Does not the diversity of outcomes suggest an intellectual puzzle that must be solved? Do African Americans who are religiously conservative lean Democratic because they are black while white religious conservatives lean in the opposite direction because they are white? If race is what really matters, is the conventional wisdom about Conservative Christian politics confounded?
A lot of questions spring from one overlooked fact. Did white Conservative Protestants drift into the Republican Party after because their failing social and racial position indicated that they belonged there? Did both groups bring into their new political home many of the political styles they once had in common, especially in the South?
Is the politically conservative propensity of white Conservative Protestants at least in part a protest against their perceived loss of political power, a protest only marginally linked to their religious convictions? These questions are important and we must ask them, even if answers are not easy to find.
History is a rough and somewhat contradictory guide. Religion inspired abolitionists, black and white. Roosevelt sought black support, north and south. Might both blacks and whites bring their religious stories along with them as they change political places so that the same stories will correlate with opposed political reactions? Literal interpretation of the Bible and frequent religious practice push African Americans toward the Democrats and whites toward the Republicans see table 4.
Literalism intensifies the diametrically opposed political orientations in the two groups; it pulls them further apart politically. Religious practice also affects the direction of partisanship. The strongest Democrats in this tabulation are the African Americans in Afro-American denominations who read their Bible daily, followed closely by those who attend church weekly.
The strongest Republicans are the whites in Conservative Protestant denominations who read their Bibles daily and attend services weekly. We note also that the correlations represented in table 4. Table 4. Evangelical writer and former aide to three Republican presidents Peter Wehner recently wrote in The Atlantic that he is hearing an alarming number of stories of laypeople purging the clergy for such heresies as opposing racism:.
Like others with whom I spoke about this topic, he requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. Her thesis is that American Evangelicals have worked for decades to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism.
This is a tendency, ironically, that is promoted, rather than discouraged, by the famous Evangelical focus on the Bible as the inerrant Word of God:. This is how you get to a body of Bible believers obsessed with a handful of verses condemning homosexuality and ready to invent out of thin air scriptural condemnations of abortion, while ignoring the massive record of Judeo-Christian teachings on social justice and the equality of all people. The real peril for conservative Christians is that they will wind up as the very opposite of Bonhoeffer and other brave opponents of totalitarianism.
A MAGA Christianity based on sanctifying s lifestyles and robber-baron economics, led by a former president full of lies and invective, is truly on the road to perdition. Despite these shortcomings, we can still learn a lot from progressive Christians. Their focus on civic engagement, community organizing, and social justice requires empathy for the challenges faced by traditionally marginalized groups, but also demands intentional and meaningful interaction with people who are different from them.
Empathizing with people who do not look, talk, think, or behave the way you do will always be difficult. My mom moved to an affluent, gated community in central Florida a few years ago—and ended up a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter.
Within her largely conservative family, she is vocally anti-Trump, and for the same reason as Peggy and Peter: because the Bible tells her so.
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For full question wording, see the survey questionnaire. Sample sizes and margins of error vary from subgroup to subgroup, from year to year and from state to state. You can see the sample size for the estimates in this chart on rollover or in the last column of the table. And visit this table to see approximate margins of error for a group of a given size.
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