ELECTION 2004

The “God Gap”: Religion vs. Secularism in American Politics

By Paul Strand
CWNews

October 15, 2004

CWNews.org – Religion has become one of the major determiners of how you vote. To put it simply, those who pray a lot tend to vote Republican. Those who don't tend to vote Democrat.

A new poll shows 63 percent of those who attend religious services more than once a week say they'll vote Republican. Sixty-two percent of those who rarely or never attend such services, say they’ll vote Democrat.

But the non-religious people are becoming such a crucial voting bloc for the Democrats that they may be dragging their whole party towards secularism. It's well-known the Republican Party has become home to religious traditionalists: conservative Christians and other believers.

Jerald Walz is one such voter. He works at a Washington institute dealing with churches and public policy. Walz said, "Issues of life and death, marriage and family, taxes and defense are issues that are all key to me, and the Republicans represent me better on those issues."

Many even accuse the Republican Party of being captive to the Religious Right or what some would call the Radical Right. It has become a common theme in the mainstream media.

It’s a reason Nicholas Benton tends to vote Democrat. The Falls Church, Virginia newspaper editor does not fancy the ‘Jerry-Falwell-face’ of the Republican Party. Benton said, "I don't like attitudes of intolerance. I don't like attitudes that paint the world in black and white terms."

But what the media rarely cover is how much the other side -- secular humanism -- now dominates the Democratic Party.

It’s a change that began to show up in 1972. By the time the 1992 Democratic Convention rolled around, the largest religious bloc of delegates was not religious at all.

Social scientist Gerald De Maio said they were, "...Secularists, self-identified secularists, defined as atheists, agnostics and those with no religious preference."

De Maio and fellow scientist Louis Bolce have been tracking this trend. Labor and minorities used to be the dominating forces inside the party. According to Bolce, they identified themselves in terms of numbers and loyalty in the electorate. Secularists have become as important to the Democratic Party today as organized labor.

It turns out in every presidential election since 1992, about 70 - 80 percent of the secular liberals vote for the Democratic candidate, and about 2/3rds of the religious traditionalists vote Republican -- usually the biggest bloc of votes for the GOP.

The media have made a big deal out of the gender gap -- that women compared to men give about nine percent more of their votes to Democrats.

But in the last few elections, the religion gap has been a whopping 42 percent, meaning non-religious voters gave 42 percent more of their votes to Democrats than Republicans.

According to Dr. Janice Crouse of the conservative Concerned Women for America, "It really is a divide along faith lines, I think. It's a divide that says there are human solutions to our problems and there are faith-based solutions."

Many on the Left blame the religious conservatives for taking the GOP way to the Right and making the cultural gap wide. But Bolce and De Maio say their research shows it is the secular liberals who have widened the gap by taking the Democratic Party so far to the Left.

So many secularists, liberals and what you might call anti-believers are now Democrats, some have dubbed it "the godless party."

Touchstone, a Christian magazine, devoted an entire issue to the topic. The Democratic Party is now so dominated by unbelievers and a relentless dedication to abortion rights, that Touchstone editorialized that it is now usually considered a sin to vote Democratic.

Groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America have made abortion a litmus test for Democrats. De Maio remarked, "Every Democratic candidate this year had to attend Kate Michelman's NARAL dinner." Amy Sullivan is a Democrat and Christian who has been fighting from inside the party for the Democratic leadership to once again "get religion."

This former staffer for Senate minority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) says that is where the votes are. She said, "A good majority of Americans, in fact 87 percent, say religion is an important part of their life. I grew up in a conservative Baptist church and was raised by two very liberal Democratic parents, and I've never seen a conflict between the two."

Sullivan believes that the Democrats can have a winning combo if they will marry talk of faith to talk of issues like, for example, "Caring for the poor by using government. When it comes to taking care of the environment, acting as good fiscal stewards of the country's resources, I think Democrats can point to their record and say we've done a better job on this than the other party has."

But Democrat leaders are often so uncomfortable talking about religion, they can be pretty fumble-footed when they finally do. Howard Dean was the prime example in this campaign cycle. He insulted many believers down south when he suggested they base their votes on, as he put it, "God, Guns, and Gays."

This man, who would quit his church over a dispute about a bike path, looked a bit foolish talking admirably about Job, but placing the Book of Job in the New Testament. It looked like pandering when Dean went all the way to Georgia to attend church with Jimmy Carter, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

Sullivan feels Kerry is doing much better. She said, "He's a Catholic who's sort of reticently talking about his faith. So he's dealt with it not by going out and trying to be somebody John Kerry isn't, but by using sort of ‘religious critiques’ of George Bush.” Like when he quoted Scripture recently to whack Bush social policies, saying 'What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith, but has no deeds?'

But despite his Catholic faith, Kerry fits in extremely well with the secular and Left-leaning philosophy of his party. Indeed, some priests have talked about denying him Communion because of his many pro-abortion votes.

Bolce and De Maio created a scale of secularism, and Sen. Kerry scores a 10 on it.

Crouse of Concerned Women agrees. She remarked, "He is a 10. If you want to look at voting record, if you want to look at basic philosophy, if you want to look at any of the measures of liberalism, John Kerry is to the left of everybody in the whole Senate."

Bolce and De Maio say the secularists captured the Democratic Party at the 1972 convention that nominated George McGovern. They took the party so far left, many religious and conservative Democrats felt pushed out. So, Ronald Reagan welcomed those people with open arms into the Republican Party in the 1980s; they were dubbed "Reagan Democrats."

The cultural divide has dominated American politics ever since. De Maio and Bolce say what the media miss is how many of the Democrats are secularists and liberals and have come to actually loathe religious conservatives.

For instance, in 2000, said Bolce, "...35 percent of Al Gore's total vote among whites came from people who intensely dislike evangelical Christians."

Bolce added that because it is a prejudice among the elites, it has become a politically-correct prejudice. But if such antipathy were directed at any other group or minority, Bolce said "Imagine what the public response would be. Outrage!"

Why don't the media talk about this? Probably because the journalists who produce most of America's news totally agree with the anti-believers.

According to De Maio, polls of journalists have shown that, "About a third saw evangelical Christians as a threat to democracy. More than half thought that they had too much political power. I think there is this feeling that ‘religion in the public square is toxic’."

And with 50 percent of journalists saying they have no religion, and some 80 percent rarely ever going to church, it is not surprising they see no problem with a secularist takeover of the Democrat Party, and certainly don't see it as any sort of a problem or a threat worthy of news coverage.

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