{"id":66903,"date":"2023-05-23T06:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T10:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=66903"},"modified":"2023-05-20T15:56:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T19:56:03","slug":"politics-the-new-religious-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2023\/05\/politics-the-new-religious-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics & the New Religious Landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The relationship between religion and politics is an important topic, but it\u2019s far more complicated and nuanced than the media usually portrays.<\/p>\n

Social scientist Ryan Burge observes that most attention to the issue of religion and politics has been directed to the \u201creligious right.\u201d\u00a0 But, his research shows that the most politically active religious demographic is atheists<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Atheists are the group most likely to contact a public official and to put up political signs.\u00a0 They come in second only to the Hindus, by 4 percentage points, in going to local political meetings.\u00a0 And an astounding half<\/em> of atheists give money to candidates.<\/p>\n

\n

Overall, according to Burge, who pulls together various measures, \u201cThe average atheist is about 65% more politically engaged than the average American.\u201d<\/p>\n

White evangelicals are actually in the middle of the pack in the number of \u201cpolitical activities\u201d they are involved in.\u00a0 Muslims and White Catholics are slightly ahead of them.\u00a0 \u00a0Mainline Protestants are much more active, with Buddhists, agnostics, and Jews even more so.\u00a0 But atheists lead everybody.<\/p>\n

That shouldn\u2019t be surprising.\u00a0 Atheists\u2019 only hope is in this world so they put their faith in politics.\u00a0 They don\u2019t give to a church or to religiously-motivated good works, so they give to politicians.<\/p>\n

In another study<\/a>, Burge notes that while religious involvement on the whole is declining\u2013which favors Democrats\u2013this change is not happening at the same rate everywhere, and there are some states in which religious involvement is growing.\u00a0 He then worked out the political implications.<\/p>\n

The biggest decline is not in the Pacific Northwest or New England, where one might expect, but in the industrial Midwest, in the \u201crust belt\u201d states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.\u00a0 These have been \u201cswing states\u201d that could go to one party or the other.\u00a0 But if they are becoming more and more secular, Burge concludes that it is more likely that they will end up in the Democratic column.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, in\u00a0 Texas and Florida\u2013#2 and #3 in population<\/a> after California, all of them having passed New York\u2013religious involvement is increasing<\/em>.\u00a0 Which would suggest, according to Burge, that the Democratic hopes to turn them blue will be in vain.<\/p>\n

Why are those states becoming more religious?\u00a0 Because of the large number of Hispanic immigrants.\u00a0 Comments Burge,<\/p>\n

\u00a0Survey data indicates<\/a> that recent immigrants to the United States report very high levels of religious attendance and prayer frequency, which predisposes this group to cultural conservatism.<\/p>\n

Messages about the rights of transgender individuals and expanded abortion access do not resonate with these types of voters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hispanics were a reliable part of the Democratic base back when the party focused on \u201cworking class\u201d economic issues, but not so much now that the party has shifted its focus to sex and gender.<\/p>\n

Note too the irony.\u00a0 Most cultural conservatives tend to be leery of the upsurge in immigration\u2013that is to say, illegal immigration\u2013and yet the immigrants they decry tend to be cultural conservatives themselves.\u00a0 And they may be the ones who can help pull America back from the secularist abyss.<\/p>\n

And yet, Burge himself thinks that religion overall is fading from politics.\u00a0 He comments<\/a>, \u201cI think that era of religion and politics is rapidly coming to a close. The Religious Right is no longer a primarily religious movement<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s one about cultural conservativism and nearly blind support for the GOP with few trappings of any real religiosity behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would argue that the decline of religion is also affecting conservatives, so that the \u201cmoral majority\u201d version of the Christian Right will no longer have the influence that it did and that conservatism\u2013even cultural conservatism\u2013will become less concerned with moral issues.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump would not have passed muster with the moral majority.\u00a0 That evangelicals tend to support him means that they themselves are not insisting on morality and spirituality in politics like they used to.\u00a0 The libertarian bros among the\u00a0\u201cbar stool conservatives<\/a>\u201d aren\u2019t religious, and yet they are strong Trump supporters.\u00a0 So more generally is the working class, the most unchurched demographic.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve blogged about<\/a>, the most loyal members of Trump\u2019s base are self-identifying evangelicals who don\u2019t go to church<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These would probably show up as \u201cunaffiliated\u201d in Burge\u2019s data base, which is drawn from church membership rolls.\u00a0 The displaced workers in the Rust Belt may have stopped going to church, but their unhappiness at their once high-paying jobs moving overseas, leaving behind boarded up factories and rusting machinery, is only made worse by the judgmental condescension of the progressive elites.\u00a0 They are not going to vote for woke Democrats.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t think Republicans need to give up on Wisconsin and Michigan.<\/p>\n

Ron DeSantis is shaping up to be the embodiment of \u201cTrumpism without Trump.\u201d\u00a0 He is definitely a cultural conservative\u2013pro-life, anti-LGBTQ, and an in-your-face opponent of wokism in all of its forms.\u00a0 Evangelicals seem to like him.\u00a0 But, as has been noted,<\/a>\u00a0DeSantis, at least so far, is eschewing \u201cGod-talk\u201d and not bothering to court religious leaders.<\/p>\n

Just as there are different kinds of religion and different kinds of Christians, there are different kinds of \u201cnones.\u201d\u00a0 And just as America\u2019s religious landscape is changing, America\u2019s political landscape is changing.\u00a0 And it isn\u2019t completely clear what those changes will mean.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 \u201cLast 2 Elections:\u00a0 Red States, Blue States, & Purple States\u201d by BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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