Pew: Religion, politics shaking up

We're as giddy as a schoolgirl today, because the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of our favorite organizations, is out with new poll results on American attitudes toward religion and politics. For Your Working Boy, this is better than a new edition of Tiger Beat!

The big headline out of the survey is that the GOP is no longer considered to be as friendly to religion as it once was, especially among Catholics and white Evangelicals, which are key to the GOP coalition (among Evangelicals, the percentage who think the GOP is friendly to religion has plummeted an astonishing 14 points -- a figure that ought to furrow the Rovian brow). But Democrats are not benefiting from the loss of confidence -- the number of Americans who consider the Dems friendly to religion is only one in four, the same as last year. Still, the downturn in confidence among Catholics and Evangelicals could be enough to make a difference in close-run elections. The advantage, however slight, goes to the Democrats -- and that could be just enough to make a difference in some races.

Another key finding is that the Religious Right is not only significantly larger than the Religious Left (no surprise there), but also dramatically more cohesive. Pew concludes that there simply isn't a "Religious Left" in this country to serve as a counterpart to the "Religious Right." Says Pew:

On the left, a larger share of the public (32%) identifies as "liberal or progressive Christians." But unlike evangelicals, progressive Christians come from different religious traditions and disagree almost as often as they agree on a number of key political and social issues. These differences in the makeup of the religious left and right are an important reason why white evangelicals remain a more politically potent force.

Here's an interesting fact from the survey:

A relatively high proportion of adults under age 30 (14%) say they think of themselves as a member of the religious left, twice the level of any other age group. However, roughly the same percentage of young people (13%) say they think of themselves as a member of the religious right.

Fascinating. Religion is becoming more important to young people than to the older generations -- even liberal young people. This suggests that the Democratic Party 10 years from now will be less rigid and faith-ophobic than it is today. It also tells me that the Democratic Party really needs to be talking to Amy Sullivan. Also interesting was the finding that people who identify themselves as "progressive Christians" tend to be not liberal but moderate on political questions. Conclusion: if the Democrats want to make inroads with the coming generation, they need to reach out more to the faithful (and in a real way, not that fakey-fake, patronizing Howard Dean way), and it needs to be more than just words: the party needs to be more open to moderate-to-conservative positions on social issues. The Dems have a lot of ground to make up. The number of Americans who view the Dems as friendly toward religion might be, in Pew's words, "largely unchanged from last year, but 16 points below the proportion who viewed Democrats as friendly toward religion just three years ago (42%)."

Finally -- and this is going to come as a shock to many liberals and Democrats -- more Americans are dissatisfied with the left for trying to push religion to the margins of public life than they are with Republicans trying to bring religion more to bear on public matters. There is a huge disconnect between the Democratic party leadership and the American public on the question of religion. But the Democrats now have opportunities to reach out to religious Americans, especially younger ones. The question is, will the party leadership and its elites be able to overcome its cultural bias against religion and take advantage of the GOP's sudden weakness on the issue? Don't bet on it.

The suspicion of religion, and even hatred of the religious conservatives (and I would say of the religion in general) goes very, very deep among the activist elite of the Democratic Party (as distinct from the broad spectrum of Democratic voters). Researchers Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio found that the secularist vision is as powerful a motivator for liberal politics as religion is for conservative politics. I wrote a piece for Touchstone a few years ago, on the Bolce & De Maio study. Here's a relevant part (boldface emphasis mine):

A fascinating set of statistics emerged when questioners polled each party’s delegates on their views of various subgroups among the other party’s activists. Both Democrats and Republicans were "significantly more negative toward groups associated with the newer religious and cultural division in the electorate than toward groups associated with older political cleavages based on class, race, ethnicity, party or ideology." That is, Republican delegates felt much warmer toward union leaders, mainline liberals, blacks, Hispanics, and Democrats than toward feminists, environmentalists, and pro-abortion activists. For their part, the Democrats were more favorably disposed to big-business types, the rich, political conservatives and Republicans than toward pro-lifers and conservative Christians. Of the 18 groups covered by the survey, Christian fundamentalists came in as the most despised, with over half the Democratic delegates giving them the absolute minimum score possible. Put another way, Republican delegates thought more highly of those who favor the legalized killing of unborn children than their Democratic counterparts thought of people who believe in a literal interpretation of Scripture.