"What I want to do is complexify the story and claim it in its complexity because the invitation to white people is to step out of the myth of how we talk about ourselves and step into the particularity of our story. In order to make the transition in which white people become the minority in this country, we need to tell truer stories about our history."

In his exploration of how white Americans can tell more accurate stories about their histories, listen to Chris Scharen describe his family's history as a descendant of the Ingalls Wilder family and some of the important but often forgotten context for the popular Laura Ingalls Wilder books.

“One doesn’t begin an investigation of one’s whiteness lightly. Yet for the rest of my now middle-aged lifetime, the United States of America will continue its path through a dramatic transformation that will soon see white people become the minority. One way this plays out is reactionary, sparking a culture of fear and resentment among white people that Donald Trump so effectively tapped in becoming the ‘first white president’ (Nell Irvin Painter). Another way this plays out, suggested near the end of my friend Robby Jones’ excellent book, The End of White Christian America, is to ask, can white people do the work to shift from expecting to decide who gets a seat at the table, to simply taking a chair at the table along with everyone else?’ To make this shift, I’m convinced, people who believe themselves to be white (an invented category, more on that to come) must tell a more truthful story about our past. This site, and the book it will lead to, is my effort in doing this.”

– Chris Scharen

For most of our nation’s history, White Christian America (WCA) set the tone for our national policy and shaped American ideals. But especially since the 1990s, WCA has steadily lost influence, following declines within both its mainline and evangelical branches. Today, America is no longer demographically or culturally a majority white, Christian nation.

Drawing on more than four decades of polling data, The End of White Christian America explains and analyzes the waning vitality of WCA. Robert P. Jones argues that the visceral nature of today’s most heated issues – the vociferous arguments around same-sex marriage and religious and sexual liberty, the rise of the Tea Party following the election of our first black president, and stark disagreements between black and white Americans over the fairness of the criminal justice system – can only be understood against the backdrop of white Christians’ anxieties as America’s racial and religious topography shifts around them.