Weak Teavangelicals

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2. Wow! Check out these amazing new findings from PRRI here.

For one thing, the movement’s pet crusades—bans on abortion and gay marriage —have shown little drawing power beyond the narrow demographic of 94-year-old preachers living in the North Carolina mountains.

In a survey released this September by the Washington-based non-profit Public Religion Research Institute, white working-class Americans—i.e., wage-earning workers without a four-year college diploma, who are the traditional recruiting corps for evangelical political leaders—voiced a striking disinterest in the culture wars. Just one in 20 of the respondents to the Institute’s national phone survey reported that “either abortion (3 percent) or same-sex marriage (2 percent) is the most important issue to their vote,” while 53 percent cited the economy. And drilling down on matters of economic policy, the poll found that “white working-class Americans display a strong strain of economic populism.” Among these findings:

• 46 percent of white working-class Americans believe that capitalism is “at odds with Christian values.”

• 78 percent say that corporations that move jobs overseas are responsible for America’s economic distress.

• 62 percent favor raising taxes on households with incomes of more than $1 million a year.