So at least part of the shift in religious voting is due to that economic shift, although there are unquestionably cultural parts of the political shift as well based on the rise of abortion, gay rights and other issues within the Democratic coalition.
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chip Berlet" <cberlet at igc.org> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 5:42 PM Subject: Re: another factoid
Hi,
Hate to be picky, but the progressive review here conflates denominational Protestants, evangelicals, and fundamentalists.
Also, there is a failure to pull out White evangelicals from Black evangelicals, the latter group having voted overwhelmingly Democratic for decades.
Most New Deal Democrats were not fundamentalists and most fundamentalists were never New Deal Democrats.
Many active evangelical Protestants and fundamentlaists from the 30's to the 60's joined neither political party, so that figure only is meaningful with the other data: Democratic % and No Preference %.
A significant number of White denominational Protestants have become Independent voters in the past 20 years, leaving the Republican Party due to their concern over White evangelical and fundamentalist political activists taking over the Republican Party at the state level.
Most White evangelicals were pulled into the Republican Party through para-chuch groups stressing social issues, not economic populism.
The post by the progressive review is just bad research and analysis.
-Chip Berlet
----- Original Message ----- From: <Leslilake1 at aol.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, July 09, 2001 12:59 PM Subject: Re: another factoid
> ...also from progressive review
>
> <<WE HAVE OCCASIONALLY noted that this country has always
had Christian
> fundamentalists. We just used to call them New Deal
Democrats. Some
> evidence to support this from the National Review: in 1960
only 38% of
> active evangelical Protestants were Republican; by 1988
the figure had
> grown to 53%. The way to turn this trend around is to
emphasize populist
> economic issues.>>