Religion and Republicans
Townhall.com ^
December 25, 2015
Mona Charen
About 15 years ago, on Christmas Eve, our family departed from the traditional American Jewish observance of the holiday (ordering Chinese takeout) and elected to find an open restaurant. We drove to the local city center (or what passes for it in suburbia) and were stunned to find that not only were all of the restaurants open; they were packed.
I had pictured my Christian friends and neighbors at home, gathered around the table, Norman Rockwell-style, eating goose or ham or whatever gentiles eat, bathed in the twinkling lights of decorated trees. In fact, I liked to think of them that way, and finding crowds treating Christmas Eve as just another night was almost a sacrilege.
Americans have long resisted the secularizing trend of Western Europe. In many Western European countries, churches stand virtually empty on Sundays and few profess belief in God (37 percent in the United Kingdom; 27 percent in France; 28 percent in the Netherlands). In the United States, according to Gallup, 92 percent said they believed in God in as recently as 2011, which was down only 4 points from the 1944 response.
If belief in God has hardly budged in the post-World War II era, religious life has steadily declined. Pew reports that just since 2007, the number of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped by 8 points, from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent. A bit more than one point of that change is attributable to the growth of other faiths, but most is accounted for by the increase in those who are unaffiliated. Among the unaffiliated, the big story is the young.
Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa's generation, born between 1928 and 1945, is 85 percent Christian (57 percent Protestant and 24 percent Catholic). Their baby-boom children are 78 percent Christian. The Generation Xers are 70 percent Christian, and millennials are between 57 and 56 percent Christian depending on when they were born. Americans are dropping out of church, marrying outside the faith they were raised in and switching confessions at record rates. In 2014, 22.8 percent of American adults described themselves as unaffiliated with any church.
The loss of congregants has been most marked among mainline Protestants and Catholics, but evangelical churches have declined, too (at a slower pace).
What does this mean for politics? It's good news for the Democrats. Religious observance, like marriage, is a good predictor of political preference. Adults with no religion lean Democrat by 36 points. Young, white evangelical Protestants lean strongly Republican. The more religious identification sags, the fewer young Republicans there are.
To: Kaslin
About 15 years ago, on Christmas Eve, our family departed from the traditional American Jewish observance of the holiday
I think Mona's takeoff point is a bit confused. Christmas Eve is not "the holiday," and most Christians would not think of their holidays as starting at sundown on the previous day, as Jews would.
(Catholics sort of do, but only sort of. The big Christmas celebration is at midnight.)
12 posted on 12/25/2015 8:18:50 AM by Campion (Halten Sie sich unbedingt an die Lehre!)
Poster Comment:
The story I remember ... Jewish NYC diner - celebration with his friends customers --- remembered by a famous Hollywood actor !
