Religious voters

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.

Shocker, right? But - there are a number of religious groups that did vote for Obama or are becoming more democratic.

A new Pew Study interviewed people both before and after the election to get their reading on who they were choosing and categorized the respondents by religious affiliation. Because Pew is also pretty good about doing these kinds of things on a regular basis we also have some nice 2004 data to compare it to to see where the GOP lost and made gains.

First, the 2008 data. Understandably, the largest group were Black Protestants. This is actually no change - they are solidly Democrat whether its John Kerry or Barack Obama. What we know, however, is that turnout was significantly up from 2004.

What did change in 2008 was the "Hispanic and other Minority Catholic" vote. We knew about this mostly from the exit polls but now we can see the extent to which Hispanic Catholics fled the GOP. In 2006 we saw the beginning of this

"Pollsters generally agree that the same voters abandoned the president's party in droves during last week's elections (November 2006), with Latinos giving the GOP only 30 percent of their vote as strident House immigration legislation inspired by Republicans and tough-talking campaign ads by conservative candidates roiled the community. "

Here is the breakdown of 2008 vs. 2004 among religious voters according to Pew:

As you can see the right wingers didn't go for Obama... that was the shocker I proposed at the beginning. According to Pew

"To begin with, there was essentially no change in the vote of regular worship-attending white evangelical Protestants, the core of what sometimes is called "the religious right" -- one of the strongest Republican voting groups. . .

"There was, however, some change in the evangelical community, and it occurred mostly among less-observant evangelical Protestants. Among mainline Protestants there was an interesting pattern. In the exit polls, there was essentially no change among white mainline Protestants. But the data presented here suggest that there were some changes within this large religious community. For instance, Obama may have made some gains among regular worship-attending mainline Protestants. And it may very well be that a lot of the efforts to mobilize the religious vote paid off in that particular community. However, these data show essentially no change among the less-observant mainline Protestants, who were evenly divided. This group was where one might have expected bigger Democratic gains." (emphasis mine)

I highlighted that section because while Democrats might have made modest gains there was really only a small gain overall. Kerry lost with 49% of the vote in 2004 and Obama won with 53% of the vote. There isn't a lot of wiggle room here - so even modest gains can be significant and show democrats where they can look to develop further links and relationships.

Now with Young Evangelicals that's the fun part... Anna Greenberg from Pew did a poll for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. Because people were saying that young voters were coming out for Obama she (smartly) over-sampled young evangelicals when looking at the groups of religious voters.

"Most of the national tracking polls had Obama at about 60% among under-30s, and he actually got 66%. So what we did with this poll was [a] multi-mode study. A certain number of interviews came from random digit dial, a certain percentage from the internet -- we didn't do the cell phone for a variety of reasons. We had, I think, the first real sample of young evangelicals and what we found was that, in fact, it was true that younger white evangelicals were more likely to support Obama than older white evangelicals."

Greenberg goes on to make an interesting point that traditionally young people vote more conservatively as they get older. This is because they tend to have children, go to church, pay taxes yada yada... Greenberg remarks that these people already do all of that. They should be conservative ... but they're not and she doesn't have a real idea on if they will develop into republican voters. I have no ideas either - its an interesting point I've never heard anyone discuss before.

All very interesting stuff that I think points to both the success in organization and the success in outreach. If you build it... they will come.... With youth outreach and faith based outreach that rivaled anything seen before the results were favorable.

If democrats want to continue to make inroads into these communities and tighten their grasp I encourage continuous issue based outreach through legislative sessions and constant communication with these groups to better develop loyalty to the party.

Who knows what the next election could bring, but if the groundwork is laid early with these groups, it could equate a much stronger majority.

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.

• National Stonewall Democrats -- The "log cabin" of the left -- proudly publicized YDA's election of its first openly-gay leaders. David Hardt of Texas and Chris Anderson of Tennessee were elected YDA president and vice president respectively in nearly unanimous votes
• Young People For (YP4) is using facebook to advertise its Progressive Academy Online, an interactive online course, focusing specifically women's rights, disability rights, economic justice, environmental justice, and LGBT rights. The course -- starting July 23 -- is titled "The Progressive Movement: Social Sector Issues 101" and is meant to enlighten and instruct young progressives.
• Skeptics responded to Anastasia Goodstein's post on YDA "Election 2.0, MySpacing @ Work & 'Indulgences' Doing Good", wondering whether the accessibility of politics via myspace or facebook comes at the expense of substance. It's an interesting and thought-provoking debate.
• Meredith Clark, a Millennial from Tallahassee, explores the reasons why Florida's young voter turnout bucked the national trend and declined in 2006, as previously mentioned on Around the Tubes. She presents a long list of excuses, as well as some interesting, legitimate points.
• Yahoo's People of the Web profiles James Kotecki, a Georgetown student, who, through YouTube, has interviewed presidential candidates in his dorm room. He has recieved criticism from fellow-YouTube aficionados for his "yawn-inducing" posts, but the a number of candidates like Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, John Edwards, and Mike Gravel have responded positively to his advice.
• ABC News publishes this ostensibly ground-breaking report on David Burnstein, an 18-year-old documentarian, who through his movie "18 in '08" encourages teens to vote in the presidential election. ABC fails to notice the rising national trend in voter turnout and avows that "we need to reverse the trend." Maybe they're just looking at Florida's trends...?
• A fascinating post on The Everyday Citizen describing "How Democrats got Religion" -- similar to the recent Time Magazine cover story. Democratic candidates seem to appeal to voters across the religious spectrum -- from evangelicals to less-fundamentalist believers -- through environmentalist and economic issues, unlike past Republicans who have relied on "family values" issues to attract religious voters. A video below parodying the "Mac/PC" ads represents a new trend of religious America: