Pray Tell: A Minority Report

In my August 15^th blog (The Next Generation of Conservatives), I examined the creeping social liberalism among younger Republicans which is moving these future GOP voters, if they maintain their current predilections, to levels of tolerance of gay marriage and lifestyle choices that are very much at odds with their parents’ views of traditional conservative Christian thought. GOP political handlers are increasingly instructing their candidates and canvassers to shy away from social issues and drill down on economic matters when addressing this demographic.

I’ve also noted how U.S. population growth is now driven primarily by immigration, since the average American woman is having 1.9 babies, below the 2.1 replacement rate. Immigrants are richly diverse, with faiths ranging from Hinduism, Catholicism, and Buddhism but less so Protestantism. Hmmm? There’s another powerful wind of change in the air that will impact both sides of the aisle for the foreseeable future: for the first time in U.S. history, Protestants are now a minority.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a report on October 9^th with some fascinating results on religious trending in the United States. “The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 –are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling,” says the report’s executive summary.

The Study “found that it was not just liberal mainline Protestants, like Methodists or Episcopalians, who abandoned their faith, but also more conservative evangelical and ‘born again’ Protestants. The losses were among white Protestants, but not among black or minority Protestants, the study found, based on surveys conducted during the summer.

“When they leave, instead of switching churches, they join the growing ranks who do not identify with any religion. Nearly one in five Americans say they are atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular.’... This is a significant jump from only five years ago, when adults who claimed ‘no religion’ made up about 15 percent of the population. It is a seismic shift from 40 years ago, when about 7 percent of American adults said they had no religious affiliation.

“Now, more than one-third of those ages 18 to 22 are religiously unaffiliated. These ‘younger millennials’ are replacing older generations who remained far more involved with religion throughout their lives.” New York Times, October 9^th.  

These changes might not yet impact the mainstream elections since younger voters tend to shy away from the polls when compared to their elders. In time, however, fiscal conservatives seeking to create legislative and regulatory schema that favor preserving wealth and invested capital over wages and salaries by tying their needs (and they are indeed a small minority) to religiously-embraced social issues may have a bigger problem. How do you engage voters to allow financial and environmental deregulation, favorable tax rates for the rich at the expense of the vast majority, if you cannot give enough of them strong support for their religious values? How do you motivate voters to cast ballots against their own economic interests?

You can see some of the political trending in current campaigns: high taxes for the rich and strong environmental and financial regulation kill jobs say the slogans. But even in periods of exceptionally high taxation of the rich, this nation prospered like no other. The methodology, therefore, seems to be “spend amazing amounts of SuperPAC money” to repeat messages that actually convince voters that these fiscal goals are in everyone’s best interest, even if the underlying assumptions are simply untrue.

With American educational results hitting new lows, the task of convincing people who don’t understand math and are loath to read history might seem to be an easy one. Such sloganeering seems to be working when combined with the ability to rope the “Base” of those with conservative Christian values; Republican candidates can and do find serious traction in elections. But if that Base of passionate and committed Christian voters –willing to trade their own economic self-interest to embrace what is to them the religiously-mandated high moral ground – slowly erodes, the repetition of factually incorrect slogans will have to stand alone to convince voters… or the GOP is going to have to find some new ponies to ride in the coming decades. Whatever the result, it will be a fascinating change to watch.

I’m Peter Dekom, and watching the present is a definite indication of things to come.