<blockquote>Religion and Politics in the United States
Nuances You Should Know By Chip Berlet Adapted from The Public Eye Magazine, Summer 2003 <http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v17n2/evangelical-demographics.html>
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In the broadest sense, according to Gallup polls, the number of persons in the United States who described themselves as either Evangelical or Born-Again between 1976 and 2001 fluctuated between 33 percent and 47 percent with a reasonable estimate being 35 percent of the population or just over 102 million people in 2003.[6] There seems to be a small long-term increase in the number of people reporting themselves in this category with 34 percent in election year 1976 and 45 percent in election year 2000. Using a different methodology and set of definitions, Barna Research has found that 41 percent of the population identifies as Born-Again using a broad definition, but only 8 percent accept all the tenets in a list of strict conservative doctrinal beliefs.[7]
Significantly, Christians, including Evangelicals, do not vote as a bloc, even within specific denominations. In the year 2000, when 45 percent of the population told the Gallup poll they were Evangelical or Born-Again, 84 percent of White Evangelical Protestants who voted cast ballots for Bush and 16 percent for Gore. One study found that 40 percent of the total vote for Bush in 2000 came from Christian Evangelicals, making it the largest single voting bloc in the Republican Party. However, Black Protestant voters, a majority of whom are Evangelical, voted 96 percent for Gore and only 4 percent for Bush. Contrast this with Jewish voters who voted 77 percent for Gore and 23 percent for Bush; and Roman Catholic voters who voted 57 percent for Bush and 43 percent for Gore.[8]
When all Evangelicals were polled regarding their Party and voting preferences, some of the results were surprising. Not surprising is that almost half of all Evangelicals are Republicans, while only one-quarter are Democrats. Yet, the single biggest bloc (among all Evangelicals) in 2000 was non-voters at 52 percent, followed by Bush voters at 37 percent and Gore voters at 11 percent. Even among Republican partisans (comprising 47 percent of all Evangelicals), while 77 percent voted for Bush, 33 percent chose not to vote; making non-voters the second biggest voting bloc in the Christian Right. Independent Evangelicals gave 19 percent and 18 percent of their votes to Bush and Gore respectively, but the biggest bloc for Evangelical Independents was also non-voters at 41 percent.[9] Many Evangelicals are "swing voters" oscillating between the Republican and Democratic Party; and many more simply feel neither Party represents their interests.
While on average older Evangelicals tend to lag slightly behind the average U.S. resident in education and income, there is a "continuing trend toward the GOP, as younger, better-educated, and wealthier Evangelicals replace an older, less upscale Democratic political generation."[10] Evangelicals who are politically or socially active, especially conservatives, seem to be increasingly upwardly mobile, suburban, highly-educated, and with above-average incomes, contrary to many popular stereotypes.[11] One group of scholars found that between 1978 and 1988, "Christian Right activism occurred predominantly in rapidly growing-and relatively prosperous-suburban areas of the South, Southwest, and Midwest."[12] Conservative Evangelicals also do a better job at rallying their own forces to vote. In 2000, 79 percent of Evangelicals who voted for Bush had been contacted at least once by a politicized religious group or individual, as compared to 36 percent of Gore voters.[13]
Many in the Christian Right tend to get their information-and thus their political worldview-not from major corporate media, but from alternative media produced within the large Christian Right subculture.[14] The most exclusionary and antidemocratic members of the Christian Right are often members of Christian political action groups such as Concerned Women for America.[15] These are groups that regularly spread alarmist and frequently inaccurate claims about liberals, radicals, gays, and feminists. The more frequently a self-identified Evangelical/Born-Again person attends church functions, and the more conservative the theological doctrine and social beliefs they follow, the more likely they are to vote Republican.[16] This especially stands out on the issue of abortion, with 73 percent of Evangelical Bush voters responding that abortion should be illegal in all cases, compared to only 23 percent of Evangelical Gore voters.[17]
Protestant churches with socially conservative agendas, that also require a high level of participatory commitment, are the fastest growing sector of religion in the United States. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) increased its membership between 1990 and 2000 by 19.3 percent to a total of over 4.2 million. Following in order of growth are the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches, both with 18.6 percent growth rates; the Pentecostal Assemblies of God with 18.5 percent; and the Roman Catholic Church with 16.2 percent. At the same time, traditionally more liberal denominations-such as the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ-are losing membership. The Catholic Church is still the nation's largest single religious belief system, with over 62 million adherents in the year 2000 (some 22 percent of the population), but if all Protestant religious groups are combined, they number 66 million adherents (some 23 percent of the population).[18]
One study has suggested that as the more socially conservative and doctrinaire Christian Right Evangelicals have expanded their control of the Republican Party, members of more liberal major Protestant denominations have backed out of being active in the Party, and many have stopped voting Republican, some going so far as to declare themselves as Independents.[19] They are reluctant, however, to vote Democratic without a compelling reason. . . .</blockquote>
<blockquote>Northwestern Observer November 2, 2000 Vol. XX No. XX Studies of voting behavior and role of government offer insight on eve of presidential election By Pat Vaughan Tremmel
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The impact of the Christian right has been exaggerated by commentators, with no evidence of any realignment of evangelical Christian voters since 1960. The widely shared, but skewed, view of the Christian right's impact can be traced to a misreading of Jimmy Carter's presidential campaigns. In 1976, Carter captured a disproportionate share of the fundamentalist and evangelical vote. The discovery of the Christian right happened in conjunction with the 1980 election and the rise of the Moral Majority. Contrary to popular opinion, however, it was not so much that Ronald Reagan had pulled previously Democratic evangelical voters into the Republican camp as it was evangelical voters returning to their natural Republican home. A look at voting behavior over an extended time period shows that conservative or fundamentalist evangelical Protestant voters have always been Republican, with this one blip in 1976 towards Carter, the Southern Baptist who openly expressed born-again tendencies.
Analysts have thus misunderstood the overall impact of the Christian right agenda on the electorate as a whole. It is true that the Christian right has a disproportionate influence over the Republican nominating process, both at the national and state levels. But the Republican Party's focus on abortion and the social rights' agenda has hurt the party among other traditionally Republican groups, such as professionals and managers. The conservative agenda also is reflected in the Republican party's declining appeal to mainline Protestants, one of the most stable Republican voting blocs throughout the 20th century. Since the 1960s, mainline Protestants have become increasingly centrist. The shift reflects their increasing divergence from the Republican conservative agenda. Mainline Protestants also have been shrinking in size over this period, so much so that, combined with their decreasing loyalty to the Republican party, they have gone from contributing nearly half of all votes received by Republican presidential candidates to about one-fifth by the mid-1990s.</blockquote> -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>