The Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religion

[brooklynite]

FiveThirtyEight

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

This was hardly a new argument. Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

Researchers haven’t found a comprehensive explanation for why the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased over the past few years — the shift is too large and too complex. But a recent swell of social science research suggests that even if politics wasn’t the sole culprit, it was an important contributor. “Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are,” said Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity.” “And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

Over the course of a single generation, the country has gotten a lot less religious. As recently as the early 1990s, less than 10 percent of Americans lacked a formal religious affiliation, and liberals weren’t all that much likelier to be nonreligious than the public overall. Today, however, nearly one in four Americans are religiously unaffiliated. That includes almost 40 percent of liberals — up from 12 percent in 1990, according to the 2018 General Social Survey.1 The share of conservatives and moderates who have no religion, meanwhile, has risen less dramatically.

[NeoGreen]

1. Sigh...no respect...

...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218318621

[lunatica]

2. That's great news for humanity!

Imagine a smiteless world!

[maxsolomon]

3. people were always nonreligious

they feel more free to express that now. you can be non-religious and still live ethically.

[tblue37]

23. Or be nonreligious and still live. nt

[Girard442]

4. Haven't done the math, but...

...seems like liberals are abandoning Christianity at about the same rate the Evangelicals are.

[Grins]

11. Ha!! I saw what you did there.

I think I would have written it, “the same rate Evangelicals already have”.

[TheRealNorth]

5. Shame what Evangelicals have done to Christianity

There are some good messages in Christianity, but the Evangelicals drown those messages out with their vitriol of anyone who doesn't agree with them.

[scarytomcat]

6. I think some are leaving because the church left them

Jesus would never be a rethug. He would be helping the poor and homeless.

[lindysalsagal]

20. a 1000 years ago, when death and illness and war made life a living hell, you needed to believe ther

there was a better afterlife waiting.

Now, not so much.

[Skidmore]

7. No problem with that whatsoever.

Millenia of religions pounding people into subservience, particularly the monotheism. Don't need a priest deciding on issues of state or at local level either.

[elocs]

8. I think that religious Liberals are really more likely to be followers of Jesus

rather than Christians like evangelicals.

If the Jesus of the Bible existed I don't think he would recognize evangelicals as his followers anyways.

[CDerekGo]

9. I've always been one of those "Christians"

one foot inside the door, one foot outside the door. But when I watched George W use religion in so many ways to twist our Nation to his needless War, his "sanctity of marriage" Act, and other B/S legislation, all the while, the Religious 'right' played right into his hand, repeating what ever needed to be said, or repeated.

As mentioned previously, NOTHING in today's rethuglicans remotely resembles what Jesus was like in the Bible. Separating kids from their parents? Putting them all in cages for weeks on end, no end in sight? Even deporting Military Veterans, simply because at some point in their life, they were not a U.S. Citizen? No, this Nation has never been, and it's DEFINITELY not a 'christian' nation now.

I left the church long ago. Don't get me wrong, I tried several different churches in my area, even going so far as to drive over an hour to one that was recommended to me. Nope, I grew tired of the judgmental preachers, the same judgmental congregations, and the ever extended donation plate.

Hell, I couldn't even tell you the last time my Elderly Parents set foot in a Church on a Sunday morning. In other words, I'm DONE with religion, can will not be looking back. A Catholic co-worker told me 'You're going to hell" when I stated I didn't believe. Told him I didn't believe in Hell either. Of course, this was the same man who didn't believe me when I told him Jesus was a Jew...

[Grins]

12. He's a Catholic and didn't know Jesus was a Jew?

Man.

[lindysalsagal]

18. They can't see their own circular thinking:

The book says he's god, god wrote the book....

The book says there's a hell, but, if you say you don't believe it, you're going to a place you don't believe exists, and that's supposed to scare you back.....

[A HERETIC I AM]

10. "Researchers haven't found a comprehensive explanation for why the number"...

“of religiously unaffiliated Americans has increased over the past few years — the shift is too large and too complex.”

Ummmm.....Really? How about the internet? The fact that accurate information about the origins of Christianity and the historicity of Christ are now at virtually everyone’s fingertips.

It didn’t dawn on them that the rise of non religious types has accelerated since the internet came along?

[lindysalsagal]

17. Agreed. When you know that being born in a middle eastern country pretty much makes you muslim,

and you can pull up chatrooms and message boards and videos of them, you catch on that religion is a product of society, not the other way around.

And when you can see the video of endless violence and war in the name of god, you really really get it.

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. Exactly

Belief in god is a cultural phenomenon, not a historical or factual one.

[eissa]

13. The silver lining

The fewer people believe ancient fairy tales, the better.

[lindysalsagal]

16. +10000. It'a either god, or the planet.

Because all this magical thinking is killing the planet.

[LAS14]

14. I just want to sound a voice for a liberal/progressive who has not been driven away. Lest...

... our silence be misinterpreted.

[guillaumeb]

28. Well said.

And there is this as well:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218318606

[lindysalsagal]

15. Great OP. The "nones", those who do not identify with a religion, outnumber the christians now.

And of course everyone else, too.

IN some states, like CT, when asked the question, "Do you agree with this statement? I believe that there is a superior being in charge of everything" only about 54% will agree. That means roughly half of the state is actually atheist, they just don't like the connotations that believers have given the label.

I think it's technology: We have no need of answers when we can communicate instantly with anyone and all knowledge is available in the palm of our hands.

[stopbush]

19. Moving away from make believe as a guiding force in ones life -

and, yes, god and Jesus are make believe - is a good thing, no matter what motivated the move.

[lame54]

22. And for that I thank them

[walkingman]

24. it's pretty simple - look at the ideology - no thanks.

[pwb]

25. I prefer the terms Democrat and Republican

Liberal and conservative to me are fringes.

[guillaumeb]

26. If 40% of liberals are religiously unaffiliated,

what of the remaining 60%?

It is important for Democrats to welcome all into their tent. And they do.

[Martin Eden]

27. Conservative "Christians" have abandoned Jesus Christ

And all he stood for, which makes them more godless than athiests.

[roamer65]

29. Jesus was a socialist.

Free health care, free fishes and loaves, throwing the money changers off the temple steps, etc, etc.

Fundies follow a false religion.

[democratisphere]

30. What intelligent person would want to have anything to do with a

so-called religion based on hatred and racism? Nothing Christian about it. Religious intolerance is the greatest threat to creating more wars.