I think this says as much about the Americans willing to start going to a new church as it does anything else. What’s growing are suburban prosperity gospel nonsense churches with varying degrees of Christian Nationalist subtexts: strip mall churches on the one end, repurposed sports arena hyperchurches on the other. These tell white people in largely white areas that the lifestyle they already live, right down to the fact that they feel most comfortable driving to a pre-fab concrete box, is holy. They get to feel they are safely members of a strong community, and donating to their pastor and the GOP will keep the heathens who would take that from them at bay. The churches understand that people don’t inherently want to throw money into a hole, so they offer a combination of services (including simple socializing with “friends”) and threats, but they meticulously avoid anything boring or asking people to consider open-ended questions without simple answers. As committed evangelicals, they are also always selling this package.

What’s dying are the mainline Protestant churches who made the mistake of taking separation of church and state seriously and trying to earnestly engage with their faith. You’ll find many of them, even if they’re quite socially conservative, are much less sure that they know what their god intends for LGBTQIA+ and nonbelievers, and even if parishioners personally are sure, they will say that kindness and setting a Christ-like example is the best policy because that is the tack their church takes. On the one hand, people of goodwill take from this that they don’t need organized religion in their lives even if they’re still Christian in some meaningful way, and they’ll just show up on Easter or when they have personal spiritual crises. On the other hand, the aggressive culture warriors find it all to be unsatisfying because they want to be told not just what to believe, but that what they already believe is correct and should invoke a literally divine level of privilege.