Friends and family have often stated that I have a good memory.  For me, having only one data point, my memory is ‘average’, though many will dispute that.  I have referred to my memory as a virtual landfill of information, though in retrospect that doesn’t fit either.  The term “landfill” implies that it is filled with garbage, or items that are no longer useful.  Instead, I’ve come to compare the ideas bouncing in my head to a large tub full of Lego bricks.  Each brick has the potential to construct a much larger cohesive structure.  The same is true about the ideas in my head.

Today, we’ll return to high school biology.  “Wait, what?!”  That’s right, high school biology (and maybe a bit of algebra and chemistry sprinkled in).  The lesson of diffusion in biology is that particles move from a higher concentration to a lower concentration.  Furthermore, they also taught the lesson of osmosis, which is diffusion through a semipermeable membrane.  I’ll admit that I remember a rather unhealthy quantity of high school lessons.

Hence, if we rule out the possibility of creating certain substances, like a precipitate in chemistry, then we can safely assume that there is a finite amount of a particular type of particle.  Much like dissolving salt into water.  Sure, it’s dissolved, but it’s still in the water.  You don’t create (or destroy) the salt from the solution even if you don’t see it.  Allow the water to evaporate, and you’ll get the salt back.

The Christian population in the US

The United States is steadily becoming less religious.  I do not state this to draw your ire; they’re simply the measured statistics since the 1970s.  Over that time, until about 2022, Christianity’s share dropped from 90% to 63%.  Furthermore, the “religiously unaffiliated” group has changed from 5% to 29%.  Finally, the “other religions” group remained largely the same.

Just take a closer look at that graph; the two line graphs are nearly perfectly horizontally symmetrical.  Christians have soured people from religion onto “religiously unaffiliated”.  Nearly everyone who has become “religiously unaffiliated” has left Christianity.  What is perhaps even more interesting?  That rate of conversion is increasing.

In fact, if we were to compare the Christian subgroups (Catholics, evangelical Protestants, etc.) to the “none” group, the latter is the largest group.  Wrap your head around that, there are more “nones” than there are Catholics.

Christianity careens towards extinction.  It is the Titanic after smacking into the iceberg.  Are you jumping into the “religiously unaffiliated” life raft?  At this rate, the “religiously unaffiliated” may outnumber Christians by about 10-15 years.  Yes, you too can be the person who non-nostalgically wears bell-bottom jeans and tie-dye shirts.

You could try to bring them back. However, that would entail admitting that you were wrong about some things, like homosexual and transgender people.  Don’t worry, you’ve had a long history of being wrong.  We can start with the Flat Earth thing.  Or the entire Earth can’t possibly orbit the sun because it breaks the “Earth is the center of the universe” belief.  Let’s not forget classifying that idea as heresy and threatening Galileo.  Was the church wrong about those?

No, that’s too scientific and much too long ago.  How about something more recent, like using scripture to justify slavery?

Increasing the Christian population

We’re just now getting to the crux of our dilemma.  Let’s say you truly believe that we’re collectively better served if a larger portion of our country were Christian, that our country was founded on Christian principles, and that passing laws supporting a Christian state is a good thing.  Incidentally, I disagree.  The very first clause of the First Amendment is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Therefore, a Christian nation or laws that favor Christianity are, by definition, unconstitutional.  The United States, as the Founding Fathers intended, is a non-religious country.  This founding principle was literally the first clause in the First Amendment; it is that important.  If you don’t like it, take it up with them.

Though let’s say for the sake of argument that you want to strengthen the influence of Christian people by increasing the population.  How do we increase the percentage of Christian people in the US?  Let me start by saying that bringing back those you have alienated into “religiously unaffiliated” is unlikely to work.  Even trying to seduce everyone else will increase by a whopping 6-7% of the population, and it is also unlikely to work.

By all means, the easiest way to increase the percentage of the Christian population in the US is to add them to the population, not to convert non-Christians into Christianity.

How the math works

The United States’ population is about 330 million people.  Christians number around 63% which makes that around 208 million people.  Let’s say that you want to increase the Christian population to 64%.  You can’t simply add 1% of 330 million (or 3.3 million) Christians to the population, because you’re affecting both the numerator and denominator.  Let’s do some algebra:

(208 + X)/(330 + X) = 0.64, and solve for X

X ends up being around 9.2 million.  If you add 9.2 million Christians to the US, you’ll end up bumping the figure to 64%.  This is not that difficult.  However, suppose that the people that you’re bringing in are not 100% Christian, but just a very high percentage, like 91%.

Here’s the biology reference from the start of the post; you could try diffusion.  Here’s a good video demonstrating diffusion.  As long as the concentration of Christians is higher among those you add, you will continue to increase (until you match the higher number).  Let’s do the math again:

(208 + (.91)X)/(330 + X) = .64, and solve for X

X ends up being around 12.2 million.  If you add 12.2 million people who are 91% Christians, you’ll reach 64%.  However, where do you get them from?  That’s easy; you import them.

As it happens, Mexico is over 91% Christian.  Just allow 12.2 million Mexicans to come into the United States, and you’ll reach 64%.