Nones

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Freethought Caucus in U.S. House reflects the rise, and political potential, of the 'nones'

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Rashida Tlaib of liberal “squad” fame on Capitol Hill, the first Palestinian-American and one of two Muslim women in the U.S. House, won this month’s primary against the president of Detroit’s City Council and is guaranteed re-election in a heavily Democratic district.

Now the “Friendly Atheist” blog on patheos.com revealed that Tlaib has quietly joined the Congressional Freethought Caucus. Aysha Khan, Religion News Service’s Muslim specialist, quickly grabbed the report.

Lest there be misunderstanding, this doesn’t mean Tlaib is spurning Islam like, say, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, celebrated author of “Infidel.” In theory, a religious believer can back such Freethought Caucus goals as “public policy based on reason and science,” protection of government’s “secular nature” and opposition to “discrimination against atheists, agnostics, and religious seekers.”

There are dozens of these special-interest caucuses in the House (.pdf here), covering anything from Cannabis to International Religious Freedom to LGBT Equality to rugby. One of the largest is the Prayer Caucus, chaired by North Carolina Baptist Mark Walker. The House members who lead the Ahmadiyya Muslim and American Sikh Caucuses are not adherents of those faiths, only interested friends.

There are now 13 House members in the Freethought Caucus, all of them Democrats, while 18 representatives decline to list a religious identity. Another 80 label themselves generic “Protestant” without specifying any particular church affiliation. See rundown on all Congress members here (.pdf).

These facts echo the increase of religiously unaffiliated “nones,” now 26 percent of the over-all U.S. population in Pew Research surveys. If effectively organized, they should exercise growing influence in the Democratic Party — though churchgoing Catholic Joe Biden’s nominating convention featured the customary God-talk.

Three Freethought members are among those who specify no religious identity: Representatives Sean Casten of Illinois, Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.


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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

Every now and then, readers — or people I meet in daily life — ask this question: Why do journalists write so much about the Religious Right (capital letters), while devoting way less digital ink to the actions, policies and beliefs of the religious left (no capital letters).

That is a complex question and you can hear me struggling with it all the way through this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this episode was my post that ran with this headline: “Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?”

For starters, people tend to ask this question every four or eight years (hint, hint), when the mainstream press does another round of stories about the religious left surging into action in an attempt to counterbalance the nasty Religious Right.

The Religious Right, you see, exists all the time — because it is one of the largest camps inside the modern Republican Party. The religious left doesn’t play the same role in the Democratic Party, unless we are talking about the importance of politically (as opposed to doctrinally) liberal black-church leaders in strategic primary elections. You can ask Joe Biden about that this time around.

I guess the simple answer to the “RR” vs. “rl” question is that journalists tend to capitalize the names of groups that they see as major political or social movements — like the Civil Rights movement or the Sexual Revolution.

The religious left, you see, isn’t a “movement” that exists all the time — in my experience — for many mainstream journalists. The religious left is just ordinary, good, liberal religious people doing things that are positive and logical in the eyes of gatekeepers in newsrooms. This is “good” religion.

The Religious Right, on the other hand, is a powerful political movement consisting of strange, scary evangelicals who keep coming out of the rural backwoods to threaten normal life in American cities. This is “bad,” even dangerous, religion.

Now, there is another big irony linked to press coverage of progressive forms of faith.


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Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?

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If you know your religion-beat history, then you know this name — David Briggs, who is best known for his years with the Associated Press.

If you know your GetReligion history, then you know that — for 17 years — we have been saying that the “religious left” deserves more attention. This is specially true in terms of the doctrinal beliefs of people in these blue pews and how those beliefs help shape their politics.

It seems that, every four years or so — a telling interval — we see a few stories about a surge of activity on the religious left and how that will impact politicians opposed by the Religious Right. It’s like politics is the only reality, or something.

Thus, several readers noted this recent Briggs byline for the Association of Religion Data Archives: “The decline of the religious left in the age of Trump.”

Say what? Here’s the overture:

President Trump has had a powerful mobilizing effect on the liberal and secular left in U.S. politics.

But will religious liberals also play a significant role in getting out the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in November?

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, some commentators began heralding the likelihood that a revived religious left would emerge from what many liberals considered the ashes of Trump’s victory.

But such hopes may be based more on a wing and a prayer than solid evidence of any such new awakening. Rather, there are several signs indicating “a notable decline” in political activity among religious liberals.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge and Damon Linker: Blessed be the ties that used to bind America?

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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?”


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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

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Joe Biden, Democrats face tough religious issues in public life that will not go away

It didn't matter where Pete Buttigieg traveled in Iowa and the early Democratic Party primaries -- voters kept asking similar questions.

Yes, they asked about his status as the first openly gay major-party candidate to hit the top tier of a presidential race. But they also wanted to know how his faith journey into the Episcopal Church affected his life and his take on politics.

"Those who are on my side of the aisle, those who view themselves as more progressive, are sometimes allergic to talking about faith in a way that I'm afraid has made it feel as if God really did have one political party," said Buttigieg, addressing a webinar for clergy and laypeople in his denomination's House of Deputies.

"It was very important to me to assert otherwise, but also to talk about the political implications of the commandments to concern ourselves with the well-being of the most marginalized and the most vulnerable and the idea that salvation has to do with standing with and for those who are cast out in society. … That energy carried the campaign, in ways that I never would have guessed."

But highly motivated religious believers are, of course, often divided by conflicts about doctrine that then spill over into politics.

Buttigieg waded into one such controversy during the campaign when candidate Beto O'Rourke said congregations and religious institutions that reject same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status.

“If we want to talk about anti-discrimination law for a school or an organization, absolutely. They should not be able to discriminate," said Buttigieg, on CNN's State of the Union broadcast. "But going after the tax exemption of churches, Islamic centers or other religious facilities in this country, I think that's just going to deepen the divisions we are already experiencing."

Other Democrats face similar hot-button issues. Former vice president Joe Biden, during his fight over the "soul of the nation" with President Donald Trump, is sure to hear questions about his Catholic faith and his evolving beliefs on moral and political issues.

Biden backed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 and the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. His views changed, while serving with President Barack Obama.

A key moment came in 2016, when Biden performed a same-sex marriage rite.


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Thinking with Ratzinger and Burge: Concerning sex, marriage, doctrine and church decline

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When historians write about the career of Pope Benedict XVI I predict that they will include a sobering quote that dates back to his life and work as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany.

I am referring to that 2001 interview when — looking at trends in postmodern Europe — he put all of his hopes and fears on the record. I thought of this exchange during a Twitter dialogue the other day with GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge. Hold that thought.

Ratzinger had been candid before. German journalist Peter Seewald probed on this topic by noting an earlier quote in which Ratzinger said that the future church would be "reduced in its dimensions; it will be necessary to start again." Had the leader of Rome's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith changed his views?

That led to this famous reflection by the future pope. This is long, but essential:

[The Church] will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes … she will lose many of her social privileges. … As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. …

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. … The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain. … But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith.


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There's good news for COVID-era church leaders amid all that familiar bad news

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America’s pastors are continually fretting about the threats of death, disease and destroyed careers that face their parishioners. Also, alongside analysts of religious trends, they have good reason to worry that in the long term shrinking coronavirus-era donations may hinder or doom their ministries and charities.

Reporters also need to ponder the following. Most U.S. congregations are now restricted to providing worship services online. Will meeting God in your pajamas become a convenient habit that permanently undercuts in-person attendance after states soften their stay-at-home and “social distancing” rules? This NPR piece anticipates a permanent slide for in-person worship. (Online classwork could similarly imperil the future prospects of expensive on-campus college and seminary programs.)

The problem is that supportive, face-to-face fellowship is an important reason people are attracted to active participation in religious congregations. Of course, it’s also possible that the new online visibility will pay off by reaching new people. (The Guy’s own Protestant church currently has many more people joining live worship online than appear in person on normal Sundays.). And some brave optimists are talking up a religious revival once this is behind us.

The local and national media have, of course, been asking religious leaders how actual donations and online attendance are running, and what they think the future holds.

Now those who haven’t yet developed such a story, or those who want to take a second look, have a news hook — and a bit of sunlight — in a Roper poll conducted in late April for the Pew Research Center, reported here and then analyzed here by political scientist Ryan Burge (a GetReligion contributor) for Religion News Service.

Reporters will observe that the poll reinforces a scenario that Religion Guy tends to accept.


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Jess Fields meets Ryan Burge: As you would image, they're talking 'nones,' 'evangelicals,' etc.

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So here is the question: Is podcaster Jess Fields just going to work his way through the entire GetReligion team, sooner or later?

I think it would be logical to do that, since Fields is especially interested in topics linked to religion, current events and the impact of journalism on all of that. You can see that with a quick glance at his homepage at Apple Podcasts.

The other day, I spent an hour or so online with him and that podcast link was included in the GetReligion post that I wrote about Fields and his work: “Jess Fields got tired of short, shallow news interviews: So he started doing loooong podcasts.”

You may recall that Fields is a small businessman in Houston who also has worked quite a bit in nonpartisan think tanks linked to state and local governments. He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and that has affected a few of his podcasts.

So now he has had a lengthy chat (very long, even by Fields standards) with social scientist, and progressive Baptist minister, Ryan Burge.

Why not? Burge is all over the place right now — writing and chatting about the tsunami of charts, survey samples and commentary that he keeps releasing, day after day, on Twitter. He also showed up the other day in an NBC special:


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YouTube thinker: Methodist conservative chats with RNS' Jack Jenkins about religious left

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Every few years, like clockwork, American newspapers roll out pre-election features about a revival of activity on what can accurately be called the “Religious Left” — even if few journalists have granted it the upper-case-letter status of the ominous Religious Right.

From Day 1 here at GetReligion, I have argued that activity on the theological and political left is one of the most overlooked stories of recent decades. I have at least three reasons for saying that:

(1) The demographic implosion of the denominations known as the Seven Sisters of liberal Protestantism — the decline escalated in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s — left room in the American public square for the emergence of modern evangelicalism. Religious progressives, however, maintained crucial high ground in elite institutions of the left and right coasts.

(2) Progressive Catholics have always played a crucial role in the Democratic Party, even as — at the ballot box — it was easy to see a growing divide between liberal “cultural Catholics” and more conservative Catholics who worship once a week or even more.

(3) Journalists tend to focus on religious liberals as a political force, while paying little or no attention to THEOLOGICAL trends on that side of the church aisle (other than changes that affect LGBTQ issues).

Theological questions will be even more important for the Religious Left in the future, as the political left grows more and more secular (think atheists, agnostics and “nones”). How will this affect, for example, crucial ties to African-American churches, which tend to be more conservative on moral issues? And while we are at it, check out this new chart from political scientist (and progressive Baptist pastor) Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor (whose Twitter feed has been on fire the past couple of days).

I bring all of this up because of a fascinating video chat that took place the other day between United Methodist conservative Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and veteran progressive scribe Jack Jenkins — formerly of ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress — who now covers national news for Religion News Service. The subject is a new book by Jenkins with the logical title, “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.”


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