l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 Why Demographic Shifts on Religion and Marriage Could Doom the Democratic
Party
Nov 22, 2011 4:45 AM EST
The party of Obama is increasingly unmarried and irreligious, a shift that
could help the GOP build a new majority.
If demography is destiny, the Democratic Party could be facing big trouble.
A growing contrast between the two major parties centers more and more on
stark differences in marital status and religious involvement—distinctions
that should give substantial advantages to Republicans and place Democrats
increasingly outside the American mainstream.
New polling from the Gallup 0rganization includes striking details that
ought to alarm the administration and its allies. For the first time,
substantial majorities of those who describe themselves as Democrats in the
age of Obama say they are unmarried and irreligious—in a nation that
overwhelmingly values both marriage and religion.
Between June and August 2011, Gallup interviewed more than 78,000 adults,
evenly divided between the two parties. Among Democrats, 52 percent say they
“seldom” or “never” attend religious services; among Republicans, 61
percent go to church or synagogue once a month or more.
Even more surprisingly, 54 percent of Democrats say today they are single;
up sharply from the 48 percent of the donkey party who counted as unmarried
before Obama’s election. For the GOP, on the other hand, the great bulk of
its support (62 percent) continues to come from married adults.
As a party overwhelmingly comprised of churchgoers and married people, the
Republicans not only mirror the nation at large (where solid majorities are
currently married and attend religious services at least monthly), but, more
important, connect to nearly universal American aspirations.
President Obama pauses during a news conference at East Room of the White
House on Oct. 6. , Alex Wong / Getty Images
The most recent figures from the Census Bureau show that in 2010 more than
83 percent had been married at least once by the age of 40, while surveys
suggest that the biggest groups of single adults (the never-married below 25
and widows above 65) would personally prefer to be part of marital
relationships. Few people who currently hold the status of husbands and
wives nourish a burning desire to live as singles (if they did, they’d
divorce), but huge proportions of those who remain unmarried wish they could
marry (or, in some cases, marry again).
On a similar note, even those Americans who may attend church services less
regularly than Republicans express strong positive feelings toward religion,
while few among the great bulk of Americans who say that they pray
regularly would endorse the attitudes of the irreligious majority in the
Democratic Party. A typical recent poll (from CBS News in 2009) showed 59
percent of all respondents saying they “pray often” and an identical
percentage agreeing that “religion is very important in their daily lives.”
People who can count on religious involvement and family support networks to
help with the basic needs of existence will feel less desire for costly,
intrusive, bureaucratic programs to satisfy daily demands.
Among the 40 percent in that survey who said that they go to services “
nearly every week,” it’s safe to say that few believe they should worship
less frequently, but among the 39 percent who admitted they attend “less
often” many would no doubt acknowledge that they wished they could
participate on a more regular basis. Only 20 percent flatly declared that
they “never” go to services—the position that currently dominates the
Democratic Party.
In other words, the United States not only remains a nation where the bulk
of the populace attends religious services regularly and most adults go home
each night to a husband or wife, but big majorities still believe that
marriage and faith are positive influences in our national life. For all the
misleading talk about the imminent collapse of marriage, the 2010 Census
brought the surprising news that among all children under 18, nearly 70
percent live with both biological parents.
In this regard, the Democratic Party faces an obvious challenge with its
majorities of the unmarried and the irreligious. The broader public (and
even prominent Democratic leaders) express strong support for lasting
marriage and dynamic faith communities as beneficial to the nation.
President Obama has spoken frequently to encourage religiosity (giving some
of his most eloquent addresses at various prayer breakfasts and church
services) and passionately makes the case for responsible fatherhood and
stable families.
By promoting such sentiments, don’t Democrats unwittingly acknowledge that
they want more people to resemble Republicans and fewer Americans to be like
them? Don’t they implicitly endorse GOP values over their own?
The reason that married, churchgoing people disproportionately develop
Republican affiliation has less to do with conservative convictions on
divisive social issues (like abortion, guns, or gay marriage) and more to do
with distrust of big government and preferred reliance on intimate
arrangements. The great conservative philosopher and parliamentarian Edmund
Burke emphasized the importance of the “little platoons” of civil society
—family, church, community, business—above centralized institutions of
government. People who can count on religious involvement and family support
networks to help with the basic needs of existence (from child care to
elder care) will feel less desire for costly, intrusive, bureaucratic
programs to satisfy daily demands. On the other hand, the unmarried and the
un-churched count as far more likely to feel alone and unprotected,
supporting expansive, activist government to address their urgent needs.
By most measures, Republicans exemplify values and behavior that most
Americans want for themselves, since those affiliated with the GOP are more
likely to be committed to long-term marriages, to be active in their
churches and synagogues, and to achieve financial success (with 23 percent
earning above $90,000, compared with 18 percent in the nation at large), and
far less likely to experience (or support) reliance on government welfare
programs.
The minority communities that today provide Democrats with their most
unshakably reliable supporters (with 36 percent of Democrats identified as
“nonwhite” compared with only 26 percent in the general public) most
emphatically share the positive view of faith and family that’s so
disproportionately displayed in the Republican Party. A fresh push among
black and particularly Hispanic voters should portray the GOP as the natural
home for those who want their kids to grow up to lasting marriages and
lifelong religious commitments—chipping away at that near-monolithic
minority support that sustains Obama’s increasingly forlorn hopes for
reelection.
If those on the right can convince the public that the embrace of
conservative ideas and candidates will reliably help more people live like
Republicans, they could make significant progress toward that dream of a
durable GOP majority that’s eluded them for more than 80 years. |
|
