Pew Research released its most recent Religious Landscape Survey in 2014; that report found 70.6 percent of Americans are Christian.
It was a little smaller than the previous survey in 2011, but not a big surprise.
The same report found 22.8 percent of Americans self-identify as “religious nones”—a group that includes atheists, agnostics, and those who identify as believing in “nothing in particular”—a slight increase over the previous three years. That, apparently, is enough to justify the following from Salon‘s Matthew Sheffield:
Unless action is taken—and this must include a concession that most Americans support same-sex marriage—as the non-Christian portion of the country continues to grow, the prospects for the conservative movement are going to attenuate as the Godless Gap widens.
Following Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, there has been a lot of discussion about how conservatives can better reach out to non-whites. The Right will probably need to have a similar discussion about doing the same for non-Christians, especially since many non-whites are also non-Christian.
Regardless of what happens to GOP candidates in November, Christian conservatives face a choice. They can embrace identity politics and become a small group of frustrated Christian nationalists who grow ever more resentful toward their fellow Americans, or they can embrace reality and render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.
Sheffield’s article completely ignores the more than 70 percent of Americans who identify as Christians. It does, however, rightly identify that non-Christians tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
But is a 2-point increase in the number of non-Christians really a reason to abandon Judeo-Christian values—or is it more likely Salon wants the GOP to die out? Here’s a summary of some of the magazine’s most recent political headlines:
- Judicial Watch vs. Hillary: The Conservative group has a long history of spreading Clinton lies
- 5 worst right-wing moments this week: Rudy Giuliani suffers brain meltdown
- Madam President: What social science says about how a female president might lead
- White privilege as economic reality: It would take African-Americans 228 years to reach the same level of wealth as whites
So, should we really be surprised by this latest piece? Oh, by the way, Sheffield is writing a book about the future of the Republican Party. Anyone want to hazard a guess what he’s going to write about?
