Religion

The "DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama" is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

[Note from Kyle de Beausset: Selvin wrote this letter right before he got into a minor car accident on April 9, 2010.  He was set to get his high school diploma in June but has been in detention ever since.  I have chosen reproduce Selvin's letter as I found it in his empty room, rather than polish his slight grammatical errors, to allow his character to shine through.]

Dear President Barack Obama,

From the bottom of my heart, I plead to my God that you and your entire family receive blessings from the highest God while you are reading this letter.  I admire and thank you for the great labor that you are fulfilling as a president in this big nation.  My name is Selvin Ovidio Arevalo.  I came to this country when I was 15 years old.  I came from Guatemala to this country to fulfill my dreams because I always have believed that this is a country of many opportunities for those whom want to succeed.

Since I came to this country, I have been going to school to learn and enhance my English.   Three years ago, I enrolled with Adult Education in Portland, ME, for my high school diploma.  Finally, in this June 2010, I shall have my high school diploma.  I am already enrolled in college transition.  I wish that at the end of this yar, I can go to college, but what concern me about is getting financial aid.  I cannot qualify for any financial aid because I am not legal in this country.  The reason that I write you is to plead you for a solution to my problem.  I have been a Christian since I was a kid.  For eight years, I have been praying to my God to touch the heart of the leaders of this country to provide me legalization.  I think that I have three important reasons for why I want to be legal in this country.  First reason: I want to go to college and have a degree of computer science and more.  Second: I am one of the leaders of a Christian church in Portland, Maine.  I am the treasurer of the church, a musician; I play instruments in the chorus of my church, and a youth leader.  Third: I have not seen my family (parents, sisters, and brother) for eight years.  I have shed tears for them, but I am waiting until a legalization to go to see them.

I appreciate and thank you for spending your time reading this letter.  Once again, I plead you for a solution to my problem.  My faith is great; I believe that one day I am going to be legal in this country.  Then my dreams will become true.  Once again, thank you for your good will and I hope you have a wonderful time.  May the peace of God be with you forever and ever!

Sincerely,
Selvin Arevalo Ovidio

How you can help Selvin:

Right now, the focus should still be on stopping the deportation of Ivan Nikolov, but if you would like to stay up to date on Selvin's case you can:

1. "Like" his Facebook page
2. Join the Facebook group "We Are Selvin"
3. Follow Citizen Orange for more updates

The "DREAM Now" letter series is inspired by a similar campaign started by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.  The letters are produced by Kyle de Beausset at Citizen Orange with the assistance of America's Voice.  Every Monday and Wednesday DREAM-eligible youth will publish letters to the President, and each Friday there will be a DREAM Now recap. 

1. Sign the DREAM Act Petition
2. Join the DREAM Act Facebook Cause
3. Send a fax in support of the DREAM Act
4. Call your Senator and ask them to pass the DREAM Act now.
5. Email kyle at citizenorange dot com to get more involved

Below is a list of previous entries in the DREAM Now Series:

Mohammad Abdollahi (19 July 2010)
Yahaira Carrillo (21 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - Tell Harry Reid You Want the DREAM Act Now (23 July 2010)
Wendy (26 July 2010)
Matias Ramos (28 July 2010)
Weekly Recap - The CHC Has To Stand With Migrant Youth Not Against Us (30 July 2010)
Tania Unzueta (2 August 2010)
Marlen Moreno (4 August 2010)
Weekly Recap - The Ghost of Virgil Goode Possesses the Republican Party (9 August 2010)
David Cho (9 August 2010)
Ivan Nikolov (11 August 2010)
Yves Gomes (16 August 2010)

Though he tries to act like he's playing the role of peacemaking conciliator, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat eventually reveals his true feelings:

By global standards, [Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the mosque] may be the model of a “moderate Muslim.” But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam.

Douthat makes the same error that most other observers are making in failing to see the wide spectrum of beliefs in Islam. Yes, there are those (al-Qaeda) who couch their hatred of America in the religion (just like there are Christians who use their faith to justify their hatred of our government). But there are also Muslims -- in fact, the large majority of those in the United States -- who worship peacefully, just like other the Judeo-Christian worship communities Douthat taps earlier in his piece.

I wouldn't like to be told as a Christian that I could not buy a property in Wichita, Kansas because Scott Roeder, a Christian zealot, killed a doctor who performed abortions. Same goes for Atlanta, Georgia, when Eric Rudolph bombed the Olympic Park during the ceremonies in 1996, to "to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand." But because Christianity is the privileged religion in Douthat's second America, we simply understand that Roeder and Rudolph are right-wing nut jobs that do not represent the wide majority of Christians. The same doesn't go for Muslims.

This evening I had the chance to interview Jeff Sharlet, author of "The Family" about Kansas politicians connections to Congressman Todd Tiahrt, Senator Sam Brownack, and Rep. Jerry Moran. He had some tough words for Rep. Tiahrt who he outed as a member of the religious cult on "The Rachel Maddow" show earlier this week.

Rep. Tiahrt denied any involvement with the "The Family" in yesterday's Kansas City Star:

Tiahrt would not respond to questions, but said in a statement he has “never lived at the C Street House, nor have I participated in any regular Bible studies or so-called counseling sessions there.”

Jeff Sharlet, as detailed in Sarah Burris' post from last week, begged to differ telling an intimate, and disturbing story about a "counseling session" between "The Family" leader Doug Coe and a younger Rep. Todd Tiahrt. (Click on the link to read Sarah's post.)

I spoke to Jeff today for the interview I will be publishing throughout the week, but we did cover Tiahrt's most recent comments and I wanted to share it with you as a brief teaser:

"At the very best, the very best, you can say about this is it is disingenuous, here we have a documented encounter and he (Tiahrt) needs to address that."

I have to say, that's pretty damning at it's best.

Look out this whole week for my interview with Jeff.

Lindsay Smith-Hayes has her Masters in Communication and currently works for a non-profit in Denver, Colorado. She has long been a Future Majority ally and we are grateful to promote her first post. --Sarah

The month of March has brought interesting news on the front of religion in America today. The National Journal’s cover article highlighted what they call the "Rise of the Godless." The American Religious Identification Survey found that the number of Americans claiming no religion is on the rise. Both instances highlight a growing lack of religions affiliation and belief in America’s youth.

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) (PDF) also found that a movement towards claiming no religious affiliation is "a general trend among younger white American." The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported “people not affiliated with any particular religion stand out for their relative youth compared with other religious traditions."

What is contributing to this growing trend? One theory is the effect of new technologies in reversing (to some extent) the Spiral of Silence. Research has long shown that those individuals who possess opinions that are in the minority or fear reprisal from the majority are less likely to voice that opinion. More recent research supports the belief that the internet allows individuals to seek out others like themselves and find support for their less popular or recognized beliefs and opinions. As young people are more prone to utilizing the internet for social networking, support, and research this may partially account for the larger number of young, non-theistic Americans.

The National Journal profiles a growing faction of non-religious youth – the Secular Student Alliance (SSA). Their motto is "Mobilizing Students for a New Enlightenment." The SSA’s chapters have grown from 42 in 2003 to 129 this year and they currently have a network of over 14,000 students. Their mission is "to organize, unite, educate, and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human based ethics."

So what are these Godless youths up to? The SSA’s blog reports on many chapter activities around the country. The Atheists, Agnostics and Freethinkers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently sent eleven of their society along with nineteen Campus Crusade for Christ members to New Orleans for relief work. The students respectfully disagreed on religion while putting aside their differences to work together and help others. The secular students are determined to improve the image of themselves and their beliefs through outreach efforts such as these.

The National Journal highlighted some SSA members who have a lot to say about the role of religion in our education and policy-setting bodies. When a student complained to one chapter in Texas about her microbiology professor offering extra credit for attending Bible study, the group went to the head of the biology department in a successful effort to put an end to such practices. The same group is now rallying support to expel creationists from their posts on the Texas Board of Education.

Politics is also playing a role within this growing faction. Paul Starobin writes

"There is no question that the religiously unaffiliated, the Godless included, are a pronounced Democratic bloc. In 2008, 75 percent voted for Obama, compared with 78 percent of Jews and 54 percent of Catholics, according to the exit polls. In interviews, activists in the secular movement are as apt to say they are libertarians as to say they are liberals; in terms of party affiliation, however, there appears to be a consensus that the Republican Party has formed an alliance with the Christian Right that is all but unbreakable. By no means do the Godless activists fully trust the Democratic Party, yet they see no other practical alternative for accomplishing their political objectives. So their strategy, logically enough, is to become a weightier presence inside the party."

The question "how political should we be?" has also risen within the membership of the SSA. The answer seems to be “it depends on the issue.” When the issue involves a debate centering around separation of church and state, the answer is obvious – get involved, be vocal. But other issues are more complicated. Some pro-choice organizations are hesitant to align themselves with atheist and agnostic groups for fear they will further alienate the opposition who mistakenly already thinks that pro-choice is a Godless stance on the part of all those who land on the pro-choice side of that fence. But the SSA does report a generally successful involvement with many local GLBT groups and their efforts.

Other non-religious groups such as the Secular Coalition for America, of which the SSA is a founding member, also seek a voice in politics. The Secular Coalition for America is an

"advocacy organization whose purpose is to amplify the diverse and growing voice of the non-theistic community in the United States."

Their mission is to

"increase the visibility of and respect for non-theistic viewpoints in the United States, and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all."

Why do we need such a body? Cenk Uygur over at The Huffington Post writes

"there is a minority group in America that is a bigger percentage of the country than blacks or Hispanics. But they are often ignored or derided in public. Almost no politician would ever admit to being one. And they are given no voice in the public arena. They are the non-religious."

Independent studies such as ARIS and the Pew Forum reflect a growing number of non-theistic Americans over the last 20-30 years. Non-believers are growing in number. Their voice is getting louder and demanding respect. The best moments of Bill Mahar’s Religulous are not the questioning of other’s beliefs, it is the call to arms he issues to all those who do not agree with the vociferous theistic majority. Atheists, agnostics, Freethinkers, Humanists, and other Godless Americans want a seat at the table, again. After all, there is a precedent. The National Journal reminds us that

"there has always been a strain of American patriot with a pronounced hostility toward traditional religion. ‘The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race, have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion.’ Who said that? The answer is not Hitchens or Harris, Dennett or Dawkins—it is none other than Thomas Paine, in his 1794 tract, The Age of Reason."

Organizations such as the SSA are producing another generation of vocal activists who are no longer afraid to demand that their point of view be respected.

First let me wish you a very Happy Merry Mistletoe and other such things! If you're looking for a family escape by pretending to read the blogs today, or write blogs, or pretend to do work as a means of ignoring that same story about the odd shaped moles on your relatives, then I'm happy to provide some interesting factoids along with your eggnog.

Now that the election is over I can go back to doing things that require more reading, like books. So I finally picked up The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church by Christine Wicker, an x-evangelical who discovered she'd been duped.

One thing you see 'round these parts of America are megachurches. You know, those giant buildings filled with pristine carpet and that always smell like new construction and chlorine. Driving south on the 35 from Kansas City into Oklahoma City, I'm always faced with what I lovingly refer to as the big-damn-cross, displaying the perfect marriage of Jesus and an one of the wealthiest cities in Oklahoma displaying their support of another excessively wealthy church.

According to Wicker, while these churches are flourishing under such wealth and power, their pews and/er stadium seats are increasingly empty.

"Even as evangelical forces trumpet their purported political and social victories, insiders are anguishing over their significant losses, fearing what the future holds. The idea that evangelicals represent and speak for Christianity in America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly."

Partnering Wicker's book with another reTHiNK: Decide for Yourself, Is Student Ministry Working? by Steve Wright. This gem appears on page 53

"Student ministry in many cases has become the local YMCA or teen amusement park; students check in and out, but mostly out. After all, once they have experienced years of fun-and-games, all-you-can-eat, no-responsibility, free-from-parents amusement, then we have helped train their appetites for pleasure to find more alluring fulfillment in the adult world."

It goes on to quote major studies into patters in youth participation via the evangelical church post-high school

• "A recent TIME Magazine article points to research that found 61 percent of the adults polled who are now in their twenties said they had participated in church activities as teens but not longer so. Some argue that young people typically drift from organized religion in early adulthood, but others say the high attrition is a sign that churches need to change the way they try to engage the next generation.
• A study from UCLA found that almost half of college students drift away from their Christian upbringing. While 52 percent of incoming students said that they regularly took part in church events, the number shrinks to 29 percent who are still involved in church activities by their junior year.
• Josh McDowell estimates, 'over 69 percent of youth are leaving traditional church after high school.'
• LifeWay Christian Research reports, 'The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families are leaving the church as they enter adulthood.'
• Mark Matlock finds, 'Depending on whose numbers you use, 58 percent – 84 percent of graduating youth from church youth groups are not returning.'
• David Wheaton, author of University of Destruction, states that 'as many as 50 percent of Christian students say they have lost their faith after four years of college.'
• George Barna gives troubling news in his book, Real Teens: 'Now only 33 percent of churched youth say that the church will play a part in their lives when they leave home.'
• Glenn Schultz at LifeWay Christian Resources estimates that 75 percent of young people leave church in their late teens and aren’t reconnecting later.
• Student Venture reports that about 70 percent of seniors in high school who claimed faith, stop attending church during the college years.
• Ron Luce in Battle Cry for a Generation estimates '88 percent of kids raised in Christian homes do not continue to follow the Lord after they graduate from high school.'
• LifeWay Research found that 70 percent of young adults ages twenty-three to thirty stopped attending church regularly for at least a year between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two."

Holy plastic Jesus, Batman! This is a lot of flight. But wait... there's more... Witnessing Suburbia: Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture by Luhr Eileen will be released in February from UCal Press. (Read chapter 1 here) This book details the rise of the evangelical pop-culture movement in the United States.

"The disparity between a church-sponsored record burning for youth and a family-centered moral critique reveals the self-conscious "modernization" project undertaken by some conservative Christians in the late twentieth century. In both instances, music provided an entry point to debates about cultural reform. Both strategies demonstrate how conservative Christians linked youth culture and social problems and how they aggressively sought to reestablish "youth" as a category of innocence in need of adult protection during the late-twentieth-century culture wars. In both formulations of the reform agenda, culture, rather than socioeconomic structure, was the catalyst for change. . . .

. . .The era's "parents movement" intersected with what has become known as the culture wars. The political battles of the culture wars are well known, but many of these struggles also involved popular culture, especially since entertainment provided a ready example of the challenges posed to parental authority."

I won't go on, but chapter 4 is titled "An MTV Approach to Evangelism: The Cultural Politics of Suburban Revivalism."

If you're an ADD reader like I am, then going back and forth between the 3 books won't be a problem, but the curious mix they provide is an understanding of how evangelicals came to power, how they are losing power, and a faith based perspective on why the evangelical youth movement lost its power, authenticity, and credibility particularly among young people.

All interesting reads - hopefully I've detained you from your families long enough. Have a great holiday and a Happy New Year.

I am a young amateur filmmaker from Canada who, after becoming increasingly frustrated with the political system and lack of action among his peers has made a short video aimed at George W Bush, John McCain and the conservative/religious right. The result is a hilarious but deadly serious message of anger and a call for mobilization.

Watch, laugh, think, maybe die a little inside, and then spread the message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw88vPtMR40

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."

by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally

This week Living Liberally launched Praying Liberally, our new network of local liberal meetups of progressives from a wide range of faiths to talk politics, say a collective prayer for "the least of these" in our world, and build community to organize around our common causes.

Since Monday, when Praying Liberally launched over at Street Prophets and got some mention on Daily Kos and Hullabaloo, we've gotten several requests to start new chapters, many from Boomers, some who've said they felt too 'old' for the Drinking Liberally crowd, which is fine. Different Liberallies appeal different people. But we still haven't gotten any requests from millennials.

This leads us to ask: is Praying Liberally just for the Boomers? Will the religious left die out?

It doesn't have to.

With interest in religion and spirituality rising on college campuses, and the fact that the millennial generation is one of the most liberal ever, the community potential is there.

Plus, The fact is there are many progressive religious youth orgs, such as Mitzvah Corps, that get young people engaged in social justice and other progressive causes.

But unlike conservative religious youth groups, progressive ones don't usually self-identify in ways that would explicitly denote them as progressive organizations. Also, these groups haven't formed solid coalitions with the progressive movement, and in that they fail to act as a legitimate gateway for youth into the progressive movement. Introducing youth involved with religious programs into the greater movement was one of the Religious Right's key skills as they grew their power in the last decades of the 20th century.

The progressive movement needs to build connections with these progressive religious youth groups through more liberal faith communities such as the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist and Episcopalian churches, and the Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish movements. As well as the younger, more liberal generation of church-goers at traditionally conservative churches.

This relationship between "Church" and Progressive Movement could provide us with great new leaders, who like Barack Obama, would come to the progressive movement through their faith community. It could also infuse these religious organizations with new energy, connecting young people to faith in new ways and expanding the opportunities offered to them by their religious community as they see their church, synagogue, mosque or temple becoming more connected with their everyday lives.

But for now, while we try to convince the progressive movement to get involved with this kind of outreach, are there any millennials out there who want to start a Praying Liberally chapter?

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?