Whither the culture wars?
A group of progressive pollsters and activists today released a new survey about religion and the upcoming election that suggests they may be on the wane.
The poll, commissioned by the group Faith in Public Life and conducted by the firm Public Religion Research, concluded that attitudes about hot-button issues such as abortion, legal recognition of same-sex relationships and the size of government are changing among young people — possibly shifting or weakening the culture wars.
“What we see is younger Americans, including younger Americans of faith — they are not the culture war generation,” said Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research. “They are bridging the divides that have entrenched the older generation.”
A majority of white evangelicals, ages 18-34, favor either same-sex marriage or civil unions, compared with a majority of older evangelicals who favor no legal recognition, the poll found. Six in 10 young Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with half of older Catholics. Young Catholics are more pro-government than any other faith group.
Younger evangelicals are less likely to identify as Republicans, or as “conservatives,” though they are not signing up to vote for Obama, the poll showed, mirroring other previous research on that subject.
Other changes, according to the poll:
# While those who attend worship services most and least regularly haven’t changed their political leanings from Republican and Democratic, respectively, voters who attend services once or twice a month — 16 percent of the population — are swinging toward Obama. Sen. John Kerry lost this group in 2004, 49 percent to 51 percent. Today six in 10 of those voters are for Obama.
# Obama leads among Catholic voters of all ages, 51 percent to 40 percent. In 2004 Kerry lost this group to George W. Bush, 52 to 47 percent. However, white Catholics, who have voted with the winner in every presidential election since 1972, are evenly split between McCain and Obama, according to Washington Post-ABC polling. That is a decrease for the Republicans.
Other major barometers were unchanged, including among the most churchgoing Americans and white evangelicals in general; both groups go for McCain.
It’s not clear yet how these attitude changes will affect the upcoming presidential election, or if it will take another election or more to see it all shake out — and how.
“The poll’s findings indicate broader seismic shifts occurring that are probably too nascent to be dramatically reflected at the polls on Nov. 4,” said Katie Paris, a spokeswoman for Faith in Public Life.
The survey was conducted from Aug. 28 to Sept. 19 and included 2,000 adults and an oversample of 974 people ages 18 to 34. The margin of error for the national sample is +/- 2.5 percent and +/- 3 percent for respondents 18 to 34.
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Survey Shows Obama Leading Among Catholics
A group of progressive pollsters and activists Wednesday released a new survey about religion and the election that suggests the culture wars may be on the wane.
The poll, commissioned by the group Faith in Public Life and conducted by the firm Public Religion Research, concluded that attitudes about abortion, legal recognition of same-sex relationships and the size of government are changing among young people.
A majority of white evangelicals, ages 18 to 34, favor either same-sex marriage or civil unions, compared with a majority of older evangelicals who favor no legal recognition, the poll found. Six in 10 young Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with half of older Catholics. Young Catholics are more pro-government than any other faith group.
Younger evangelicals are less likely to identify as Republicans, or as “conservatives,” though they are not signing up to vote for Barack Obama, the poll showed, mirroring other previous research on that subject.
“What we see is younger Americans, including younger Americans of faith — they are not the culture war generation,” said Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research. “They are bridging the divides that have entrenched the older generation.”
The poll also found that Obama leads among Catholic voters of all ages, 51 percent to 40 percent. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry (47 percent) lost this group to President Bush (52 percent).
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When the flag-pin smear wouldn’t stick, they should have tried something with more shine.
When they ran “he’s not one of us” up the flag pole and too few saluted, they should have taken a cue.
When tried-and-true hot buttons like abortion and gay rights gained little traction among the voters needed to swing a close election, they should have pushed other buttons.
Instead, at the most decisive moment in the quest to hold the White House, what did the occupying party do? Once again, it pushed the “culture war” button.
That was manifest when Sarah Palin was teleported from obscure governor to purported Republican savior. She needed little resume, and almost no nationwide reputation. Her evangelical leanings and opposition to abortion in any and all cases made her an instant hit with social conservatives.
Apparently John McCain thought those were the votes he needed.
Last week as he campaigned desperately in Pennsylvania, McCain might have wondered why he didn’t choose as his running mate the moderate, pro-choice former governor of that state: Tom Ridge.
McCain might have made a “game changer” by choosing Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s running mate.
Instead, he listened to Rush Limbaugh. He chose someone certain to stir the hard right into song, yet to turn off many moderates and independents.
Not only that: When you look at what younger voters — even young evangelicals — think about those same-old, same-old culture-war issues, the Palin choice looks even more problematic.
A poll for the group Faith in Public Life concludes that the issues that made Palin a hit with the hard right connect with surprisingly few young Americans, even those who call themselves evangelical or conservative.
A majority of white evangelicals, for instance, favors either same-sex marriage or civil unions.
Six in 10 say abortion should be legal in most cases. Yes, the religious right of tomorrow.
“What we see is younger Americans, including Americans of faith — they are not of the culture war generation,” said Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research, which did the study.
In the 2006 election we saw that the wedge issues so heavily employed in the Bush years no longer were cutting it.
Flag burning? Gay rights? Weeks before the U,S. House and Senate changed hands that year, a poll in Texas’ most competitive House races found that GOP appeals about these issues were turning off a majority of voters. Yes, Texas — central front and proving ground in the culture wars.
Widespread support for embryonic stem cell research was and is emblematic of voters’ interest in pursuing matters of public welfare rather than stopping everything for theological arm wrestling.
Most Americans don’t think that putting the “rights” of a frozen, discarded pre-embryo over the fates of people dying of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s fits within a “culture of life.”
All of the above makes most fascinating the choice of Palin by McCain, the one-time favorite of independents.
A maverick would have followed his own playbook, not Rove’s, not Rush’s.
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A new poll finds that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified, but their views can shift when they consider the Christian principle of the golden rule.
The poll released Thursday, commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University, found that 57% of respondents said torture can be often or sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists. Thirty-eight percent said it was never or rarely justified.
But when asked if they agree that “the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers,” the percentage who said torture was rarely or never justified rose to 52%.
“Presenting people with this argument and identifying with the golden rule really does engage a different part of people’s psyche and a part of their heart, their soul, and really does shift their views on torture,” said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, which was commissioned to conduct the poll.
The findings of this poll, which did not define torture, compared to a Pew Research Center poll from February that found that 48% of the general public think torture can be justified.
The new poll found that 44% of white Southern evangelicals rely on life experiences and common sense to determine their views about torture. A lower percentage, 28%, said they relied on Christian teachings or beliefs.
The poll was released on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and comes after several religious groups have joined a public campaign to oppose the use of torture in interrogating suspected terrorists.
Results were unveiled during the National Summit on Torture at Mercer in Atlanta, which was co-sponsored by Evangelicals for Human Rights.
David Gushee, a Christian ethics professor at Mercer and the president of the evangelical group, said the poll numbers should tell leaders, including presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain, who oppose torture that people can change their minds about this issue if it is discussed from a moral standpoint.
“Opinion on this question is movable,” he said.
Pollsters also found that 53% of white Southern evangelicals believe the government uses torture in its anti-terrorism campaign, despite claims by government officials to the contrary. About one-third, or 32%, said the government does not use torture as a matter of policy.
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*Faith in Public Life planned and co-sponsored the Compassion Forum, a presidential forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania in April 2008. Religious leaders posed questions on issues like poverty, climate change and Darfur to then-Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton knows exactly what Barack Obama is feeling as he struggles to contain his San Francisco faux pas. Her moment came during the 1992 campaign in an appearance on “60 Minutes” when she suddenly said: “I’m not sitting here as some little woman, ‘standing by my man’ like Tammy Wynette.”
Why she said that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that every Tammy Wynette cooking dinner in a mortgaged house for three kids and a working man in some small town rose up to say, “You’re not me, Hillary.”
So it came to pass last Saturday night, in what is surely the most preposterous photo-op in campaign history, Hillary Rodham Clinton of Wellesley and Yale was pounding down Crown Royal whisky from a shot glass at Bronko’s bar in Indiana. A friend emailed that if she really wanted to win Pennsylvania, she would have drunk some of the draft beer in her left hand, dropped the shot glass into the mug and slammed that back. But hey, her heart was in the right place.
For those of us who monitor the political currents to discern direction in the nation’s life, this was one of the biggest weeks in the campaign.
Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.
On Friday evening, email queues lit up everywhere with people reacting to Barack Obama’s thoughts on life being nasty, bitter and short in small-town America. Time was not long ago that a Democratic candidate could have said such folk cling to guns and religion and are hostile to “diversity” with nary a peep from his party. Not now. Obama was repudiated. Crushed. Media analysis suggested the damage could last til November.
Before midnight, Hillary was paddling down Whiskey River with the boys at Bronko’s. Then on Sunday evening, the white flag really went up over the culture war’s battlefield.
Hillary and Obama were both at an event in Grantham, Pa., in Cumberland County. That’s south of Mechanicsburg and east of Boiling Springs. John Kerry took Pennsylvania by 2.5% in 2004, but Cumberland gave George Bush 64% of its vote. Hillary and Obama were appearing on a CNN event called the “Compassion Forum.” They were at a place called Messiah College. Connect the dots.
Campbell Brown to Sen. Clinton: “And you have actually felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on many occasions. Share some of those occasions.”
Hillary Clinton: “I have had the experiences on many, many occasions where I felt like the Holy Spirit was there with me as I made a journey . . . You know, it could be walking in the woods. It could be watching a sunset.”
Hit rewind on the tape of history. It is 1992, the Republican Convention in Houston, at the Astrodome. This was the moment of arrival for the “Christian right.” Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush’s VP nominee, spoke to a huge throng of evangelicals about “family values.” Pat Buchanan delivered his “culture wars” speech. The press corps, for whom all this was alien ground, was openly hostile to the GOP.
Shelves bend beneath the weight of books analyzing the “war” between religiously oriented cultural conservatives and secular libs. “Piss Christ” and all that. Abortion. Robert Mapplethorpe’s erotic photographs banned in Cincinnati. Abortion. Gun control. Michael Moore mocking Charlton Heston. Hollywood’s endless Babylon. Home schoolers. Abortion.
Though vilified, these people wouldn’t go away. The exit polls for George W. Bush’s victory in 2004 revealed that the No. 1 issue for most voters was “moral values.” Liberal analysts furiously attacked Karl Rove for “exploiting” these sentiments.
But even Karl Rove couldn’t invent God, and God and faith were everywhere in Grantham Sunday evening.
Sen. Clinton: Faith “is everything that makes life and its purpose meaningful as a human being . . . We want religion to be in the public square. If you are a person of faith, you have a right and even an obligation to speak from that wellspring of your faith . . . Our obligation as leaders in America is to make sure that any conversation about religion is inclusive and respectful. And that has not always happened, as we know.”
Sen. Obama: “Religion is a bulwark . . . Somebody like myself whose entire trajectory, not just during this campaign, but long before, has been to talk about how Democrats need to get in church, reach out to evangelicals, link faith with the work that we do . . . There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that’s a mistake . . . A comprehensive approach where we focus on abstinence, where we are teaching the sacredness of sexuality to our children.”
Some bloodless analysts have said for several years that Democrats had to say this to win because, you know, a lot of people “go to church.” And yes, what candidates seeking votes say may be false, faked or fantastic. What remains is the fact that these two, in competition for votes, have conferred political legitimacy and respect on this swath of America.
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