The Political Dominance of Fundamentalism

[rug]

May 13, 2013 By Adam Lee

Last week, Alex Knapp and I got into a friendly debate on Twitter about whether it’s fair to stereotype conservative and fundamentalist religion as representative of religion generally. I wanted to flesh out some of my arguments there with additional data.

I wish it were true that the religious left and the religious right were equally influential. If they were, they’d usually balance each other out, and there would be little reason for atheists to worry about undue religious influence in politics.

But that isn’t the case. Poll after poll has shown that, in America at least, religious affiliation predicts voting patterns. The more committed a believer is, the more frequently they attend church, the more likely they are to be conservative and to vote Republican. The states where the highest percentage of people describe religion as “very important” to their daily lives are all solid red states. The 2012 election bore this out, with Protestants continuing to support Republicans by lopsided margins. If religious fundamentalism wasn’t politically dominant over religious liberalism, none of this would be the case, and knowing a person’s depth of devotion or level of church attendance wouldn’t tell you anything about which candidates they were likely to support. But it does.

Further reinforcing this picture, the “mainstream” Protestant churches, which are the most theologically liberal Christian denominations, are suffering from severe demographic decline, plummeting from over 50% of the population to a mere 8% in just a few decades. (Note this isn’t solely affecting liberal churches – America is becoming more secular in general, which is affecting all denominations. Conservative churches are shrinking and consolidating as well, although not quite so dramatically.)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2013/05/the-political-dominance-of-fundamentalism/

The flaw in this analysis is that voters on the left are less likely to meld religious beliefs with political beliefs.

If he is correct that fundamentalists dominate this country, there would be no Democrat in the White House or a Democratic majority in the Senate. Without ignoring the threat, this is a simplistic overstatement.

[longship]

1. The GOP is nothing but a religious cabal.

But I firmly believe that this is not sustainable given changing demographics.

Mixing religion with politics is poisonous to both. But then, mixing religion with anything is poisonous. Regardless, the GOP can do a lot of damage before people open their eyes to what they are doing. I keep waiting for that to happen, but it seems like people prefer to be willingly blind.

[rug]

2. The shriller the rhetoric the weaker they get.

I think people are just getting fed up with them.

We'll see.

[longship]

3. That's what I am thinking.

The GOP's seeming inability to keep their mouths shut certainly has damaged their brand. That trait certainly allowed the Dems to gain seats in both the Senate and the House.

But for some reason people don't see their Congress critter as being part of the problem. At least not unless they totally jump the shark.

Don't ask me how Michelle Bachmann keeps her seat. Her constituency must be as barking mad as she is. That last fact is most worrisome.

[LiberalAndProud]

4. I think the Michelle Bachmann phenomenon can be explained in exactly 3 sentences.

However, Bachmann has a huge fund-raising advantage over Graves. She's raised more than $14.8 million in the current election cycle, making her one of the House's top fund-raisers. While Graves is said to be worth more than $100 million, he's only raised $404,000, and $250,000 of that was his own money.”
http://www.minnpost.com/glean/2012/08/mark-ritchie-church-talk-postponed

It would be interesting, though, to know what church membership demographics might look like in the 6th district.