"The Politics of God"

I don't really know that much about politics, but it is the political season and I did watch the VP debate last night. Today I read an article entitled "The Politics of God." It was kind of interesting, a little summary of how religion affects how Americans vote. (This article came from the Kennedy School of Government Bulletin, but when I last checked that URL, it was not the latest issue. This magazine arrived in my mailbox because our older son is a recent graduate of the KSG and Ethiopia is too far away to mail it. And even though they, no doubt, expect me to cower in respect, I did find a copyediting error in the article, a missing closing double quote. "So there!" I say smugly.)

The article talks mostly about voting patterns since the Kennedy election in 1960. According to the author, 82% of American Catholics voted for JFK.

Twenty years later, the once-burning "Catholic issue" was forgotten, replaced by the "Christian Right" question. After voting for Jimmy Carter in 1976, the nation's white evangelicals overwhelmingly opted for Ronald Reagan in 1980.... Urged on by fundamentalist preachers like Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority and then by Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition, those voters dropped the Democratic Party by the millions for wholehearted embrace of the GOP.

The article goes on to point out how Americans are much more religious than Europeans, and they vote according to their religious values. But it is too simplistic to say religious Americans vote Republican and secular ones vote Democrat. Rather, the author says Americans divide up along these religious percentages:

25% Catholic
25% white evangelical or fundamentalist
25% mainline Protestant
10% black Protestant
2% Jewish
2% Mormon
1% Muslim
10% secular

and then vote thus: white evangelicals and Mormons will vote Republican, black protestants and Jews will vote Democrat. Therefore, the election is in the hands of Catholics and mainline protestants.

Hmm, maybe I should have posted this entry on my favorite
online forum, but then all those twenty-somethings would think I'm interested in politics.