The piece of data that lies at the heart of Charles Blow’s Saturday New York Times piece is obvious when you come to think about it, but it’ll still come in handy as an argument for questioning certain stereotypes about today’s GOP:
Which political party’s members are most likely to believe that Jesus will definitely return to earth before midcentury? The Republicans, right? Wrong. The Democrats. This was revealed by a report issued last week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. On the surface it may seem surprising, but, in fact, it’s quite logical. Blacks and Hispanics, two highly religious groups, are a growing part of the Democratic Party…Add to this the fact that, according to the 2009 Gallup report, 20 percent of the Democratic Party is composed of highly religious whites who attend church once a week or more, and you quickly stop second-guessing the Second Coming numbers. Welcome to the Religious Left, which will continue to grow as the percentage of minorities in the country and in the party grows.
Blow goes on to consider what this might mean:
People often ask whether the Republican Party will have to move to the left to remain viable. However, the question rarely asked is whether the growing religiosity on the left will push the Democrats toward the right.
To which the answer will rather depend on what you mean by ‘right’. If it’s something on the lines of what Mike Huckabee is peddling, the answer may well be yes, but not, I would imagine, for quite a while.
Blow also thinks that any change will be gradual:
At the moment, that answer is both yes and no. On the one hand, unlike John Kerry before him, Barack Obama made a strong play for the religious vote on his march to the White House. It worked so well that it’s likely to continue, if not intensify, among Democratic candidates. On the other hand, the religious left is not the religious right. The left isn’t as organized or assertive. For the most part, it seems to have made its peace with the mishmash of morality under the Democratic umbrella, rallying instead around some core Democratic tenets: protection of, and equality for, the disenfranchised and providing greater opportunity and assistance for the poor. The unanswerable questions are whether these highly religious, socially conservative Democrats will remain loyal to a liberal agenda as they become the majority of the party and their financial and social standing improves. Or whether Republicans will finally make headway in recruiting them. The future only knows.
Then again, the world as we know it may not have much of a future if, as these Democrats believe, a deity will soon descend from the sky.
Via Andrew Sullivan
