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A Word on Behalf of Religion
These have been hard times for American institutions. Over the past four to five decades, confidence in nearly every institution of American life has declined. A 2018 Gallup survey found, for example, that trust in Congress stood at 42 percent in 1973 and dropped to 11 percent this year. Only 29 percent of Americans gave high ratings to public schools in 2018, compared with 58 percent in 1973. Newspapers have lost altitude too with only 23 percent today expressing “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of trust in them. In 1975, 52 percent had confidence in the presidency, compared with 37 percent today. The data are similar for the medical system, TV news, and banks. The only institution showing improvement was the military. (Small business was mostly trusted and held steady over the decades.)
However much some institutions may seem to merit this loss of trust – and we could throw in the political parties too – a generalized cynicism about our system and, in the end, one another, is a corrosive thing for a society. We might want to consider whether our curdled opinions are entirely merited.
Organized religion has suffered the worst loss of reputation. In 1973, 65 percent of Americans expressed strong trust. That has declined to 38 percent in 2018.
The ongoing scandals involving sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have doubtless contributed to organized religion’s loss of standing. That some major evangelical leaders, like Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, and Jerry Falwell, Jr., have become shameless flacks for a cruel and immoral president has sullied their own reputations while giving the side eye to the faith that supposedly commands non-situational ethics.
That’s why a recent survey by the Voter Study Group examining the views of religious versus secular Trump voters is so interesting. One of the myths that has hardened since the 2016 election is that religious people were particularly stalwart Trump fans. Emily Ekins, who authored the study, corrects that: “Religious conservatives were less likely to vote for Trump in the early G.O.P. primaries when Republicans had several candidates to choose from. Among the most devout, a plurality (39 percent) voted for Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) rather than Donald Trump (34 percent). However, Trump did best among those conservatives who never go to church, garnering fully 69 percent of their votes in the early primaries.”
Though most religious Republicans and conservatives eventually voted for Trump in the general election, their attitudes toward issues do not place them in what commentator John Ziegler has dubbed “Cult 45” – the rally-attending, diehard core of Trump fans.
Ekins has labelled the most Trump-sympathetic group, about 20 percent of his voters, as “American preservationists.” Of all Trump supporters, they are the least religious. But other identities have substituted. Fully 67 percent of them say that their race is “extremely or very important” to their identity (compared with a maximum of 39 percent among other Trump voters), and 48 percent expressed authoritarian tendencies, supporting a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections.” Among more than weekly church goers, only 9 percent said being white was “extremely important” to their identity.
Among religiously observant Trump voters, strong majorities have favorable views toward blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, whereas secular Trump voters are cooler. The most religious Trump voters are also much better disposed toward international trade and more likely to favor a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. The religious are also much less alienated than the secular. They are less likely to report annoyance at having to deal with limited English immigrants, and less likely to say that they “feel like strangers in their own country.”
Ekins found the same effects of church attendance that other studies have found – that the observant are much more likely to volunteer, for example, and not just at their own churches. But the most interesting finding in her work is the that the non-religious Trump voters are the ones who seem to have poured their need to belong into politics. Not only does this leave them unmoored from their local communities, and open to finding identity in ethnicity, it also substitutes the passions and hatreds of politics for the time-tested wisdom of faith.
Those on the left who reflexively cheer the decline of religion may want to reconsider. And those on the right should reflect on the damage that a too-close association of religion and politics does to both.
Published in Culture, Religion & Philosophy
Perhaps you can be a character witness for Dr. Ford or Captain Bill Kristol’s First Mate on his Titantic II Cruise.
I’d sell any ‘Charen stock/futures’ if you have any.
Assuming the polls and surveys are true (which I usually don’t), I believe organized Judeo-Christian religion has suffered in this country because 1) many traditional denominations have embraced leftism – same sex “marriage” or the denying of non-PC portions of scripture, 2) refused to forcefully deal with the scandals in their denominations (leaving the wolves among the flock), and 3) more people are realizing you don’t have to be in a denominational brick-and-mortar church to believe in a faith’s message. For example, I believe in Christ’s message, believe he is the Son of God, and know I’m a sinner who could never live up to his ideals.
Yet, I don’t go to church, I’ve raised my daughters to be Christian but let them as adults make their own decisions, and I fully support faith being something to be publically celebrated (although I struggle with Islam because I am seriously biased against it).
I think the left has abandoned religion (other than Islam), and is on the march to eliminate Christianity from public view, dicussion, and celebration (goodbye Christmas, hello “Winter Holiday”). The Jewish people are such a small percentage of our population, and so many are liberals, the left doesn’t have to attack them – only Israel (and may God bless your strong support for Israel).
And why can’t I delete this stupid outline number?
Moderator Note:
Nasty and rudeMona,
The Progressive Left has attacked virtually every positive American institution relentlessly in the most mean spirited and underhanded way for the last 100 years. As a result they are now in almost complete control of most of our Federal and State bureaucracies, our schools, our Universities, and many of those same hallowed American institutions you mention almost all of which have been turned into appendages of the Progressive Left brainwashing millions in the process and promoting literally millions of ill advised regulations and notions that have torn American Life asunder. How could anyone in their right mind think highly now of American Universities or Schools when they clearly are not interested in educating American children in a fair and reasonable manner but are only seemingly interested in turning our children into some sort of brainwashed Progressive drone that attacks the innocent when triggered by their Progressive masters? How could anyone think highly of the Federal Bureaucracy when it clearly has gone unconstitutionally rogue in pursuit of the Progressive Deep State agenda that criminally persecutes innocent Americans without mercy and clearly does not give a damn about the real plight of the American people?
Yet you choose to mischaracterize the political leanings of many of our most upstanding citizens, the religious, as some sort of relevant issue in the declining popularity of American Institutions [redacted]
Moderator Note:
Off topic and rude[redacted]
Yes.
Moderator Note:
Rude.[redacted]
Let’s look at this another way. Religion is only a part of the overall decline of trust in any institution. A falling tide lowers all boats. As noted in the article, 11 percent trust for Congress, 29 percent for public schools, 23 percent for newspapers. Against that backdrop, 38 percent for religion, regardless of the degree of the drop, seems pretty good.
Gosh. So we have a study that shows people who have faith in God are less likely to put their faith in Man.
Who’d of thunk it?
Was just listening to the September 24th Federalist podcast with Emily Ekins, Director of polling at CATO Institute – seems as though Mona should have given some type of attribution for “her work” here. It’s basically a transcript – what did this survey say about plagiarism?
Very good, interesting article. “Cult 45” are little scarier, more hostile to the fundamental beliefs and personal characteristics from the other 80% of Trump voters than I’d thought. We are an odd lot, aren’t we?
Yay for us whites! Stalin and DaVinci! We rule! Gah, this drives me nuts. It ain’t your race. It’s your culture – and within your culture, there’s a sizable faction convinced you’re doing your culture the wrong way.
BTW, can we retire this “cruise” snark before it becomes the new Beltway Cocktail Party? I say that as a self-interested NR Cruise guy who’s had innumerable genial disputes over dinner and / or drinks. You’d think it was all WASPs in top hats tut-tutting. Conservative cruises are fun. Especially the arguing part.
That depends. Do they feature Frankie Ford?
Perfectly willing to drop the ‘cruise’ knock right after those of us that are against Illegal Immigration stop being alluded to as bigots, racists or have our religious faith knocked if we aren’t “all aboard the SS Amnesty & Open Borders”
It was a test.
Yep, the NR cruises are a certified blast! I’m looking forward to this December . . .
Mona,
Your statistical defence of the religious in America is interesting. However, I don’t think you grasp just how close we were to the total destruction of religion in America. The left in the last 30 years has mutated from a big government party to a quasi-Marxist social justice party. They no longer are concerned about asking religion to be more tolerant of any given issue but are actively looking to destroy religion as their chief competitor in the control of the minds of the masses.
If someone else had won the Presidency in 2016 then the Court would have swung even further to the left than it had already gone. The left is capable of consciously misinterpreting the Constitution to obtain whatever result it wants. The Free Exercise Clause would be the next target. In short order, religious observance would have been defacto outlawed with no recourse to the Constitution. As you well know, this disaster was narrowly averted at the polls.
I have often thought that the joke was on Karl Marx. He said, “Religion is the opiate of the People.” As it turns out, Marxism is the opiate of the People and Religion is the strength of the People. Karl must have got a little mixed up.
Regards,
Jim
The decline in faith in our institutions and how people voted had nothing to do with Trump or religion – it had everything to do with voting out liberal / socialistic policies. Trump ended up being the nominee but had any other Republican candidate been chosen, it would be the same. I’ve witnessed extraordinary changes (not for the better) in our culture in just the last 8 years – shocking really. It has been painful to try to restore just some semblance of our Judaeo-Christian principles and values that God gave the Founders – who then created something unique, and un-duplicated anywhere else in the world, and have been, bit by bit, undone in recent years. The Supreme Court fiasco is one example – now guilty until proven innocent?
Overall, I agree with Ms. Charon’s assessment. I am surprised that she is surprised. I am one of those “religiously observant Trump voters” who she apparently now agrees, based on the Elkins data, didn’t all of a sudden turn into a racist Nazi white supremacist Klansman. Rather, we made a transactional choice to support the President despite his flaws.
This is why guys like me have been so infuriated by the unfair and unsupported accusations of wrongdoing leveled by commentators like Ms. Charon.
Unfortunately, in this same column, her erroneous prejudice remains on display:
Please don’t lecture me about the demands of the Christian faith. Ms. Charon seems clueless on the subject. There’s the whole “render unto Caesar” part. There’s the whole “in this world, but not of this world” part. It is far, far more complicated than she thinks. It certainly does not demand that we never associate with sinners. Quite the contrary.
The Jews and the Christians should share this understanding. Read the book of Daniel.
Further, the very Gallup survey that Ms. Charon cites does not remotely support her hypothesis, which attributes declining “strong trust” in organized religion to Trump. Let’s look at the numbers. The Gallup data is here (scroll down about halfway).
“Strong trust” in organized religion was 65% in 1965 and 38% in 2018. And this is supposedly Trump’s fault, or more precisely, the fault of religious leaders who supported Trump.
But it was down to 42% in 2015, before Trump. So no, it seems to have little or nothing to do with Trump.
I suspect that the decline doesn’t even have much to do with the Catholic Church scandals, but with the appalling degeneration of the morality of the Democrats. It is very difficult, these days, to be a religious believer and a Democrat, given the illegitimacy, abortion, and homosexuality issues. This is the growing cultural divide, so it is perfectly understandable that increasingly radical Democrats would express less support for organized religion.
This, incidentally, is precisely what the Elkins study cited by Ms. Charon says. (“Left-right culture wars over L.G.B.T. rights — particularly government sanction of same-sex marriages — have likely soured many Democrats’ views of Christians.”)
Some thoughts here:
That being said:
This is correct, and moreover we should all be extremely wary of looking to any party or politician to “save” us or the practice of our faith. The best we can hope for is that politicians will leave us alone.
Yes. All well said.
I was more, um, pithy. “:)
Well struck, Skippy!
I tend to agree.
But I think the bigger threats were always the philosophical ones. (I.e., blame my profession and the goons in other fields who took up our worst ideas and ran with them.)
Like this stuff, quoting @DavidFrench quoting me:
On second thoughts, quasi-Marxist big government socialism was also an idea of the philosophers.
My takeaway is that this study only goes to further my belief that trying to learn anything about a specific person based only on a group affiliation or identity is doomed to fail. Isn’t judging individuals by their groups one of the great sins of the left?