A friend of mine who was a data journalist long before that was normal — Anthony DeBarros — used to tell my Washington Journalism Center students the following: A good reporter can look at almost any solid set of survey statistics and see potential news stories.
So here we go again. When the Pew Research Center released its epic “Nones on the Rise” study in 2012, all kinds of reporters studied the details and saw all kinds of stories. The updates on those numbers keep producing headlines, with good cause.
But if was veteran scholar John C. Green — yes, I quote him a lot — who saw, even before the public release of those numbers (click here and then here for GetReligion reminders), a very important politics-and-religion story. Here is the crucial info, as he stated it on the record in 2012:
The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.
“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”
Of course, the modern Democratic Party also includes one of America’s most fervently religious camps, as well — African-American churchgoers.
Many have predicted the obvious: At some point, there will be tensions there. Woke Democrats are, for example, on the rise and grabbing lots of headlines. But who saved Joe Biden’s political neck in the South Carolina primary? How does he please the woke choir and the black church?
With that in mind, let’s look at two must-file charts that political scientist Ryan Burge circulated the other day via his must-follow Twitter account. And keep in mind that we are building toward a new Damon Linker essay with this blunt headline: “Could America split up?”
Now, when I saw that chart, I immediately thought of the prophetic Jesusland graphic that grew out of the red-blue patterns seen in White House races the past two decades or so.
Then, I thought of that chart — and the next chart, just below — when I saw that think piece by Linker at The Week.
Let me stress that it was my mind that connected these Burge charts to Linker’s essay. I don’t know if either of those brilliant men would agree with me on this.
But I think journalists can see an overarching trend: America’s religious, moral and cultural divides are turning into political divides (and America’s red vs. blue advocacy journalism culture is pouring gasoline on these fires).
So what does Linker have to say?
Let’s start with this long, but essential, overture:
I see so much anger around me — at the grocery store, while driving, on television, online. I feel so much of it myself. … Who are these people? What do I share with them? Aristotle suggests that at its best, citizenship can be a form of friendship. But America is nowhere near its best right now. These people may be my fellow citizens, but they aren't my friends. Sometimes they feel like my enemies.
How has it come to this? The right feels like it's fighting for its very life against a left that's waging a scorched-earth campaign against it. As far as the right is concerned, progressives don't just want to win. They want to grind conservatives into the dust, humiliate them, force them to jump through public hoops, and confess their sins before the world. And the list of sins grows ever longer — on race, on religion, on sex, on gender. The goalposts always shift further. Each triumph for the left is followed by the opening of another front in a rolling cultural revolution. The right feels desperate — and understands every one of its own moves as an equal and opposite reaction to a prior offensive on the part of its political and cultural antagonists.
The left, meanwhile, views things exactly in reverse. The story of the country is one characterized by unjust domination by a narrow class of white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered oppressors, and then a slow, grinding fight toward greater liberty and equality for every identity. Yet instead of giving up its exclusive privileges and conceding the justice of continuing with progress toward ever-greater democracy, the right has mounted a counter-assault that aims to reverse the progress America has made, with the ultimate goal of propping up its remaining power and then actively narrowing the circle of citizenship in the hopes of turning back the clock to a time when white, heterosexual, cisgendered men were in charge of everything.
Racism is sin, of course. All small-o orthodox believers know that.
But it’s hard not to notice — as shown in the Pew “nones” study — that most of the divisions on gender and sex center on clashes between traditional forms of religion and the evolving woke doctrines of the Sexual Revolution.
So what is the end game here? What happens if and when the empowered Democrats pack the U.S. Supreme Court, kill the filibuster and create a few extra bright-blue states with new senators?
Here’s a final word from Linker, before you read his whole piece:
When I try to wrap my mind around what it would look like for political violence to break out and start spreading like brushfire through the country, I come up short. The historical Civil War was waged as a traditional military conflict over territory, with discrete battles, campaigns, victories, and surrenders. That's because the dispute mapped precisely onto the physical world. The North could have allowed the Confederacy to walk away, but it didn't, and so the two sides fought it out, with the South eventually losing, bringing the war to a decisive end.
But today? We talk of red states and blue states, but that's obviously simplistic. It's not even possible to speak of an archipelago of progressive coastal cities arrayed against a much less densely populated inland empire of conservatism. The fact is that even small cities in America are significantly more liberal than the small towns and countryside that surround them. I live in an inner-ring suburb of Philadelphia that is heavily Democratic, but just a few miles from my house there are neighborhoods and towns filled with loyal Republicans. We are politically intertwined. That's the way a country is supposed to be — at least when those on different sides of political disputes don't hate each other.
Let us attend.
Does anyone see potential religion-beat stories here?