Editors’ Note: Reposted from The New York Times, August 29, 2021. As the nation’s population dynamics continue to reorganize electoral maps, other social forces shift and shape to affect political outcomes.
By Ryan Burge
There’s no more politically unified religious group than Black Protestants, with more than 90 percent of them voting for Mr. Biden in 2020.
But while Black Protestants are often supporters of a more liberal approach to economic issues, they are still conservative Christians who oppose many progressive social policies.
Over 60 percent of Black Protestants said in 2018 that homosexual sex was always wrong, the same percentage as evangelicals.
At the same time, Democrats must not take for granted the increasing number of atheists and agnostics in their coalition.
Atheists provide a particularly difficult problem for Democrats.
When asked to place themselves in ideological space, the average atheist sees the Democratic Party as becoming more conservative over the last three years, while they themselves have become more liberal.
Data indicates that atheists are the most politically active religious group in the United States in recent years. In a 2018 survey, atheists were twice as likely to donate money or work for a political candidate as white evangelicals. Atheists want the Democratic Party to become more progressive and are unlikely to remain silent if they don’t see changes.
Democrats have to find ways to pull off a very tricky balance on policy priorities between the concerns of the politically liberal Nones and the more traditional social positions espoused by groups like Black and mainline Protestants.
So Democrats have to find ways to pull off a very tricky balance on policy priorities between the concerns of the politically liberal Nones and the more traditional social positions espoused by groups like Black and mainline Protestants.
Fewer Americans are identifying as Christians and more have no religious affiliation. How will secular Americans transform politics?
Ryan Burge tracks the decline in mainline protestants and the rise of Americans with no particular religious identity.
He says they are part of a broader anti-institutional trend in American life, with only atheists and agnostics sticking out as the political subset. John C. Green finds a rise in avowed secularists who are motivated by politics and changing the face of the Democratic party.
But these secularists don’t represent everyone who lacks a tie to organized religion.
Ryan Burge: Well, the first is that the Nones have just exploded. I think that’s something that we… I don’t think we fully understand all the implications of that, but in the 1970s, the Nones were probably at one in 20 Americans were a None. Today, it’s likely around 30% or even higher depending on how you do a survey and how you ask the questions.
There’s actually evidence that Gen Z and millennials, it’s closer to 40% are Nones. Just an unbelievable rapid rise, and it’s touched every segment of the American population.
It’s not just a thing amongst the educated or amongst white people or even amongst liberals, although the Nones do tend to be more liberal, everyone has become more secular over the last 20 or 30 years.
The other thing is that all Nones are not created equal. For a long time, social science kind of saw them as this monolithic block, where we just call them the Nones, the people who have no faith, but if you dig into the data and you separate it by atheists, agnostics, and then a third group called nothing in particular, you see that these groups are vastly different. Especially the nothing in particular group from the atheists.
The Democratic Party has to find a way, and I think this is actually really difficult, they have to find a way to keep all these different groups happy at the same time. For instance, they’ve got to keep black Protestants happy, but they also have to keep white atheists happy who could not be more different on things like the Equality Act, which is a bill that’s being debated in Congress and being kicked around right now that would basically say that churches could not fire people because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity.
The Democratic Party has to find a way, and I think this is actually really difficult, they have to find a way to keep all these different groups happy at the same time. For instance, they’ve got to keep black Protestants happy, but they also have to keep white atheists happy who could not be more different on things like the Equality Act, which is a bill that’s being debated in Congress and being kicked around right now that would basically say that churches could not fire people because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity.
Black Protestants do not like that bill. They want churches to have religious autonomy and be able to hire and fire whoever they want based on theological concerns.
White atheists could give a rip about that. They want no one to be discriminated against in any institution in America. Those things are at odds with each other.
Categories: CIVIL RIGHTS, congress, democrats, elections, Issues, legislature, National, political parties, politics, republicans
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