Can Liberals Get a Witness?

[cbayer]

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/claude_fischer_liberals_religion.php

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
Claude S. Fischer


Stained-glass window in Father Dyer United Methodist Church in Breckenridge, Colorado / Lars Hammar

Churches are meddling in politics. Ministers are leading social movements, backing and attacking candidates, campaigning from the pulpit.

That was the complaint in the 1950s and ’60s, when clergy pushed for civil rights legislation, nuclear disarmament, and withdrawal from Vietnam. Some religious leaders attacked GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater for being too close to racists. In 1964 conservative journalist David Lawrence pushed back: “To preach a sermon . . . calculated to have an effect on the current Presidential campaign . . . raises a question of propriety if the principle of separation of church and state is to be maintained.”

Today, however, religion is associated strongly with the right. The transformation is evident not only in headlines, but also in white Americans’ behavior.

Back in the 1970s, the percentage of white liberals who disclaimed any affiliation with organized religion was only about ten points greater than that of white conservatives (14 versus 5 percent). But in the 2000s, the gap more than doubled, and it’s still growing. Between 1972 and 1984, 34 percent of whites who voted for Democratic presidential candidates—McGovern, Carter, Mondale—reported rarely attending church, only six points more than those who voted for the Republican candidates. In the 2000s, 49 percent of white Gore-Kerry-Obama voters were church avoiders, nineteen points more than the white Bush-McCain voters. Put another way, nearly all of the white Americans who drifted away from organized religion in the last few decades were liberals.

more at link

[dimbear]

1. Definitely worth a read.

Whether you see it as a good thing or a bad thing, the writer verifies that forced to choose between social justice and religion, liberals choose social justice.

[cbayer]

2. Glad you enjoyed it, dimbear. I did as well.