We now know, apparently, what happens if you force political scientist Ryan Burge into lockdown — but leave the WiFi turned on.

You end up with lots and lots and lots of charts, with most of them focusing on the major role that religion plays in politics and the American public square, in general.

Burge’s work was all over the place during 2020, with good cause. He’s a contributor here at GetReligion, but we keep stressing that journalists (and news consumers) really need to follow his active Twitter feed and his work at the weblog Religion In Public. Here in that blog’s “Year in Review” feature.

Anyway, I wrote Burge and asked him to send me several crucial bytes of his work from 2020, with some quick commentary. You will see that below. I have always appreciated the fact that Ryan’s work tends to poke at stereotypes on the left and the right.

I also asked him for his take on the Top 10 religion-beat news stories and trends of 2020, using the full list of options provided at the start of the Religion News Association poll. I have already offered my own take on that poll here in an “On Religion” column and then here, in a “Crossroads” podcast.

Burge’s commentary on that poll is at the end of this post.

So let’s get started, with Burge’s charts and commentary. Everything from here on was written by Burge and, I would note, readers will certainly see evidence of his views as a Baptist progressive. Read on.

I think about this graph a few times a week. … I love the idea of asking people to place the two parties in ideological space.

Evangelicals think that Democrats are super liberal. Atheists think that the Republicans can’t get any more conservative.

It’s interesting to me that atheists see themselves as more liberal than the Democratic National Committee, but evangelicals see themselves in lockstep with the GOP.

I think this graph just crystallizes how Republican white evangelicals have really become.

This is approval data for President Donald Trump from July of 2019 to June of 2020.

The pandemic rage … millions were infected … by all objective measures the response was bungled by the White House. And evangelicals liked him just as much in May of 2020 as they did in December of 2019. There is no capitulation there.

The policy environment and current events have no effect.

Partisanship rules everything around us.

This is the one that I bring up all the time. It’s the key existential threat to the Republican party going forward.

Relying on white Christians for their base has worked for a long time, but it won’t work for much longer.

When less than half of Americans are white Christians, the GOP has to pivot. I don’t know if they have that ability right now, but they need to find it.

Now, on to the Top 10 poll. I made a list based on what I thought would have the most lasting impacts into 2021 and beyond.

 (1) COVID-19 pandemic claims lives of many religious leaders and laity, upends death rituals, ravages congregational finances, spurs charitable responses, forces religious observances to cancel or go online and stirs legal fights over worship shutdowns.

Comment: I would like to think that we should be over the worst of this by June, but this will have a long tail and we will still be having hundreds of deaths a day even into 2022, I fear.

(2) Amy Coney Barrett, whose background in Catholic and charismatic circles draws scrutiny, joins an expanded conservative majority on the Supreme Court after replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dies at 87 and whose liberal Jewish values shaped her views.

Comment: This could be the longest last effect of the Trump presidency. I don’t believe that there will be a singular moment when Roe v. Wade falls, but it will continue to be chipped away at for the next three decades.

(3) Worldwide protests and racial reckonings follow police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, with many faith-based activists and groups taking part. Many religious institutions undergo soul-searching over racially fraught legacies.

Comment: I think that these stories will continue to emerge and denominations are going to have to take them seriously. The Southern Baptist Convention’s CRT controversy is just the most public issue right now. But non-denoms want to grow and younger generations are more racially diverse — they will have to address these issues.

(4) Dozens of nations decry what they term widespread human-rights abuses by China against predominately Muslim Uighurs and others in Xinjiang region, many in detention camps. New U.S. law authorizes sanctions against Chinese officials deemed complicit.

Comment: The Chinese are committing genocide on a massive scale and most Americans have absolutely no clue. I feel like we are back to 1940, when there were rumors of concentration camps in Europe, but most Americans didn’t know or didn’t care about the killing of millions of Jews. The anti-China sentiment has already began to intensify, this will make it much worse.

(5) White evangelicals and other religious conservatives again vote overwhelmingly for President Trump, despite some vocal dissent. Protestants fuel his gains among Hispanic voters. Some religious supporters echo his denials of the election results.

Comment: White evangelicals are a collision course — their politics are interfering with their mission. As the ideology of the GOP continues to slide toward extremism, it’s going to be harder to win new souls to churches that are far outside the mainstream politics of this country.

(6) Pandemic-related limits on worship gatherings spur protests and defiance by Hasidic Jewish groups and evangelicals led by pastor John MacArthur and musician Sean Feucht. Supreme Court backs Catholic and Jewish groups' challenge to New York's limits.

Comment: Religious liberty will be the key fight going forward in the courts and this is just the most recent example of that larger war. Look for religious liberals to take up the language of religious liberty going forward to defend their actions in court, as well.

(7) Leaders and advocates in the United Methodist Church agree on a proposal to split the denomination over intractable divisions over the role of LGBTQ persons in marriage and ministry. The proposal heads to a COVID-delayed General Conference in 2021.

Comment: Don’t sleep on the gay marriage debate in 2021. There are many denominations that are going to have to wrestle with it in earnest. We are already seeing many evangelical non-denominational churches and networks softening their stance and that will become a flashpoint for many conservatives going forward. I suspect that only a handful of fundamentalist traditions will hold out and the vast majority of churches will being to allow same-sex unions.  

(8) Some evangelical pastors sound alarm over growing inroads of conspiracy theories in their churches involving COVID-19, the election and QAnon, which depicts President Trump in an apocalyptic battle against a globalist cabal of pedophiles.

Comment: There’s always been a strain of conspiratorial thinking running through evangelicalism, but it’s no longer submerged. Many evangelical pastors have used social media to peddle conspiracy theories in a new way and President Trump did nothing to tamp down those impulses during his presidency.

(9) U.S. Supreme Court requires that a state-based scholarship program for private schools include religious schools. Court exempts religious employers from discrimination lawsuits involving mission-critical jobs.

Comment: I think that the most important question in public opinion related to religion and politics is: Do you think that parochial schools should be legally allowed to deny employment to members of the LGBT community? It hit right at the nexus of civil rights and religious liberty. These battles will rage in the next decade and I think will drive a wedge in both political parties.

(10) Fallout continues over a whistleblower complaint that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has built up a secret, tax-exempt, $100 billion reserve fund and hasn’t spent it on charitable purposes.

Comment: I’ve been surprised to see how this story blew over so quickly. I think more details about this will come out in drips and drabs in the coming years. The ex-Mormon community is incredibly vocal on social media and this could become one of their rallying cries going forward.