Sometimes a headline is flashier than the facts. On Monday, the Religion News Service ran a column by Ryan Burge and Rick Richardson titled “Half of Gen Z says Trump support keeps them out of church.” The headline suggests that President Donald Trump is a devastating force of anti-evangelism for American churches. But a closer look at the data raises questions and, if not red flags, at least yellow ones.

An Obsolete Survey

The first yellow flag about the survey results is its date. “The Billy Graham Center Research Institute fielded a survey of 2,365 Gen Z adults (ages 18-28) through NORC’s AmeriSpeak panel between Aug. 9 and Sept. 26, 2024,” Burge and Richardson write.

Unless that’s a typo, the survey is nearly two years old. If it is a typo, Burge and Richardson made the same error in a Christianity Today article (published June 11, 2026), which discusses different data from the same survey and also gives the survey period as “between August 9 and September 26, 2024.”

This curious fact raises the question: why would anyone invest in a survey in the months before a presidential election, then wait nearly two years to publish the results? The question becomes even sharper when considering the survey’s unusually large size, 2,365 respondents. Such a survey must have been expensive to conduct. Why delay its publication?

A variety of possible explanations present themselves. Perhaps unexpected staff turnover disrupted immediate publication. Perhaps the survey was forgotten amid the chaotic busyness that often overwhelms everyday life. Perhaps mission priorities changed. But perhaps now the survey has been rediscovered, and the institution that commissioned it wants to release the findings — better late than never — lest their investment go unrewarded.

Perhaps, perhaps. But, if any of those theories are true, their contrast with other facts would raise further questions. For instance, the Religion News article adds that “the lead investigator for this project was Rick Richardson at Wheaton College.” Richardson’s name appeared in the byline for the article. The subtitle of the article claimed to divulge findings from “a new study,” and the article text itself stated, “We now have data to answer this question …”

If, therefore, through some unfortunate series of circumstances, the results of the survey were shelved for almost two years, why is an article by the project’s “lead investigator” presenting the data as new? If anyone understands the full scope and timeline of the project, it should be Richardson.

The date of surveys is always important, especially when dealing with politics, and especially when dealing with Generation Z. It is even more important in this instance because there are so many intervening events that could have changed people’s opinions. For starters, Donald Trump went from being a private citizen and the target of politicized prosecution to being president once again. His change in status or his conduct in office could have changed respondents’ views. Generation Z was also deeply impacted by the assassination of Charlie Kirk in late 2025, an event which changed many people’s attitudes toward free speech, the family, and politics.

A Failed Contact

The Washington Stand sought to clear up confusion surrounding the survey by contacting Wheaton University’s Billy Graham Center through the phone number on the university contact page. This number led to an automated directory of departments and institutes within the Billy Graham Center. Strangely, none of the options was for the “Research Institute.” TWS ultimately spoke with an operator in a different part of the university who was also unable to direct me to the Research Institute.

When a TWS reporter called the Billy Graham Center a second time, he was unable to even reach the automated directory. The number he reached was “disconnected and no longer in service.” However, TWS did not find anything to suggest that the Billy Graham Center or its Research Institute had been closed. This reporter has no explanation for these perplexing interactions — a second yellow flag.

An Unsupported Narrative

Enough time has been spent on preliminaries. The question all readers really want answered is this: what do the survey results actually show? Unfortunately, this author can provide only a partial answer.

The Religion News piece focused on Gen Zers’ response to the statement, “Christians’ support of Trump has made me less likely to go to church.” On this question, it found that adults from Generation Z were roughly evenly divided, with 48% agreeing and 52% disagreeing. Even when parsed further, the distribution was almost surprisingly uniform: 19% strongly agree, 14% agree, 15% slightly agree, 15% slightly disagree, 16% disagree, and 21% strongly agree.”

The researchers analyzed the data by demographics and found, unsurprisingly, that respondents tended to answer the question differently based on their political affiliation. Two-thirds of Democrats agreed that they were less likely to go to church over Donald Trump, compared to only one-quarter of Republicans.

They also found that agreement with the Trump question was fairly independent of how often respondents actually went to church. According to the data, 40% of those who never went to church said that Christian support of Trump made it less likely, 42% of those who attended seldom, 45% of those who attended monthly, and even 38% of those who attended weekly or more.

This result strongly suggests that Christians’ support of Trump was not the decisive factor in determining whether adults from Generation Z attend church. In fact, the nearly flat distribution suggests that Christians’ support of Trump had almost no impact at all. Thus, what the data show is quite the opposite from the anti-Trump narrative touted in the headline. This constitutes a third yellow flag.

Burge and Richardson seemed to recognize this weakness to devote additional analysis to this theme. “The sample of young adults was broken down into three categories: those who attend church weekly, those who don’t attend weekly but not because of the Trump-Christian association, and those who don’t go to church that much and pointed to the Trump connection as at least one reason making them less likely to show up for Sunday worship.”

With these categories in hand, they found that 21% of Gen Z was “already going to church on a regular basis.” Another 39% were not going to church weekly for reasons unrelated to Trump, while another 40% were not going to church weekly and listed Trump as one of the reasons. “Said simply: 40% of Gen Z said politics was keeping them away from a local church,” the researchers concluded.

An Unknown Number of Alternatives

Yet careful readers may have noticed a key phrase: the Trump question was “at least one reason” for those not going to church weekly to stay away. This implies that the survey asked respondents about multiple reasons for non-attendance at church. Indeed, earlier the authors admit that the Trump question was “buried in a battery about political de-motivators for church involvement.”

Yet they do not even list what the other possible motivators were. The full results are not linked in the article, nor do they appear to be published anywhere else. TWS’s inability to contact the Billy Graham Center Research Institute to obtain a copy means that TWS is unable to provide an independent assessment. For example, did the survey ask whether Gen Zers were turned off of a church for its support of Kamala Harris? What about for issues instead of personalities: abortion, immigration, same-sex marriage — did the survey factor these hot-button issues in?

Based on the categories they set up, Burge and Richardson would have been more accurate if they had concluded, “40% of Gen Z said politics was one of the reasons keeping them away from a local church.” However, not every reason has equal weight in a person’s mind. There were likely some young adults for whom hatred of Trump was paramount. But others may have listed this as a reason because it sounded good, even though their real issue with church is something else entirely. The researchers never attempt to assess or even list the other reasons.

At last, the researchers admit, “it’s important to note that we can’t say if this is the only reason these members of Gen Z are staying away from a house of worship. Their lack of attendance could stem from a variety of concerns based on religious beliefs, life circumstances and any number of other factors.”

If only someone with access to the data had thought to analyze these factors to see whether that were so!

A Null Hypothesis

Surveys are analyzed using statistics. And a fundamental principle of statistics is that results are measured against a null hypothesis. The “null” hypothesis assumes no relationship between the variables being tested. Statistical analysis then tests how likely or unlikely it is for the observed results to be explained by the null hypothesis. If the results are very unlikely (for instance, less than a 5% chance) to be generated by the null hypothesis, then researchers have proven an alternative hypothesis (with, for instance, 95% confidence). Most non-statisticians will likely recognize when this happens by the terms commonly used to describe it: “statistically significant” or “outside the margin of error.”

Burge and Richardson make no mention of a null hypothesis or statistical confidence. The data they do analyze shows that hostility to Trump carried through more or less evenly across all categories, suggesting that the results were not statistically significant. The one exception, obviously, is partisan identity.

In other words, what these data show is not so much that Christian support for Trump keeps young people away from church, but that Americans are widely split over Trump, based on whether they are Republicans or Democrats. This is not a very original or insightful conclusion.

Unfortunately, the most obvious hypothesis — historically, biblically, and socially — receives no consideration in the Religion News piece. Based on everything from historical observation to basic logic, what we should expect to find is this: the foremost determining factor on whether or not a person regularly attends gatherings for Christian worship is whether or not that person is a Christian.

Just as we should expect to find football players on the gridiron and representatives on the floor of Congress, so we should find Christians attending church because they are the ones who have business there. Everyone else is just a guest.

As it turns out, the Gen Z survey did screen for religion, and the researchers do control for Trump support by religion. “72% of atheist members of Generation Z said Christians’ support of Donald Trump has made them less likely to attend a church service,” they listed with progressively lower figures for agnostics (65%), those who identify as “nothing in particular” (55%), “something else” (46%), “Christian (generic)” (44%), Catholic (42%), “other religion” (39%), and Protestant (30%).

What the researchers should have done is measured church attendance by these religious identifiers, and then reported how much of the variance was left to be explained.

The researchers were at least responsible enough to note, “Now, it’s important to note here that we can’t infer from this data whether this [Christian support for Trump] is the primary (or only) impediment for someone showing up to church on Sunday. It’s highly likely that there are many in these three groups who would not come to church for any reason, and the Trump connection is just a factor among many or a tidy way to explain their lack of religious participation.”

A Biblical Principle

Here, they do hint at an important principle: unbelievers often make excuses for rejecting God, even when their real problem is their refusal to repent of sin. “This is the judgment,” Jesus declared. “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). Sometimes, those whose hearts are darkened (Romans 1:21) do not even understand their own reasons for evading the house of God.

Burge and Richardson concluded their piece with a predetermined question, “The question is: Can we estimate what share of Generation Z might be more inclined to show up to church if the association between Trump and Christianity weakened in the years ahead?”

This writer proposes a different question: can we estimate what share of Generation Z is blaming their rejection of Christianity on Trump, when really they are lost in immorality and need to hear the transforming truth of the gospel? If not, then let’s leave the political question on the table, exhort the church to focus on its primary mission, and leave the results to God.