Rise of the Socially Conservative Religious Left
Saturday, July 3, 2010
10:39 AM
Labels: african american religion , Latino/a religion , regional religious traditions , religion and politics , religion in the press
Labels: african american religion , Latino/a religion , regional religious traditions , religion and politics , religion in the press
Paul Harvey
This won't be shocking news to a lot of readers of this blog, but an interesting column nonetheless: Charles Blow, "Rise of the Religious Left," in yesterday's NY Times. He begins:
Which political party’s members are most likely to believe that Jesus will definitely return to earth before midcentury? The Republicans, right? Wrong. The Democrats. This was revealed by a report issued last week by the Pew Center for the People and the Press. . . . According to a Gallup report issued last Friday, church attendance among blacks is exactly the same as among conservatives and among Republicans. Hispanics closely follow. Furthermore, a February Gallup report found that blacks and Hispanics, respectively, were the most likely to say that religion was an important part of their daily lives. In fact, on the Jesus question, nonwhite Democrats were roughly twice as likely as white Democrats to believe that He would return to earth by 2050.
If this analysis was broken down regionally and geographically, a lot, or at least some portion, of that apparent racial disparity would disappear, I would surmise, based on the findings of the Religion by Region project, which we've blogged about here before. Time to go find my classic CD of John Prine, Jesus, The Missing Years.
