The Godless Vote

So this is an interesting video that was posted to The Atlantic a couple of years back. The central premise is that Democrats have a problem with religion. But it leaves something out.

It makes the point that about 28% of self-identified Democrats "don't identify with any particular religion," twice the percentage of the Republicans, and up from 10% in 1996. According to Pew, in 2015, about 23% of all Americans identified as "Unaffiliated," most of them claiming to be "Nothing in particular."

And what this tells us is that while Americans who lack a religious identity and/or affiliation are over represented in the Democratic party, it's to a lesser degree than they are under represented in the Republican party. So I wonder: Would it also be accurate to ask if the Republican Party takes non-religion seriously?

Because maybe the problem isn't so much that Democrats are bad at speaking about religion as it is that they have to meld together a coalition that has a LOT more non-religious people in it, and who expect to be treated as equals. I know people on both sides of the Democratic - Republican spectrum, and I haven't had someone on the Democratic side openly disparage my lack of religiosity in 20+ years. On the other hand, my Republican acquaintances are much more likely to view me as either a target for conversion or as potentially dangerous - and tell me so, although it's been a couple of years since the last time it happened. And of the few people that I'm personally familiar with who are both staunchly Republican and devoutly Christian, most of them are fully in favor of laws that, from my point of view, would basically mandate that everyone effectively paid lip service to Christianity.

And I think that this factor is one that goes unmentioned. As the number of religiously unaffiliated people has grown, "Freedom of Religion" has, for many of them, become interpreted as "Freedom to behave irreligiously." And, let's face it - while the stereotype of Republicans as theocratic may not be accurate, it is widespread. When you hear about a bill that "would require teachers to spend no more than 15 minutes in the first class of each day to read, verbatim, opening prayers said before a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate" (even if you don't expect enough members of either party to vote for it that it has a chance of passing) which party would you suspect of having offered it? For all that Republicans offer secular reasons for things like opposition to same-sex marriage (well, sometimes, anyway) again, pretty much anyone who understands American politics at all suspects that the real reasons are found in a Bible or at a pulpit. And while the last politician who refer to an atheist student as an "evil little thing" was in fact, a Democrat, I suspect that most people would have bet the other way.

And so if you're a religiously unaffiliated American who actually cares about freedom of irreligion and wants to be politically active in a party that might actually win an election now and again, which party do you choose?

And maybe that's the issue. Because Democrats can't afford to alienate their non-religious voters and still remain a viable party, they can't rely on the same overt appeals to religion that were still workable when I was a child. The person who serves two masters my not be exemplary for either of them, but politics doesn't always leave one with a choice.