In one of the first diaries of this series, we noted that 90% of John McCain's votes came from white voters. More specifically though, 83% of John McCain's votes came from white Christian voters. As a proportion of the electorate, we saw whites are declining. But guess what? So are Christians, slowly but steadily. Here's how that looks:
What in the heck is wrong with Appalachia? I keep running into interesting correlations that tells me Appalachia should be giving far less support to Democrats at the presidential level than it actually does.
Here's the example from yesterday:
Click to enlarge.
If all of Central Appalachia behaved like the rest of the region, we'd expect to see all the points scattered near the line in the graph above. Instead, the points representing counties in parts of Appalachia go soaring off above 50%.
And Southern Appalachia does its own strange thing too. More below.
Since I've arrived in Maine, I've spent a good deal of time exploring people of faith, their reaction to same-sex marriage, and involvement in the No on 1 campaign. I wrote previously about Bishop Gene Robinson and his framing of religion and same-sex marriage here, and about supportive religious communities here.
Today I want to talk about the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese here, his involvement in the issue- which has become something of a flashpoint here in Maine- and the backlash and response to it in the grassroots.
Since I've arrived here in Maine, I've been intrigued at the element of religion in the debate, religious activism around marriage equality. Earlier this month, Nate Silver calculated that support a marriage ban rises on a one-to-one level with religiosity in a state. Maine is the third-least religious state in the Nation, according to Gallup, so he argued that bodes well for our prospects.
I don't doubt the statistical analysis, but what I think is being missed is the element in which people of faith mobilize to support marriage equality.
On Thursday, I went to a packed-to-the-walls talk by Bishop Gene Robinson in the Cathedral of St. Luke's here in Portland, where he spoke movingly about Question 1. Yesterday, I went to a large march that concluded with a several-hundred person rally in a Unitarian Universalist Church in the afternoon (this is on a Sunday afternoon in the rain in seemingly a Patriots-rabid area).
What amazed me was the degree to which people of every faith had turned out for this campaign. Nearly every religious creed was represented. I spoke with a number of people at the rally who self-identified as regular worshipers and people of faith- those would respond affirmatively to the Gallup question. But they were not only against Question 1, they were activists.
I talked with Pastor Stephen Carnahan of The Open House United Church of Christ in Portland, who MC'ed the rally:
The United Church of Christ of which I'm a part, and the Unitarian Universalist churches, we've been out on front of this issue for some time, so there's been a groundswell of support among progressive Christians in the Maine community... the Catholic Church and some of the conservative Protestant chruches, progressive Protestants on the other. There are a LOT of progressive Protestants in this area, though, so it's been a large and growing number... I don't think we're any less spiritual than any others.
He went on to mention how approximately 140 ministers had went to testify on marriage equality at the state legislative hearing, the congregation has done phone banking, and so forth. This, I think is something that's being missed in analyses like Nate's.
It really is heartening to see this, because in many places, there's prevalent assumption that if it's religious, it must not bode well for LGBT people. I have a lot of friends who feel this way, and I personally have a reflexive antipathy towards religion until I went to the famous Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, an incredibly community of volunteering and welcoming towards all people of all walks of life, but where members of the congregation were just as religious as any other. That congregation, and the ones in Maine I saw gathered on Thursday and today, prove the assumption wrong.
On Thursday, Bishop Gene Robinson- the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church- was here in Portland speaking about the marriage ballot initiative. I sat down with him beforehand to ask him about the religious aspect of this. Here's what he had to say:
There was a particular part of what he said that struck me as interesting.
I see marriage as becoming more and more of a civil institution as religious affiliation shrinks. The main reason two people become married is for the civil benefits- taxes, health care, transfer of property, and so forth- has become more prominent. Yet religion has become a stakeholder in the institution so much that religious institutions have a seat at the table in debates like this. And so when there is a movement to expand marriage rights to LGBT couples, churches cry foul and stoke fears that they will be required to marry such couples. The same fears were expressed regarding marriages between people of different religions and people of different races.
In reality, as Bishop Robinson said, this is the church imposing its will on the state. "Separation of church and state works both ways." The framing of what he meant is what really caught me: that churches, as he said, are deputized by the state for civil purposes. If you want to get married, you to a church and you get married. Or you can go get a justice of the peace. You can even have a friend become a Universal Life minister just for the occasion. There are lots of ways. And as Bishop Robinson pointed out, when you get a divorce, you don't go back to the church. You go to the courts. But because marriage originated as a religious concept, and because churches and other religious organizations are massive and organized, the church has a seat at the table, and the religious exceptions written into the New Hampshire and Maine legislation has a specific exception for that. So they get to cry foul and people listen to them.
A way to counter that is that religious institutions should not be allowed to say who should and who should not be married outside their doors. Stay out of state affairs. Thus, his frame: that religious institutions are deputized to perform marriages, just as a library is used for a blood drive. But that doesn't mean the library gets to have a say on who shall give and who shall not. Ergo, neither should a church, and separation of church and state run both ways.
The Pan Atlantic (state-based pollster) poll this past week showed 50.0% voting Yes, 42.7% voting No, and 7.3% undecided (albeit a sample size of 110 Catholic voters). Anecdotally, since I've gotten to Maine I have heard story after story of someone's Catholic mom or grandmother who is voting No, in a state where there is a strong Catholic Church presence and the Church has done two collections for the initiative. For me, the jury is out on whether Bishop Robinson's frame is resonating, but I think it's one to push.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently weighed in against a Democratic health care reform proposal, calling it a legal fiction. It may be opposing it on grounds that are a moral one.
The comparison between the 18-29 demographics and the 65+ (in Pew) and 70+ (in ARIS) make the trends clear. Across the two surveys, Mainline Protestants are declining rapidly, Evangelicals and Catholics are declining very slowly, and non-Christians are going to continue to increase as a percentage of the population. For example, among seniors, there are more than twice as many Mainline Protestants as "Nones," (people who don't list a religion, but not necessarily aethists). However, among the under-30 population, there are more than twice as many "Nones" as Mainline Protestants.
Evangelicals and Catholics have done a bit better among younger generations than Mainlines, but are still slightly underrepresented within the under-30 set according to Pew. As such, they are also likely to decline as a percentage of the population over the long-term.
Since both surveys have age crosstabs, they make it possible to forecast future religious affiliation with reasonable accuracy. However, before we make such a forecast, since we are looking at the future of religious from an electoral perspective, it is necessary to sort the numerous religious affiliations into coherent units of partisan preference. The Pew survey allows us to do this, given their far more detailed demographic crosstabs. Looking at the Pew survey, and at exit polls, there are four clear partisan categories:
White Evangelicals / Born Agains: This is a group that breaks 3-1 Republican. It includes white evangelicals, but also white Mormons and white "other Christians." It is declining from its current 24% of the electorate, but only slowly.
White Traditionals: This is a group with a slight Republican lean, favoring John McCain by about 7% in the most recent election. It is includes mainly white Catholics and white Mainline Protestants (whose voting habits have very similar partisan splits), and also a smaller amount of white Orthodox Christians. While it is the largest group, forming 37% of the electorate and nearly one-third of the over-18 population, it is also, by far, the fastest shrinking group.
Non-Christians: This is an overwhelmingly Democratic group, breaking 3-1 for the blues. It includes all self-identified non-Christians, whether they are white or non-white. This group is (very) slightly whiter, and vastly more Asian, than the rest of the population. At 21% of the over 18 population, and 20% of the electorate, it is the smallest group, but it is increasing in size rapidly, mainly due to the growth of Asians and "nones."
Non-white Christians: This is the most Democratic group of all, favoring President Obama by a 4-1 margin in 2008. It is the second smallest overall group (22% of the over 18 population), and the smallest voting group (representing 19% of the electorate). It is increasing in size, but not quite as quickly as non-Christians. It is also the most ideologically diverse group, given that it has large populations of African-American Christians (20-1 Obama) and Latino and Asian Christians (just under 2-1 Obama).
From now until 2032, these four groups should make up the following percentages of the electorate (or something very, very close to these percentages):
Projected Ethno-religious % of Electorate, Presidential Elections 2008-2032
Group
2008
2012
2016
2020
2024
2028
2032
White Evangelicals
24%
24%
24%
24%
23%
23%
22%
White Traditionals
37%
35%
33%
31%
29%
27%
26%
Non-Christians
20%
21%
22%
23%
25%
26%
27%
Non-white Christians
19%
20%
21%
22%
23%
24%
25%
The increasing trend toward political polarization in this country is largely the result of this ethno-religious trend. The only one of these groups that is even close to a 50-50 split, "white Traditionals," is quickly declining as a percentage of the population. The increasing polarization in America can thus be understood as largely a result of the end of a white Catholic / white Mainline Protestant era of bi-partisanship. As that group undergoes a rapid decline, all that remains are ethno-religious demographic groups that break overwhelmingly in favor of one party or another. The end result is a more culturally, and thus ideologically, divided country. White Catholics and white Mainline Protestants just have more in common with each other than, say white Evangelicals and non-Christians.
This chart also further emphasizes the long-term electoral trouble the current Republican coalition faces. Combined, the two strongly Democratic groups, non-Christians and non-white Christians, should increase from 39% to about 52% of the electorate between now and 2032. A shift like that would add another 10% to the Democratic margin if partisan preferences within the groups remain the same. (The preferences won't remain the same, of course, but I don't intend to predict how they will change.)
The troubles for Republicans don't end there. Tomorrow, as "the future" series continues, I will discuss why the country will keep becoming gayer. Or, at least, more openly LGBT.
I couldn't quite turn any of these numbers into an article of their own, but they still deserve more attention:
According to the most recent poll on the subject, 81% of the country believes that people who are openly homosexual should be allowed to serve in the military. This is higher than the percentage of Americans who self-identify as Christian, which has dropped to 77%. It is kind of surprising that allowing homosexuals to openly serve in the military is now a more commonly held belief than the divinity of Jesus.
According to new data released by the Cook Political Report, only one congressional district in the country voted for John Kerry and John McCain: the Pennsylvania 12th, represented by John Murtha. Either that district just really likes people named "John," or perhaps Western Pennsylvania isn't as representative of the country as we were told last year during the Pennsylvania primary.
Over the past thirty years, real income for the top 1% of all households has increased 3-4 times over, which dwarfs the meager gains by the bottom 80%:
This graph is reflective of many things, including who controls governmental policy.
Republicans have become even less popular, if you can believe it. According to the most recent polls from CBS, Fox, NBC and CNN, the percentage of Americans who view the Republican Party as "favorable," has declined by at least 4% since late October. Outside of these four, no other polling firm with October trendlines has taken a "favorable / unfavorable" poll of the Republican Party in 2009.
Like the end of a Saturday Night Live sketch, it is difficult to figure out a way to end this article.
Although it receives noticeably less media attention then the changing ethnic makeup of America, there is a deep shift in religious self-identification that is changing the national cultural landscape at an equal rate. The latest version of the American Religious Identification Survey, which was released earlier today, confirms a continuing shift away from Christian self-identification in America:
The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers - or falling off the faith map completely.
These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.
An 11% drop in Christian self-identification has major political implications. In 2008, self-identified non-Christians voted for Barack Obama by a massive, 75%-23% margin. If, in another 18 years, there is a further 11% shift away from Christian self-identification, according to current voting patterns it would increase the Democratic margin of another 5-6%.
I'll be eager to look over the entire survey because, while some news reports indicate the drop in Christian self-identification has been over 11%, others place it at 10%:
In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. Researchers said the dwindling ranks of mainline Protestants, including Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians, largely explains the shift. Over the last seven years, mainline Protestants dropped from just over 17 percent to 12.9 percent of the population.
No matter how often politicians and pundits decry polarization in America, none of them ever really address the broad cultural trends that play a role in this. Christianity used to be a nearly consensus aspect of ideology in this country, and now that consensus is crumbling. When such a large ideological institution begins to lose sway over the population, only the most sheltered among us would expect the vacuum to be filled with bland, centrist, Broder-esque uniformity.
It was 11:22 Ante Meridian, on January 21, 2009. I did as I rarely do. I stood silently and watched television. As one who listens to what is aired, and does so from another room, this was an unusual occurrence. However, the Cherokee wisdom of wolves, an illustration that represents the internal strife within every human being beckoned me.
Then, at the very same hour on the very next day, again I was compelled to do what is odd for me. I did not say a word as I glared at humanitarian actions took place on the screen. President Barack Obama proclaimed, by Executive Order, the United States would not torture. Nor would we, as a nation, detain presumed "combatants" without a just trial. On each occasion, I was in awe as I gazed upon what I had not imagined would come to pass. Upon reflection, the two events seem to be related.
Tonite is the first night of Chanukah and here in our half-Jewish descent, half-Christian descent and all-Atheist household we are getting ready to have a daughter and grandsons over for first night dinner. It's interesting how we align ourselves with the holidays in order to maintain gift-giving and food celebration traditions.
It started me thinking about belief in general and, watching CBS News Sunday Morning as they did a piece on Angels, I heard that 65% of Americans believe that angels exist as messengers from heaven. Many believe they have spoken with angels. And, of course, they substantiate the basic belief in Heaven (and Hell) that an ABC poll of a couple of years ago said 85% of Americans share.
Too bad Rick Warren isn't so open-minded. After his over-hyped and intrusive interviews of Obama and John McCain this last August, the best-selling author of A Purpose-Driven Life disclosed to his congregation at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Ca., the one kind of person he couldn't vote for. "I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, 'I don't need God,'" Warren preached, according to the Los Angeles Times. "They're saying, 'I'm totally self-sufficient by [myself].' And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It's too big a job."
It's hard to decide which is more laughable: Warren's conception of the presidency or of atheists. Unfortunately, both conceptions are widespread among Americans.
I second that. Warren posits atheists as people who are openly thumbing their noses at God--sort of like people who recognize there is a God but who just refuse to bow to "His" authority. As with many Americans, the notion that some people simply fail to believe in a self-conscious power that exists outside the laws of nature doesn't enter into the equation. Further, being an atheist isn't even a rejection of something--it is merely a failure to make an assertion. I always hate it when I have to answer the question "well, why don't you believe in God?" The burden of proof doesn't rest with me. God is a positive concept that must be proven, not an obvious construct that must be disproven.
Allow me to describe to my level of hate. According to Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry:
1hate Listen to the pronunciation of 1hate
Pronunciation:
hÃt
Function:
noun
Usage:
often attributive
Etymology:
Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kÃ"dos care
Date:
before 12th century
1 a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b: extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing 2: an object of hatred
Do I hate republicans? Do I have every reason to hate republicans? I believe that I do, for love of country alone should I hate and call upon all who would listen to share in that hate. But no I don't hate the average republican on the street, even though they have expressed their unmitigated hatred of me. You see republicans have often spoken words of hate for me, simply for my beliefs. To illustrate allow me to tell you what I believe. I believe in God, and I believe that God calls me to action. That action includes defending immigrants as Jesus was an Undocumented Immigrant. That faith makes the demand of me to give to and care for the poor. This covenant comes with the requirement that I shall not judge if someone is not perfect (Although hypocrisy is ok to judge). And more importantly my God has said to me many times in many different ways, but I think he said it best, "THOU SHALT NOT KILL!" -GOD
I have often wondered why America is more right-wing than some other wealthy nations. In particular, among the original G7 nations, Canada, France and Germany have all operated decisively to America's left over the past three decades. America's ideological status compared to Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom is much more debatable.
The question is only relevant as a recent historic development, too. Until Nixon took office, it is possible that America was the most consistently progressive nation on Earth for its entire history. Sure, we were far from perfect, but we were less imperialist than European nations, we were a republic far earlier, we were a relative haven of religious freedom, our social safety net was comparable or superior to just about all other wealthy nations, we were moving toward universal suffrage quite quickly, the death penalty was illegal, we were at the forefront of the early environmental movement, we founded the U.N., and we were, by far, the number one destination of people around the world who were seeking freedom and opportunity.
What happened over the last forty years? In most of the categories I listed above, we have now fallen behind other nations. How did our rate of progressive development slow to a relative crawl compared to many other wealthy nations? I can think of three reasons, one of which can be done away with, possibly permanently, if Obama wins the Presidential campaign. I explain in the extended entry.
There has been a lot of negative commentary, both in the traditional media and the blogs, about Obama's appearance at the Saddleback Church. Some didn't see the point of him going to a stacked forum, some didn't think he did very well overall, some were critical in both regards. While I didn't think he was as sharp as he could have been in terms of his performance, I think there were some very good things about him going to Saddleback. A couple of points on this:
The Rev. Rick Warren said Thursday that his upcoming forum with Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama will be aimed at asking them tough "heartland questions."
The author of the best-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life" is to interview McCain and Obama on Saturday.
Heartland questions, eh? Where is this "heartland" that Warren speaks of?
The candidates will appear together at Warren's 20,000-member Saddleback mega-church in southern California.
Ah, I see. Southern California. Truly, the heartland of America.
(Interesting perspective on fighting Obama's memetic email problem. - promoted by Daniel De Groot)
By Evan Frisch and Joe Brewer, co-founders of hivethrive
How should we respond to lies and deceptions about a person who has instilled hope in millions of Americans? The attacks, as we know only too well, have a long history of effectiveness that could keep our hopes from being realized. This is unacceptable.
The Obama campaign has just launched a new website to fight the smears. While it is encouraging that they are taking seriously the need to respond quickly to hateful distortions and fabrications, we want to lay out a more effective approach than the standard myth-busting tactic. This conventional approach to dispelling myths about a candidate is to first present and label the smear, then offer facts that contradict it. Recent studies have shown that this approach can backfire and reinforce the ideas you are attempting to debunk. Studies have shown that people often to "misremember" falsehoods as facts the more efforts to dispel the myth are repeated. The Washington Post and FactCheck have also pointed out the drawbacks of this approach to myth-busting.
My series, "Shadow Elites And Religion" was interrupted after its first two installments (Part 1, Part 2), mostly because I'd built up such a head of steam that I wanted to do a lot more digging for the third installment, focused on John McCain and his ties to two Word of Faith ministers--John Hagee and Rod Parsley. All sorts of other stuff intruded, and, well, the hiatus continues.
But meanwhile, Sarah Posner, Word of Faith expert extraordinaire, has posted an excellent piece over at Huffington Post--"McCain's Pastor Problem", while Gary Kamiya chimes in at Salon with "Psycho Christians and the media", and there's even signs of catchup with my second installment, "Shadow Elites And Religion--Part 2: Sun Myung Moon", as noted in a frontpage post at DKos, "Moonshadows ", by DarkSyde, which focuses on recent attention to the connections between Moon and Bush Sr.--connections that I didn't delve into in my post, because I wanted to focus on the deep structural connections, but that are quite considerable in themselves.
Darkside highlights this piece at the Houston Chronicle, and John Gorenfeld's book, Bad Moon Rising.
I'll be writing more this weekend, but one thing worth highlighting now is the thinness of the McCain defense--"He's not my pastor, so it's not my fault."
