Growing religious partisanship

Today’s online Inside Higher Education briefly reports on Liberty University’s refusal to officially recognize the campus Democratic Club.  The group can still meet on campus, but it cannot use the Liberty name, nor receive university financial support.  Liberty officials said the university could not give its stamp of approval to a group associated with a political party that supports pro-choice positions.  You may recall that the late Jerry Falwell founded Liberty University, so the decision is hardly out of the blue.

The story draws on a Lynchburg News Advance article about the Virginia Governor Kaine’s request that Liberty reconsider denying the Democratic Club equal support (Kaine is, after all, the chair of the Democratic National Committee).  The headlines of both are obvious in sentiment.  The New Advance headline has a little fun with irony: “Kaine urges Liberty to reverse ‘attack on the liberty of its students.”  Inside Higher Education suggests totalitarianism: “One Party State at Liberty U.”

There was a small flurry of reader commentaries, 65 or so by around 20 people.  A few took the side of Governor Kaine, a few said good riddance with the Democrats. Two people dominated the discussion.  “Arthur Pewty” crudely parodied conservative Christians and conspiracy theorists.  “Gordie” earnestly argued back from a liberal Christian perspective (and complained it was hard to know when Pewty was being “sarcastic”).  While Pewty egged on one conspiracy theorist trotting out the urban legends of Obama’s radical Muslim sympathies (“You are SO RIGHT Mr. VinceP1974!”), Gordy had a meltdown:

I am sick and tired of low lifes like you and I will fight you every step of the written word that I can find allowable on this forum. I am sick of it and all the lies that the Republican scum of this earth and the distorting of issues or using words to suit their purpose. You and your kind will be in my prayers to vanish from this earth. You, Rush, Fox and all that are like them shall be dammed till eternity.

Perhaps Pewty giggled over this, for pranksters like to get an outraged response, but it's too bad that both sides of the debate resorted to vitriol. Fortunately, we can’t take this online discussion as representative of Americans, as if this were a fray amidst a much larger Culture War.  Typically, only people with deep feelings about a particular issue, what survey researchers call “intensity,” are the ones to participate in online forums.

Still, Liberty University’s action, and those debating it, echo a shift in the relationship between religion and political parties.  Referring once again to my trusty Pew Foundation source, a recent report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes, 1987-2009” finds a growing difference between the Democrats and Republicans in terms of “religious traditionalism.”  Respondents were asked three questions to determine their level of traditionalism.  To what degree to you agree or disagree with the following statements: 1) Prayer is an important part of my daily life; 2) We will all be called before God at Judgment Day to answer for our sins; and 3) I never doubt the existence of God.  The chart below tracks the percentage people who agree with all three statements, by party and over time.

What’s remarkable is how close the Demos and GOP were just a decade ago, when we look at all voters.  But more remarkable is the shift among White Non-Hispanics, increasingly polarized.  There’s a reversal of this trend in the last year, but looking at the two decades as a whole, it’s not likely a permanent trend.  Over the same time period, a growing percentage of people say they completely agree with all three statements (40% in 2009), while a growing number of people also describe themselves as affiliated with no particular religion, or as “atheists, agnostics, or ‘nothing in particular’” (16% in 2009).  In other words, the US population features an increasing number of fervent religious traditionalists, and those who are decidedly not (though the former outweigh the latter).

The puzzle then is, if such a large minority of Americans are traditionalists, and these traditionalists are flying to the GOP banner, why were the Republicans trounced so thoroughly in the 2006 and 2008 elections?  The Pew study suggests one reason. The “percentage with conservative views on social values has been steadily declining over the past two decades” especially among younger generations.  Religiosity has surged, but the mores informing that religiosity have shifted.  Or, we could say that this religiosity has contributed to shifting mores, or at least accommodated it.  Whatever the relationship, the GOP policy positions on social issues have lost supporters.  Of course, war and scandal didn’t help Republicans much either.

So, Liberty University’s partisan decision represents the growing religious divide between Republicans and Democrats.  I’m not sure, though, that purifying the ranks is going to help the Republicans all that much, especially if it’s not certain that religious traditionalists can be trusted to adhere to standard GOP positions.