Short essay questions and Jigsaw Religion and politics part ii

6 • Voice of Reason • No. 1, 2016

Religion, Democrats and Republicans

Our two great national parties have always had distinct religious appeals. The Republicans were the northern Protestant party in a cen- tury of Protestant predominance, which kept them competitive and, in fact, the majority party from Lincoln until FDR. The Democrats were the Catholic party in the North and the Protestant party in the South, thanks to the Civil War. The much smaller Jewish vote leaned Republi- can until they voted for Al Smith in 1928 and overwhelmingly for FDR in his four campaigns and have remained Democrats since. This was the paradigm of the old triad of Protestant-Catholic-Jew enunci- ated by Will Herberg in the 1950s.

Since then, and especially in the last few decades, the rise of the religiously nonaffiliated, not even a factor in polls until the 1990s, has changed the religious profiles of the parties. So has the rise of other religions, the rebirth of an evangelical subculture, and many political positions of the parties, some of them rooted in the religious differences.

Today the Republicans are heavily evangelical (38%) in their makeup and are strongest in the South, where they were not even competitive until Eisenhower. About 21% of Republicans are Catholics, while 17% are mainline Protestants (who used to dominate the party) and 14% are unaffiliated. Mormons make up 3%, black Protestants 2% and Jews 1% of the GOP coalition, according to the most recent (2015) Pew Research Center survey.

Democrats are increasingly influenced by the 28% unaffiliated, while Catholics have declined to 21%. Evangelicals are 16% and mainline

Table 1: Party Profiles

% Republican % Democrat

Evangelical 38 16 Catholic 21 21 Mainline 17 13 Black Protestant 2 12 Mormon 3 1 Jewish 1 3 Other religions 4 6 Unaffiliated 14 28

The above data are the percentages of each party supporters that belong to these religious groupings. Source: Pew Research Center, November 5, 2015.

Table 2: Religion in the States

Top ten states for major religions:

Evangelical Catholic Mainline Protestant Black Protestant

1 Tennessee Rhode Island South Dakota Mississippi 2 Alabama Massachusetts Iowa Louisiana 3 Kentucky New Jersey Minnesota Georgia 4 Oklahoma New Mexico West Virginia Alabama 5 Mississippi Connecticut North Dakota Maryland 6 West Virginia New York Kansas South Carolina 7 Georgia California Nebraska North Carolina 8 Missouri Illinois Pennsylvania Virginia 9 North Carolina Louisiana Delaware Delaware 10 South Carolina New Hampshire Maine (Arkansas, Florida, Michigan,

Tennessee tied for 10th) Unaffiliated Mormon Jewish

1 Vermont Utah New York 2 New Hampshire Idaho New Jersey 3 Massachusetts Wyoming Connecticut 4 Washington Alaska Delaware 5 Alaska Arizona Florida 6 Maine Montana Maryland 7 Oregon Nevada Massachusetts 8 Montana Oregon California 9 Colorado Hawaii New Hampshire 10 Nevada Washington Oregon (Vermont, Alaska, Maine)

Note: Buddhists rank first in Hawaii, Eastern Orthodox Christians in Alaska, and Muslims in New Jersey.

continued on page 7

No. 1, 2016 • Voice of Reason • 7

Religion Pervades Immigration and Refugee Debates

Democrats and Republicans, continued from page 6

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call for exclud- ing all Muslim immigration to the United States created an uproar in December. Most of his fellow candidates spoke out against the pro- posal, some forcefully and others in ambiguous tones. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush both expressed a preference for Christian immigrants from war- torn Syria, while the others denounced using reli- gion as a criterion. (Trump also called for a possible register of all Muslims and for monitoring certain mosques). His proposals received widespread criti- cism from religious liberty advocates and from Demo- crats and Independents, but were endorsed by a majority of Republicans, according to polls.

But the question of refugees and visa waivers re- mains complex, especially when it applies to Syria. The civil war there and the ISIS uprising have caused four million refugees to flee, settling mostly in Tur- key and Lebanon. But hundreds of thousands have fled to Europe and some to North America.

World Relief reported in November that 18% of Syrian refugees are Christians, but only 2% of those resettled in the United States since 2011 are Christian. (The statistics from the Refu- gee Processing Center show 2,098 Muslims and 53 Christians have been resettled in the U.S.).

While President Obama told Turkish reporters in November that “We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” others wonder. Michael McConnell, a professor at Stanford Law School—and often mentioned

as a possible future Supreme Court justice – wrote in Politico on No- vember 30, “The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which governs these issues, defines ‘refugee’ as someone who has fled from his or her home country and cannot return because he or she has a well- founded fear of persecution on account of ‘religion’—as well as race,

nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”

He added, “In the face of the deliberate target- ing of particular religious minorities by ISIS and related forces, it is altogether proper for asylum coun- tries, such as the United States, to prioritize protec- tion to the victims over economic refugees and other displaced persons.”

McConnell criticized the dearth of Christian refugees from Syria. “But there is something seri- ously amiss when those who bear ‘the largest brunt of persecution’ are the least likely to get asylum.”

Nina Shea of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom criticized the United Nations’

refugee processing system for “disproportionately excluding Christian refugees.”

Congress may reduce the numbers further. The House’s overwhelm- ing passage of H.R. 4038, the American Security Against Foreign En- emies (SAFE) Act, in November forbids additional Syrian and Iraqi refugees unless approval is granted by three national intelligence agen- cies.

Protestants are 13%, while black Protestants represent 12% of the Democratic coalition. Nearly 3% are Jewish and 5% represent other faith traditions.

Compared to 2007, mainline Protestants have dropped 4% among Republicans and the “nones” are up 4%. Among Democrats, mainline Protestants have dipped 4%, evangelicals and Catholics 3%, while the “nones” are up 9%.

There is not a direct correlation between the changing religious composition of the party coalitions with voter turnout, since the “nones” have consistently lower turnout rates, thereby diluting their influence in the electorate.

Age, income, education, gender and geography also affect the reli- gious composition factor. Nones, for example, are young and male and are not only less likely to vote, but are less likely to even register. Gregory Smith, Pew’s associate director of research, explained, “Politically speak- ing, religious nones seem to punch a little bit below their weight.” He added, “that suggests that the political consequences of the growth of the nones might not be as pronounced as the consequences for the American religious landscape as a whole.”

There is also the factor of how much an individual’s religious convic- tions will affect his or her presidential vote. Evangelicals are clearly conservative on most issues, though their younger voters are less so. Catholics are the classic swing vote, liberal on some issues, conservative or moderate on others. (They usually end up voting for the winner.) Mainline Protestants are the same, though historical Republican lean-

ings are hard to break. Jewish voters are strongly Democratic, especially in congressional voting, though 30% supported Romney in 2012. “Other” religions and the “nones” are 70% or more Democratic, but there is a libertarian wing that is influential among nonaffiliated Re- publicans.

These factors will reveal themselves in the early caucus and primary states. Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers are nearly 60% evangelical, which is more than double their percentage in the state, where mainline Prot- estants (Lutherans and Methodists especially) are still influential. The nonaffiliated were a big chunk of the New Hampshire Republican primary vote (and the Democrats, too).

South Carolina Republican voters are heavily evangelical. Nevada is a religiously diverse state, where over half are either “nones” or Catho- lics, while Mormons have a disproportionate segment of the GOP vote.

The “Super Tuesday” primaries on March 1 were dominated by Southern evangelicals, but Florida’s huge and diverse electorate voting on March 15 might be the first example of a national-type result.

Tables 1 and 2 on page 6 spell out the data.

Elections 2016

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