faith

Faith in Public Life released a new study this week, The Young and the Faithful, measuring the political views of young voters of faith. As we've seen continuously throughout this cycle, these young, religious voters are much more favorable towards Obama than their elders, or previous young christians. They are more tolerant - particularly on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. And they are more likely to support multilateralist foreign policies and greater government involvement in solving the problems we face as a nation. The new FIPL report confirms these findings, and notes that it is primarily young Catholics and young voters who attend church just a few times per month who are driving these trends.

Here's a look at some of the key findings:

Monthly worship attenders swing to Obama in 2008. The greatest shift in candidate preference between 2004 and 2008 has occurred among voters who attend religious services once or twice a month, moving from 49% support for Kerry in 2004 to 60% support for Obama in 2008. McCain maintains a significant advantage among voters who attend more frequently, while Obama has a nearly identical advantage over McCain among those who attend once or twice a month or less often.

More Americans think Obama is friendly to religion than McCain. Forty-nine percent of Americans say Obama is friendly towards religion, while 45% say McCain is friendly towards religion. More than seven-in-ten (71%) say it is important for public officials to be comfortable talking about religious values.

Younger Catholics more strongly support Obama, abortion rights, and more active government than older Catholics. While older Catholics (age 35 and older) are split between the candidates (46% for McCain and 44% for Obama), among younger Catholics Obama leads McCain by 15 points (55% to 40%). Six-in-ten younger Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to half of older Catholics. Younger Catholics are more pro-government than any other religious group, with two-thirds preferring bigger government with more services, compared to 41% support among older Catholics.

Younger white evangelicals strongly oppose abortion rights but are less conservative and more supportive of same-sex marriage than older evangelicals. Young white evangelicals are strongly opposed to abortion rights, with two-thirds saying abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Yet, less than half (49%) of younger evangelicals identify as conservative, compared to nearly two-thirds (65%) of older evangelicals. Among young evangelicals, a majority favor either same-sex marriage (24%) or civil unions (28%), compared to a majority (61%) of older evangelicals who favor no legal recognition of gay couples’ relationships.

Younger white evangelicals are more pluralistic and more supportive of active government at home and of diplomacy abroad. While less than one-third (30%) of older evangelicals say a person can be moral without believing in God, 44% of younger evangelicals affirm this idea, a 14-point gap. A majority (56%) of younger evangelicals believe diplomacy rather than military strength is the best way to ensure peace, compared to only 44% of older white evangelicals. Younger white evangelicals are also more likely than older white evangelicals to favor a bigger government offering more services, by a margin of 21 points (44% and 23% respectively).

Support for same-sex marriage is significant among young religious Americans. Among young white mainline Protestants and Catholics, close to half (48% and 44% respectively) support same-sex marriage. Young white evangelicals are 2.5 times as likely as older evangelicals to say that gay couples should be allowed to marry (25% to 9%).

Addressing religious liberty concerns strongly increases support for same-sex marriage. When respondents were provided with an assurance that “no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples,” support for same-sex marriage increased by 14 points in the general population and among younger adults.

Young adults prefer larger government that provides increased services. Nearly six-in-ten (57%) young adults say they prefer a larger government providing more services rather than a smaller government providing fewer services. Among Americans as a whole, less than half (45%) want bigger government. The generation gap is evident among every religious tradition. Two-thirds (67%) of younger Catholics say they prefer bigger government, and younger white evangelicals are 21 points more likely than older evangelicals to support larger government (44% to 23% respectively).

As an NPR story on the report so aptly concludes: "this is not the culture war generation."

There is an interesting new site/organization called Songs in the Key of Justice that I stumbled upon today. It is a movement out of the Catholic community for teens embracing and continuing the social justice movement (seemingly lost on the new outbreak of conservative Catholics).

SIKOJ (Sik - oj? gotta rethink that acronym) encourages its participants to be active in their communities, schools, parishes, all to impact their world and make a difference. This is not a new concept for the faith based community, but so often its wrapped around an ideology and the spread of the faith that the actual social justice activism is lost.

This is a great organization for pushing activism, but it falls into the continued trap of forcing its faith as a cornerstone of its outreach.

From their "Making a Difference" section Keeping the Faith

"Keeping the faith has taken on a whole new meaning for Catholic young people in Iraq over the past two years. But these young people have more than demonstrated they are up to the challenge of the Gospel!"

Oy. Like there isn't something more important right now to Iraqi children... like... getting to the market or to school without being blown up. I'm just sayin..

There is an embedded social networking site through the website where people of faith can connect and ideally create a collective action around a social project in their community. I was the only person within 3 states around me that was not a youth minister on the SN site. Perhaps it will catch on in the catholic community...

Most times I want to reward organizations that do any kind of youth outreach at all because its a step in the right direction. And using young people to impact their world is an even greater accomplishment, but when its using them as foot soldiers for a doctrine it begins the slippery slope into that whole Jesus Camp mentality.

I still say that if you want to impact the world through social justice movements that are faith based - I would go to something a little less focused on pushing a specific faith but pushes more a solution to the disaster at hand. Save Darfur is a good one, Invisible Children is another.

Is anyone else sick of this kind of sinister approach to REAL social justice? That said, its an indicator to those of us who are on the left that the right wing is beginning to catch up to the internets... And they're doing it to reach out to young people... prepare for indoctrination!

I've got two, semi-connected threads in my head at the moment that I'm mulling over that have to do with how younger voters are/might influence the Republican Party. The first has to do with what we normally think of as "moral values," and how young evangelicals might reshape the debate.

Over at Revolution in Jesusland, Zack Exley points to some very interesting data from the Pew Center on Faith and American Life:

Of all the people who say moral values are very important in deciding how to vote, less than a third (30%) are referring to the candidates’ positions on issues, with by far the largest number (14%) referring to abortion. In addition, they mention gay rights (3%), that marriage is between a man and woman (3%) and gay marriage (3%). A few, but only a very few, mention homosexuality (1%), and stem cell research (1%).

The greatest majority (78%) of these voters mentions personal characteristics of the candidates including their honesty (28%), integrity (11%), ethical values (8%), and someone who does the right thing (8%), is trustworthy (7%), truthful (6%) or keeps his/her word (6%).

So there's that - a clear opening to recapture the meaning of "values" in our public debate. I don't have statistics, but I'm willing to bet that this is reframing of values would play especially well among younger evangelicals, whose support for Bush, and the Republican Party, has dropped significantly in recent years, even as Bush has been very supportive of Christian Right culture-war issues like gay marriage, stem cells, and abortion.

Instead, of supporting that agenda, what we've seen so far is young evangelicals supporting Mike Huckabee, a candidate who preaches something of an anti-poverty agenda, and wants us to be "good stewards of the earth," by 2 - 1 among young Republican voters. These young, conservative evangelicals don't seem to care about culture war issues the same war their parents/elders in the church do. Rather, they are much more interested in a different conception of faith in public life, particularly what it means in a social justice context.

The second strand is that this isn't limited in scope to young evangelicals. The 2006 American Freshman survey (pdf) revealed that there is considerable support among young conservatives for traditionally liberal positions on a number of issues:

This has tended to manifest itself in two ways, I think. First, in the support of young people for the candidacy of John McCain in New Hampshire, where 27%, a plurality of young voters chose his candidacy, and in the creation of new organizations like the Republican Youth Majority, a newish GOP youth group supporting a pro-choice, pro-environment, fiscal conservative platform.

It's important to note that prior to Huckabee's surge in December and McCain's resurgence post-Iowa, Rudy Giuliani was consistently the favorite choice among young conservative voters (pdf). Now that Huckabee has gained some traction and media attention, and is actively courting younger voters, and John McCain is perceived to be back in the race, Giuliani's support among younger voters seems to have dried up.

So here's a thought - could the Millennial Generation conservatives move the Republican Party to the center/left? Probably not anytime soon; with young voters choosing Democrats by a 2 - 1 margin, there are far too few of them to be all that influential right now. But it will be interesting to see how they shape the GOP as they grow into power.

Thoughts? I don't have this worked out yet - not by a long shot - and this is probably an oversimplification of a number of trends among conservative youth and evangelical youth. I'm interested in seeing/hearing people reinforce or tear down this idea.

Yesterday I was on a conference call with the Harvard Institute of Politics's John Della Volpe, who presented findings from the IOP's surveys and recent election research. There wasn't too much new information for those who are regular readers of Future Majority - the youth vote began trending up in 2004 thanks to new outreach programs; this resulted in Democratic victories in 2006; Millennials are optimistic and civically engaged; we are multilateralists who believe in international institutions, etc. There was, however, some data about morality, religion, and political persuasion that I find very interesting.

First, the poll found that an increasing number of American youth are spiritual (70%), however that does not translate into a desire to see candidate's profess their faith on the campaign trail.

Also interesting on this particular slide is the question about the moral direction of the U.S. This is an often abused statistic - particularly by the religious right, who use it as a club to beat pundits and journalists with the idea that more Americans are supportive of their position on abortion and stem cells. Della Volpe shed some light on these figures, pointing out that moral direction is a subjective term, and that in the cross tabs, it becomes apparent that self-identified Democrats responding to this question cite poverty, global warming, and Iraq as evidence or moral failings, while traditionally conservative respondents identify culture war issues like abortion and stem cells. So while similar numbers of Democrats and Republicans agree that the country is headed in the wrong moral direction, their views on what that means couldn't be further apart.

By far, this slide below was the most interesting piece of the presentation (click for a larger image). Take a look at the green and gray constituencies and tell me your head doesn't start to explode. Basically it identifies two new "types" of voter who comprise more than half of the Millennial electorate: the Secular Center who are less likely to vote, less supportive of moral arguments in politics less likely to support universal health care, but more supportive of gay rights; and the Religious Center who are more likely to vote, somehow split between Kerry and Bush despite the fact that African Americans and Hispanics (Democratic constituencies) are driving the growth of this sector, don't support GLBT rights, yet are greener than their secular counterparts.

I have no idea yet how to square these percentages with the actual numerical size of Millennials, and the recent swing towards Democrats by Millennials, or even with the question about partisan identification and morality mentioned above. Cognitive dissonance is setting in, and I'm getting eaten alive this week by my day job. I'll be back with more in this over the weekend once I get a chance to think and run some questions by the folks at the IOP. In the meantime, what's your take on it?