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Only if they can hold enough of those kids. Mainstream religion is collapsing in America. On a long enough timeline that might lead to a society of tradcaths and Hasidics. But at the moment those are niche communities. The "mainstream" religious don't appear to be sustainable.
I don't think that this is true – non-denominational churches (which I would think are often but not always right-wing evangelical coded) are actually growing. And attending evangelical types typically have a positive tfr, IIRC.
Some groups (like the Southern Baptists, IIRC) are undergoing narrowing (perhaps temporary as Baby Boomers and the Silent Gen decline?) and of course retention rates are not perfect (so a high tfr does not guarantee continued adherence.) But I think that modeling a mild downturn in attendance to infinity is as naive as modeling a mild upswing to infinity.
Regardless, just going by current trendlines, I think we can expect evangelicals to continue to be a "live player" group. They're often overlooked in favor of the Amish or tradcaths because the Amish are basically a far-group to most internet users and tradcaths have a lot of momentum, so they are more fun to talk about, while evangelicals' day in the sun ended with Bush 2, but evangelicals never actually went anywhere.
I wouldn't necessarily predict it but I think there is actually a very good chance that evangelicalism (defined broadly, and perhaps throwing in a few Protestant denominations that wouldn't consider themselves evangelical but nevertheless have many of the same characteristics) is actually the Religion of the Future in America. Very plausible to see them cannibalizing the mainstream denominations as they enter tailspins, pick up tradpilled younger Gen Zs, and make massive inroads into traditional Catholic territories.
Yes Evangelical churches are growing in a large part because they are scooping up converts from the collapsing mainline denominations. Religion as whole in the US is still declining, but the Evangelicals do present an interesting data point as the rest of US mirrors the secularization of Europe and Evangelicals don't It's possible that the Evangelicals stop the tide or even reverse it. My guess is they'll hold steady they have a high fertility rate but a high defection rate of the youth and secular culture has a strong pull. They are also massively less influential than they were in the 80s and 00s and they'd have to work pretty hard to get that power back.
There have been some signs that the decline is tapering off. I would not be shocked if it continued to slide, but I also would not be shocked if it didn't go lower.
Of course part of this is the question of "what counts as religious"? The rise of the nones, for instance, hasn't really corresponded with the rise of secular atheist types (and many nones indulge in religious practices) - so has the decline of religion been essentially false, and it's just been that organized religion is on the decline? Or do we really need to look at practice and church attendance? That seems like a more serious and better measurement in many ways (as I understand it it actually is a better predictor for many religious benefits) but does that unfairly discount religious practices that are by their very nature disorganized? There's some methodological questions there. I'd simply confine myself to observing that the "decline of religion" mostly doesn't mean "the rise of secular liberal atheism" or anything like that. It means people aren't going to church, not that they have become transhumanist Star Trek liberals or something.
One notable difference since the 00s, I think, is that evangelicals will be more comfortable being in a political coalition with Catholics, and even Mormons and Muslims. They're still going to have serious reservations, but Obama-era liberalism made the misstep of putting "conservative religious people" broadly on the same team in some areas. I think this is tremendously important - all the little parts of these coalitions have their own organizations and patronage networks. Exercising political power is not just about counting heads, you need networking and institutions, and "all religious groups in the US that are relatively conservative" is much more powerful a coalition than "evangelicals."
Yeah the nones are tricky. I still suspect they are a psyop by the liberals to raise the number of secular people but I nevertheless think they are a useful category. Someone who will tick the box Christian when given the choice between Christian and Atheist but none when that is presented is definitely not a standard believer but neither are they a capital A secular Atheist as the term is. I feel most "disorganized religious practice" is too disparate and ironically disorganized to accurately measure via polling and statistics without something like in depth interviews.
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That sounds like regular selective pressure. The communities that can maintain fertility will be the ones that dominate in the long run.
You can model the sexual revolution as a heritable fertility disease for which a small segment of the population was immune or had attenuated effects, even if the source of their resistance was cultural rather than biological.
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