Hello Daily Kos!
I'm a politically active Democratic college student who's a new member to this site.
I've enjoyed the information I find here, especially the process oriented, electioneering stuff I enjoy most.
I've played around with a few diaries, (one I'm particually proud of), and have gotten a pretty warm reception.
I hope I can repeat that reception with this next diary, although I fear that because of the topic- I may not.
The topic is of course religion, or the virtues of a lack thereof.
A growing number of people in this country are rejecting organized religion.
They may call themselves by diverse names- agnostics, atheists, secularists, or simply "not religious", but they are united by one common charcteristic- they do not practice religious beliefs.
As I will show here in this diary, these people are a core constituancy of the Democratic Party. And although, as a Non-Religious Democrat, I support pragmatic efforts to woo religious voters to our camp, I caution that this must be done in a way which does not alienate the non-religious.
Further, any attempt be the Democratic party to tie its fortunes to one particualar religious group (Christians, for example) is inadvisable, as the fastest growing religions in this country are the small, non-christian religions which in future will fragment the religious population of our country.
The Non-Religious in America
The Census Bureau is not allowed to collect statistics on religious affiliations, so the best publicly available information on the US population and religion comes from the respected Pew Research Center for The People and The Press through thier Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. According to thier 2001 survey the non-religious make up a significant and growing proportion of the American population:
This chart shows 14.1% of Americans consider themselves to be "non-religious", defined as responding "non-religious" or "secular" (13.2%), "agnostic" (.5%), or "atheist" (.4%)
Perhaps more importantly for the future of the Democratic party ,however, are the trends compared to a previous survey done in 1990:
This chart, which marks the perentage change in number of respondants from 1990-2001, clearly shows that the non-religious are a fast-growing segment of the population. It also highlights another key feature of the religious landscape of America, the rapid growth of non-Christian denominations.
One may remark that Christiany is growing slower in perentage terms only because it already is so big at 75% of the population. But in fact the Non-Religious segment of the population is growing faster in absoulute terms as well, adding 13 million respondants since 1990, while Christianity managed to add only 8 million.
The Non-Religious and the Democratic Party
Despite their rapid growth, the Non-Religious are still a minority in America. This fact begs the question: why should the Democratic Party care?
Political parites exist for one reason- to win elections. Sometimes this means targeting a majority group, winning a strong majority amongst them, and taking the election. Other times this means building a coalition of minority groups with high favourable vote margins, add a sizable chuck of the majority group vote, and take the election.
The Democratic Party is such a coalition. It loses in nearly every majority group except women. It loses whites. It loses Protestants (who are still an absolute majority of the population). It loses married people (who are a still the majority of the electorate, although no longer a majority of the population.)
The party wins by cobbling together high-margin minority groups with a decent showing amongst the majority groups.
The non-religious is such a high-margin group:
This chart shows the national exit poll results for the 2006 House Race. As expected Democrats lost the majority vote amongst Protestants, but won the Catholic, Jewish, and Not Religious minorities. This coalition of groups allowed the Demorcrats to take the election, even when losing the majority of Protestants. At 11% of the electorate and voting 75-25 for the Democrats, the Non-Religious are major part of that coalition.
In fact, compared to other minority groups, the non-religious are one of the most important factors in the Democratic 2006 win:
This chart, based on the same 06 exit polls, shows the percentage of the Democratic vote each listed minority group represents. The Non-Religious community represents 15.5 percent of all ballots cast for the Democrats, not far behind the African-American community, even with union members and far outpacing the vaunted Latino vote, which despite big margins, still remains only 10 percent of the Democratic electorate.
For obvious orginizational reasons, the Non-Religious community did not have as much to do with the Democrats victory as the unions, despite thier even numbers. But one fact remains clear. Had the Non-Religious community voted 50-50, down the middle, the Demoratic vote total would have dropped from 53% to 49%. Plugged into key districts, it would have been enough to keep the house in Republican hands.
Democrats, Religion, and the Future
The Non-Religious vote is thus an important one for the Democratic party. Although making inroads into the Religious vote is wise, it would be inadvisable for the Democratic Party to adopt a theocratic tone that will offend Non-Religious voters. The Democrats are unlikely to make enough gains with Religious voters to offset thier potential losses, especially if the Republican Party uses its period out of power to disentangle themselves from the Christian Right and return to fiscally conservative principles.
The Democratic Party must also not repeat the Republican mistake of equating "faith" with "Christianity". The fastest growing major religion this country is Hinduism, the second fastest Islam, the third fastest Buddhism.
With the partial exception of the latter, the growth of these three major religions is being driven by immigration from Asia. These immigration trends are real, big, and unlikely to stop any time soon.
According to US Census Bureau projections, Whites (the ethnic group with the higgest percentage of Protestants) will continue their decline as a percentage of the population, going from 72% of the population in 2000 to 62% in 2025, the near political future for college students like myself.
Asians and Hispanics, (who are largely non-protestant) will gain ground in that time adding a combined 9 percentage points to thier share of the population.
Once can reasonably expect that as Whites decline so will Protestantism, and as Asians and Hispanics rise, so will Catholicism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, etc.
Based upon previous trends, one may reasonably expect the non-religious to increase their share of the population as well.
With these long term demographic tends in mind, it would be HIGHLY unwise for the Democratic Party to pander to the Religious Right for short term electoral gain, particually when it already has a winning coalition at the helm.
I personally (unlike many here at kos) have no problem with the slick religious stylings of a Harold Ford or a Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. I care much more about policy and how it is implemented.
The Democrats cannot afford to write religion into thier public policy the way the Republicans have in the past decade. We cannot afford to be funding abstainence-only sex-ed courses. We cannot afford to be barring condom distrbution in Africa. We cannot afford to banning stem-cell research. And we CANNOT AFFORD ANOTHER TERRY SCHIAVO. Such pandering will only serve to alienate the non-religious voter and threaten to unravel our winning coalition.
As Democrats we would be suicidal to bet our future on the "value voters" of today, the White, Evangelical Protestants whose electoral power will only be diminished at the hands of two powerful, likely irrversable long term trends: the increasing secularism of society and immigration from Asia and Latin America.
The Non-Religious and Kos
As a non-religious member of DailyKos it has not escaped my attention that our own dear Kos has set up a sister site called Street Prophets: Faith and Politics.
I have to much respect for Kos to believe that this site is a cynical response to the exit polling of 2004 that showed the "values voter" handed Bush the Presidency.
In all likelihood Kos is a religuous man himself, and I respect that as I respect all people.
But I worry that the DailyKos's reaching out to evangelicals might make it less of a faithless-frindly community.
Does a website that hosts a branch off called "Faith and Politics" have room for people who don't believe the two should have absolutly nothing to do with one another?
Does such a website have room for the view that religion is the problem, not that answer. That Islam and Christianity are equally morally bankrupt ideologies that should be abandoned.
Is such a community capable of acepting those who view a book with the following passages:
However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46)
If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives." (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)
They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman. (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)
as dangerous, immoral, and a threat to modernity?
I should certainly hope that it does. For the non-religious, even those who don't so stridently object to the Bible as I do, are on the rise and the Democratic Party and Daily Kos is their home.
For now.
Sources All the data used in this entry may be found here and here