“God never needs a majority… All He needs is a faithful remnant.”
Christian fundamentalist and former Kansas Governor, Sam Brownback.
Gallup Polling reported in March: “Two decades ago, an average of 42% of U.S. adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week. A decade ago, the figure fell to 38%, and it is currently at 30%. This decline is largely driven by the increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation -- 9% in 2000-2003 versus 21% in 2021-2023 -- almost all of whom do not attend services regularly.” Catholics and evangelicals led the list with the greatest declines, and the trend lines show that formal religious beliefs skew older, and withdrawal from those practices skews younger. As older Americans pass, replaced by rising younger demographics, we can most certainly expect further contraction, particularly in faiths with the greatest rigidity and most extreme beliefs.
Yet as this diminishing and less-than-a-political majority has experienced wild success in ending the notion of separation of church and state, watching the Supreme Court give the edge to religious conservatives in commerciality and public support for schools, getting books that offended them off school and public library shelves and killing off Roe vs Wade, all they seem to have done is to invite a backlash against their religious triumphs that threaten to undo their vectors forward and contract their flocks further. What equally upsets them is that their “anointed to lead them” candidate is faltering in the polls as the election approaches. Even if Trump prevails in November, unless he is successful in his transition to autocracy, the writing is on the wall.
The reality of rising generations of voters: they are more tolerant of gender, racial and ethnic diversity, they resent incursions into their private and personal lives and climate change is a huge concern for their futures. On the other hand, there is one unifying word for the conservative elements of the evangelical community: discouraged. Reporting for the September 13th New York Times, Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham delve into this new era evangelical disappointment: “On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Sam Brownback, the former governor of Kansas and a champion of socially conservative causes, asked a small crowd of his fellow Christian voters if they were feeling discouraged.. Inside this church in Grapevine, Texas, nearly every hand shot up.
“The response might seem mystifying: These voters had won huge victories, most notably in overturning Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion… And Mr. Brownback sat alongside a former football coach whose victory in another Supreme Court decision allowing prayer on the field symbolized the court’s decisive swing in their favor...But with the presidential election closing in, hope suddenly felt thin. Powerful efforts to ‘suffocate’ their values seemed to be everywhere, Mr. Brownback said to widespread agreement…
“The country is growing more secular and pluralistic by the year, with regular church attendance declining. Many leaders in the Republican Party, their political home for decades, have gone silent about their opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. And, Mr. Trump, the man once considered to be their strongest champion, is publicly distancing himself from their causes, even as he attacked Democrats in the presidential debate for their support of reproductive rights.
“For decades, their views have been embraced and pushed by the Republican Party. When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016, he made a promise — ‘Christianity will have power’ — to groups unsure of his loyalty to their cause. Even after he lost re-election in 2020, Mr. Trump gave them overwhelming victories through the judicial system he remade. Overturning Roe was the culmination of a generational battle for conservative Christians, delivering a victory that amounted to one of the biggest political resurgences in American history.
“But in this post-Roe era, the political landscape has grown increasingly fraught for them… ‘We had been on offense for 50 years, and now they’re on offense,’ said Ralph Reed, a longtime conservative operative who led the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. ‘That doesn’t mean that we won’t ultimately prevail, it just means that we’re in a different season in that struggle.’” It’s hard for conservative Christians to feel that Jesus is not protecting and advancing their cause. The notion of many evangelicals, that God promised no more global mega-catastrophes following the Great Flood, flies in the face of devastating hurricanes, storm surges, tornadoes, wildfires and flooding that seem to haunt red states with particular ferocity.
Even the millionaires and billionaires willing embrace this social conservatism that brings with it GOP tax cuts and deregulation, are beginning to understand that their customers and even many of their investors are reacting extremely negatively to efforts to micro-manage their lives into a direction that is no long part of the modern world. And that’s bad for business!!! Ask Elon.
Still these evangelicals know that at least one powerful federal governmental body is with them for the long haul, likely to impose that white Christian nationalist mandate no matter how hard local initiatives, legislatures and even Congress may try and reverse these trends. The Supreme Court is theirs… for several decades to come.
I’m Peter Dekom, and hardest opinion to change, regardless of empirical reality, is one based on the belief that God has ordained the only path forward… and let no man rend that vector asunder.
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