Christianity in the United States

In the United States, Christianity has often been a prop of liberalism, and even radicalism.  It’s not very long ago that evangelicals were pounding the sidewalks and ringing doorbells on behalf of Jimmy Carter.  I actually had my own doorbell so rung one evening in 1976.  The Roman Catholic Church has produced radicals aplenty in recent decades, from the Berrigan brothers and “liberation theology” firebrands to Barack Obama’s pal, Father Pfleger.  The Episcopal Church has been at the forefront of modern feminist and gay rights movements, infuriating many “values” conservatives.  Establishment Methodism is practically synonymous with bleeding-heart liberalism: Hillary Clinton is a Methodist – a pretty typical one, I am told.  Of all the United States’ demographic subgroups, one of the strongest for redistributionist big-government socialism is African Americans…who are also one of our most religious subgroups.  And so on.

Politically speaking, polls show that the *most* religious Americans tend to favor conservative-Republican candidates, while the *merely* religious are all over the place, with a general trend, if anywhere, considerably left of center.

The most intensely religious large group of Americans is evangelical Christians.  They form about 7 percent of the adult population.  In the 2008 elections, according to the faith-trends monitor, Barna Group, 88 percent of evangelicals voted for John McCain, against only 11 percent for Barack Obama.  That 88 percent is, statistically, the same as the 85 percent who voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004.

If you move down the scale of religious intensity, you come to “born again” Christians.  These are 43 percent of the adult population, a number that includes the 7 percent of evangelicals.  To put it another way, 36 percent of us are born again, but not evangelical.  Of the overall 43 percent, there is a pretty even split in party registration: 18 percent Republican, 17 percent Democrat, 8 percent independent or other.

This means that, among non-evangelical born-agains, registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans.

From: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire (New York: Crown Forum, 2009), pp. 163-164.

John Derbyshire (born in 1945) is a contributing editor at National Review, where he writes on political and cultural subjects.  He is the author of several books.

 

Nothing to See Here

I was an Anglican, after all.  They don’t insist on your actually believing anything. – John Derbyshire (born in 1945), English-born American political and social commentator and author

 

Irish and Welsh Religion

There never was – well, not in the modern world – a country more steeped in Christianity than the Ireland of my youth [note: Derbyshire was raised in England - RZ].  The 1951 census showed only 64 atheists in the Republic of Ireland.  They could all have met together in one of those famous Dublin pubs.  This intense devotion to the Church continued into the 1980s.

Nowadays, the strikingly low religious numbers coming out of Ireland are for vocations: 9 priests ordained in 2007 (when 160 died or quit) and just 2 nuns taking final vows (228 died or quit).  You could cram them into a single confessional.  The average age of Irish priests is, currently, sixty-one.  Regular attendance at mass has dropped from 85 percent in 1985 to below 60 now, according to the Dublin Archdiocese, and that latter figure is propped up by an influx of Polish workers.

It’s not just Catholicism that has taken a hit.  The other paragon of intense religiosity in my youth was Methodist Wales.  When we sang hymns at morning assembly in my English-Midlands schools, the voices of the Welsh schoolmasters – schoolmasters being the principal export of Wales – could be heard above all the rest.  Every one of them had sung in a chapel choir; every one could tell you his voice register to a fine precision; none of them needed to look at the hymn book for the words (which he could have sung equally well in Welsh, also without a prompt book).

Now, the chapels of Wales are empty and derelict, where they have not been bought up or demolished.  In 2001, they were closing at the rate of one per week.  Wales, like Ireland, is becoming just another hedonistic, religiously indifferent European welfare democracy.

From: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire (New York: Crown Forum, 2009), p. 169.

 

American Religion

In the United States, Christianity has often been a prop of liberalism, and even radicalism.  It’s not very long ago that Evangelicals were pounding the sidewalks and ringing doorbells on behalf of Jimmy Carter.  I actually had my own doorbell so rung one evening in 1976.  The Roman Catholic Church has produced radicals aplenty in recent decades, from the Berrigan brothers and “liberation theology” firebrands to Barack Obama’s pal Father Pfleger.  The Episcopal Church has been at the forefront of modern feminist and gay rights movements, infuriating many “values” conservatives.  Establishment Methodism is practically synonymous with bleeding-heart liberalism: Hillary Clinton is a Methodist – a pretty typical one, I am told.  Of all the United States’ demographic subgroups, one of the strongest for redistributionist big-government socialism is African Americans…who are also one of our most religious subgroups.  And so on.

Politically speaking, polls show that the most religious Americans tend to favor conservative-Republican candidates, while the merely religious are all over the place, with a general trend, if anywhere, considerably left of center.

The most intensely religious large group of Americans is Evangelical Christians.  They form about 7 percent of the adult population.  In the 2008 elections, according to the faith-trends-monitoring Barna Group, 88 percent of Evangelicals voted for John McCain, against only 11 percent for Barack Obama.  That 88 percent is essentially the same as the 85 percent who voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry in 2004.

From: We are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire (New York: Crown Forum, 2009), p. 163.  All italics and the ellipsis in the original.

John Derbyshire (born in 1945), is a novelist, a writer on mathematical subjects, and a columnist and commentator for National Review.  He lives in Huntington, New York.