestantism Be the End of America?

Emmanuel Todd's grim prognosis in The Defeat of the West

French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd was the first person to have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He noted that, unusually, its infant mortality rate was rising, and that they had even ceased publishing that statistic. Based on this and other data, he concluded that the Soviet Union had entered “the final fall.”

In something of a parallel to that work, his new book, La défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), published in January, says that the West is on track to lose the conflict in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, this was received poorly by critics who accused him of repeating Kremlin propaganda.

What caught my attention was that Todd blames the fall of Protestantism for unleashing a crisis in the heart of the West itself. And that this rather than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the true source of our problems. He writes, “The real problem facing the world today is not Russian will to power, which is very limited. It’s decadence at its American center, which is unlimited.” (You can see why people hated this). I read the book for myself to see what he had to say about Protestantism.

My earliest readers will know that that I’ve been learning French. I’ve mastered enough to essay Todd’s book, but am still sub-fluent. So you should validate the translations I provide here before relying on them, as they are a mixture of Google Translate and my own work.

Much of Todd’s research work has focused on the influence of historic family structures on ideologies. For example, he argues that the Russian family structure created a social state that was amenable to communism. Russian families were strongly patriarchal, and all of the sons lived with their father. This created an ideal of, simultaneously, authoritarianism (of the father) and equality (between the brothers). Communism was, in a sense, an embodiment of this type of social order.

There’s a copious amount of discussion about family structures in this book, but Todd adds to that an overlay of religion. He sees Protestantism, rather than the market, industry, or technology as the heart of the modern West. Its most critical impact was a drive for universal literacy, so that all the people could read the Bible in their own language. It also created the famed Protestant work ethic. An educated, industrious populous led to the takeoff of economic growth in Protestant countries. Indeed, Protestant countries were the most advanced industrial economies in Europe and basically remain the leaders. (Todd believes France benefitted from being adjacent to a band of Protestant nations).

If Protestantism brought positives to Europe, it also introduced the idea of inequality in a profound way, through its idea of the elect and the damned. Hence Protestant countries also created the worst forms of racism (as in the United States) and antisemitism (as in Germany). He cites the fact that Protestant areas of Germany were more supportive of the Nazis than Catholic ones.

The root of the nation state is also in Protestantism, not in the French Revolution or anything of that nature. He writes, “With Protestantism, there appeared peoples who, by too much Bible reading [in their vernacular], believed themselves chosen by God."

In this analysis, he seems to basically be recapitulating Max Weber, of whom Todd describes himself as a student.

Protestantism Active, Zombie, and Zero

If Protestantism lies at the heart of the West, then the disappearance of Protestantism is a crisis for the West.

Todd divides religions in modern societies into three states: the active state, the zombie state, and the zero state.

In an active state, people attend church regularly. They have families on the Christian model, and they do not cremate their dead. (Christianity has always frowned on cremation as denying the hope of the resurrection of the body).

In a zombie state, people no longer attend church regularly, but still turn to the church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Critically, in a zombie state, people still hold to the habits and values of the old religion. So in a Protestant zombie state, people would still have the Protestant work ethic, place a value on literacy (education), etc. They largely retain Protestant practices around family and avoiding cremation. Especially they retain “the ability for collective action.”

In a zero state, people no longer even have church weddings or funerals. They don’t have their children baptized. In the zero state, the habits and values of the old religion have disappeared. People embrace cremation. And they abandon the Christian family structure. Todd sees the arrival of “marriage for all” as marking the definitive point of arrival at a religious zero state.

I did not note exactly when he said the United States entered a Protestant zombie state, but it encompassed the first part of the twentieth century up until about 1965. Todd notes that the zombie Protestant era was very good for America, with an extended period of triumph from FDR to Eisenhower. But that does not mean a zombie state always produces good outcomes. He also sees Nazism as arising out of a Protestant zombie state in Germany.

Around 1965, America entered a transition phase towards a zero state. In his treatment of the UK, Todd illustrates the loss of the habits and values of Protestantism by pointing to a softening of the culture of the English public schools (which, confusingly to Americans, are actually their most elite private schools). The same phenomenon occurred to a lesser extent here at elite prep schools and colleges. We see the transition in a few phenomena. One has been steady grade inflation over time. Todd cites figure showing that students spend significantly less time studying today than they used to as well. Another is the loss of the ethic of public service and self sacrifice. Many of the graduates of those schools fought, and even died in World War II. Rather than go directly to college, George H. W. Bush joined the Navy right after graduating from Phillips Andover to fight as an aviator in the Pacific theater. By Vietnam this became the exception. A recent newsletter from Matthew Yglesias on why colleges students need to study more covers similar territory here.

But just as the positive qualities of Protestantism began to unravel, so did the negative. In particular, Todd see the civil rights movement and the entire subsequent efforts toward full social and economic integration of blacks into mainstream society as a product of Protestant decay. To him, racism and discrimination against blacks were not just regrettable byproducts of a Protestant belief in inequality, but played a core function in structuring American society. Putting blacks into the role of “the damned” in society was what allowed there to be equality among whites themselves.

With the Obergefell decision in 2015, the transition phase ended and America definitively arrived at a Protestant zero state.

I’m more going to present Todd’s theories than attempt to rigorously analyze them, but it is worth noting that there are things one could critique here. For example, while there may have been a base level racial equality among whites, all whites were certainly not viewed as equal, as prewar Catholics and Jews could attest.

Also, the 1950s are supposedly part of the Protestant zombie era, and yet that was the high water mark of church attendance in the United States. Todd pooh-poohs the idea that America has been that distinct from Europe on that front. He says research shows people inflate their church attendance levels in surveys. But no one disputes that the 1950s were an era of high church attendance.

Todd also brutally dismisses the evangelical movement, seeing it as heretical and not really Protestant at all. But the only source he cites for that take is Ross Douthat’s book Bad Religion, which does not suggest he has a sophisticated understanding of American evangelicalism.

That brings up one of the key weaknesses of Todd’s analysis of America. His analysis of contemporary America leans heavily on writers like Douthat, names that are known and are legitimate, but are in an important sense dissident or peripheral. Others in this vein that he refers to are Joel Kotkin and John Mearsheimer. This will weaken the credibility of his arguments with many American readers who defer to mainstream consensus authorities - although those reading here definitely cast a wider net that includes dissident sources. American evangelicals, of course, are likely to discount critiques coming from Catholic commentators like Douthat.

I was particularly struck that Todd’s framework aligns quite well with my own three worlds model. The transition from zombie Protestantism starting circa 1965 is also when I say the status of Christianity (especially Protestantism) starts to go into decline in America. That transition phase covers my Positive and Neutral Worlds. His Protestant zero point begins at the essentially the same time I identify the start of the Negative World.

If you are looking for a different way to describe the current era than my Negative World concept, the idea of a Protestant zero state is one that would work. The idea of zombie/transition phase/zero state decay is also an alternative framework for parsing recent American socio-religious history.

The Implications for America

Todd believes many of the negative contemporary trends in America are a product of this Protestant decline.

He believes that the arrival of a Protestant zero state has produced a culture of nihilism in America. He notes, for example, America’s falling life expectancy and growth in so-called deaths of despair. He also makes much of America’s infant mortality rate, one of his favorite statistics, an area where he thinks we are doing poorly.

It’s not just about the problems plaguing the citizenry though, but the way America’s leadership has responded. He writes, “But the most astonishing thing is that the rise in mortality has gone hand in hand with the highest health care costs in the world.”

Though not from the book, this graphic from Le Monde Diplomatique is stunning. It overlays life expectancy (squares and circles) with per capita health care spending (bars). America (Étas-Unis) is an incredible outlier here, spending by far the most per capita while having much lower life expectancy than most advanced economies and being one of the very few whose life expectancy has declined.

What’s especially nihilistic about this is that a portion of our health care spending itself is devoted to actually furthering death in the population. Todd says:

It is now that the relevance of the concept of nihilism is going to make its full appearance: Anne Case and Angus Deaton show that the increase in mortality occurred while part of this health expenditure was devoted to the destruction of the population. I am referring here to the opioid scandal. Large pharmaceutical companies, supported by well-paid and unscrupulous doctors, have made available to patients in mental and emotional pain, for economic and social reasons, dangerous, addictive painkillers, very frequently leading to direct death, alcoholism or suicide.

Not only that, but Congress actually passed legislation to make it very difficult for federal agencies do anything to reduce the flow of opioid pills:

In 2016, Congress, controlled by these lobbies (which are legally and officially part of the American political system), passed the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, which prohibits health authorities from suspending the use of opioids.

He says this shows that America has arrived at a point of “zero morality,” a theme that recurs in the book. This is shown again in how, while comparatively little action is taken against opioid deaths, there’s immense focus on sending ever more billions in aid to Ukraine.

At the same time, in the case of Ukraine, we struggle to produce sufficient armaments to keep up with the Russians. This one of the “ten surprises” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that prompted him to write the book. One of the most astounding stats in it is that Russia only has 3.3% of the combined GDP of the Western allies - yet it is out producing us in terms of artillery shells and other critical military supplies.

This shows that America has dangerously deindustrialized. Todd acknowledges that the US is still a major producer of raw materials such as oil and gas, and that it is still the leader in producing the most advanced new technologies. But the industrial center between those has been hollowed out.

These situations prompted him to question the actual economy of the United States. How much of the Gross Domestic Product is actually “Real Domestic Product?” Take health care. If the world’s highest health care spending by far produces such poor results, doesn’t that indicate that much of it is illusory in terms of actual economic output? He even goes through a back of the envelop calculation that I’m sure economists will find ludicrous to estimate that our true GDP per capital is only $39,520, not its nominal level of $60,800.

The hollowing out and offshoring of our industrial base is part of how America has become dependent on high trade deficits with foreign countries to enable American consumption. Should this be forcibly ended, it would mean a major decline in the American standard of living. (He thinks that foreign countries are tiring of this arrangement because, although they have undoubtedly benefitted from it in terms of rising incomes and building up their middle class, they have also been turned in to a kind of externalized proletariat of the West, a status they are aware that they hold).

His prime example of nihilism is not falling life expectancy or a hollowed out industrial base, however, but the fact that America increasingly denies reality. He sees this paradigmatically in transgenderism. Todd is a man of the left, albeit a heterodox thinker. He supports abortion, gay marriage, and even the right of people to change their gender presentation. But he sees the idea that a man can really, truly become a woman or vice versa as a clear denial of reality. This denial of reality extends to other areas as well, such as international affairs.

Todd’s litany of ills in American society goes on and on:

• He says America is no longer functionally a democracy but rather a “liberal oligarchy.” The needs, desires, and preferences of the people can be, and often are, ignored. He seems to have in mind here growing dominance by the super-rich.

• America hit a critical tipping point in its share of the population with college degrees. When the level of higher education in a society hits 25%, this class becomes entrenched as dominant, and inequality soars. It destroys the egalitarian sensibility crated by universal literacy, shatters the idea of a “collectivity,” and religious and ideological values splinter. Social atomization rises.

• He notes at at the same time the college degree attainment rate has risen, SAT scores are falling, IQ is falling, and the amount of time spent studying is falling.

• John Rawls said that inequality could only be tolerated to the extent that it benefits the poorest. But Rawls didn’t really start becoming popular until the 1980s, and especially during the 1990-2006 period - exactly when inequality was soaring and taxes on the rich were being cut. America’s elites espouse Rawlsian values while promoting extreme inequality and catering to the super-rich. This is another expression of nihilism. He wonders if is “a sort of economic-philosophic-satanic ritual.”

• There are also phenomena ranging from rising obesity to mass shootings.

He says that any real Protestants left in America would likely say that their country has experienced a major “fall from grace.”

Protestantism Zero and the Character of the People

Rather than just a list of problems facing America, we should put it together into a picture of how the character of the American people have changed.

In the character of the masses, we see the impact of a Protestant zero state in the rollback, and in some cases reversal of the old Weberian Protestant values. The white working class especially has become severely degraded, as charted by writers like Charles Murray and Robert Putnam. Adding together what Todd lists with other common observations and we see: declining real education levels, a severely atrophied work ethic, obesity and other health issues, declining church attendance, sexual incontinence/dysfunctional family life, and growing despair (as seen in the opioid crisis). We also see things that the pervasiveness so tattoos that previously would have been anathema to old WASP standards.

The impact of a Protestant zero state should be seen as a systemic factor here. It’s not that these people became this way because they personally lost their faith. That would suggest, as would surely be popular among some, that their own choices or defects in their own character are to blame for what has happened to them. Rather, the habits and values of Protestantism have disappeared from American culture. And a de-Protestantized elite did things like destroy the economic base of the white working class, and let the opioid companies run wild.

Todd’s analysis shows why the conservative think tank quest to restore “bourgeois values” is a pipe dream. Bourgeois values are a modernized version of zombie Protestant values. They cannot be revived or sustained in the absence of a Protestant culture (something Todd does not believe is possible to bring back).

In the character of the elite, we see that they’ve become a post-national, post-imperial collection of individuals. They are no longer a class leading the people of their country.

He contrasts today’s elites with the old WASP upper class:

It is routine to make fun of WASPs. And it is true that this upper class, like any ruling class, carried all kinds of ridiculous prejudices. The fact remains that it had a morality and made demands. Between 1941 and 1945, its youngest members were sent, like the rest of the mobilizable population, to war in Europe or the Pacific. They were, like Roosevelt, from this enchanted little world that had not hesitated to impose tax rates rising up to 90% on the upper income brackets.

John Rawls, by the way, had come from WASP stock.

The WASPs had a moral code, which included both good and bad elements, and set an overall direction for society. Todd says, “The end of the [WASP] power elite, in a climate of zero morality, was accompanied by the disappearance of any ethos common to the ruling group.” Instead of that common ethos, today’s ruling class, which Todd denies the title of elite, has “a dynamic of pure power.”

Todd notes that the leadership of America today, such as the senior leadership cadre of the Biden administration, is disproportionately non-WASP in ethnocultural origin, though no one group predominates. It no longer has a cultural or moral center, and is incapable of setting a direction for the country. It is no longer a group but a collection of self-interested individuals. He says:

The United States had been led, between 1945 and 1965, by a homogeneous, coherent elite, united by personal ties. It preserved what was good about Protestantism and controlled what was bad. It submitted, like the rest of the population, to a common morality. It accepted military service - the “blood tax” - and taxes in general. It pursued a responsible foreign policy focused on the defense of freedom…Today, the Washington village is nothing more than a collection of individuals, completely devoid of common morals…..In fact, these individuals only exist in relation to each other; they no longer determine their actions and decisions by referring to external and, above all, higher values: religious, moral, historical. Their only consciousness is local, that of a villager. The observation is very worrying: the individuals who make up the ruling group of the greatest world power no longer obey a system of ideas that transcends it but react to impulses coming from the local network to which they belong.

The net result:

The election of Trump, champion of vulgarity, then that of Biden, champion of senility, will have been the apotheosis of this zero state. Washington's decisions have ceased to be moral or rational….In fact, American hubris begins at the very moment when zombie Protestantism disappears and the country plunges toward religious zero state.

Protestantism and American Decline

Todd makes few specific predictions about the future apart from the defeat of the West in Ukraine. But he clearly has a very negative view of the trajectory of the United States.

As I said, I’m more presenting than analyzing his arguments here, so I’ll merely say that I’m much less bearish on America than he his.

Our country has repeatedly managed to update and reconstitute itself in the face of major crises. There no guarantee that we’ll do it again this time, of course, but I think it’s very possible that we do. I am personally long the USA.

At the same time, the problems Todd highlights are very real, particularly in the changes in the culture and character of the American people and the decline of its leadership class. These have to be faced, and the collapse of Protestantism is the elephant in the room in understanding them.

I’ve noted before how little contemporary analysis takes stock of the fundamentally Protestant founding and character of the United States. You’re much more likely to hear someone describe America as having a Judeo-Christian heritage than a Protestant one.

But Todd, agree with all of his takes or not, reminds us that America is inextricably bound up with Protestantism specifically, in both its good and bad elements. So we should take stock of what the collapse of Protestantism means for the country. Many things that we like to think of as simply American or Western are in fact products of, or heavily shaped by, Protestantism in particular.

As I’ve said with regards to the Negative World, there’s no rolling back the clock. So it is here. Rather than bemoaning the loss of the products of America’s Protestant culture, and engaging in a futile attempt to try to somehow shame the country into adopting bourgeois values in the absence of the religion that produced them, perhaps we should instead look at what we can realistically do from here with the pieces that are actually on the board today.

Cover image credit: Oestani, CC BY-SA 4.0