The Disappearing Religious Right

“White grievances” supplant “moral values” as a major impetus to get out the vote for the Republican Party.

Data gathered after the 2020 Presidential Election show that “moral values” as a motivation to get out the vote has greatly decreased. Only 3% of voters said abortion was the most important issue facing the country according to the AP VoteCast Survey. Same-sex marriage wasn’t even a consideration.

In 2010, 43% of voters considered abortion to be a “very important issue” and 32% of voters thought same-sex marriage also to be a “very important issue” according to a Pew Research Center survey.

The largest group of 2020 voters, 41%, said the coronavirus pandemic was the most important issue and they voted 73% for Biden per the AP VoteCast Survey. Predating the pandemic and “based on analyses of survey data of the whole U.S. population examining both [2016] voting behavior and attitudes toward blacks and immigrants … Trump’s core supporters are working-class white men, the group most racially resentful and most opposed to further immigration.” This is true especially “when we look at lower-paid working-class jobs [that] typically require high school degrees or less and tend to pay low wages.” This analysis was presented in July 2019 by Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Eric Hoyt, directors at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity.

“The Republican Party Is Now the Party of White Grievance” Jessica Lynn wrote on Nov. 5, 2020. Lynn noted that “these white males are under the false (and illegal) impression that it is their civic duty to restore order with military-style weapons, that voting is rigged, but only if their guy loses.” Lynn concluded: “White grievance is simply racism, not wanting ‘others’ to get a piece of what you have.”

“Resentful white voters” are the GOP’s “core constituency,” syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The attack was “an expression of their fear,” he said. “They know they’ve lost the debate over LGBTQ rights, immigration, race and all the other issues marking the line between left and right. They realize the nation’s population of angry white people is dwarfed by its rainbow coalition of white, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Islamic, Jewish, LGBTQ and others who demand ‘liberty and justice for all.’”

“The Republican Party has long been an engine for white resentment politics” noted Ezra Klein, a New York Times opinion columnist on the Jan. 11, 2020, broadcast of the “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.”

Defining the Religious Right

As a political movement, the Religious Right was created by the intentional melding of organized religion and the Republican Party. It was a brilliant strategy in the late 1970s to take advantage of not only – at that time – the prestige of, and respect for, religious leaders to benefit the GOP, but also to provide unlimited dark money for political campaigns.

Long before PACs and Super PACs were standard funding sources for political operatives, all religious organizations were/are legally as financially opaque as they wish to be. Additionally, the names of donors not only need not be disclosed but also the donors receive a tax deduction for their “contributions.” Not only do the finances of religious organizations need not be disclosed, they are also tax-free institutions.

The only requisite for religious leaders and organizations to maintain their tax advantages was/is not to endorse a candidate by name. So the “moral values” that would energize conservative Christians to political activism and get out the vote were carefully selected. The Republican Party became the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ champions.

Neoconservatives Paul Weyrich, along with fellow Catholics Terry Dolan and Richard Viguerie, and Howard Phillips, a Jew who had converted to evangelical Christianity, established the Moral Majority in 1978 to be led by Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell. Other Evangelical churchmen followed.

Weyrich, once referred to as the most powerful man in America, also founded The Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and many other organizations that became the foundational tools for neoconservative domination of the GOP.

Since Catholic bishops are usually only replaced when they retire or die, it took over a decade for Pope John Paul II, with the advice of his allies in the Reagan Administration, to create a majority of prelates dedicated to the Republican Party. They then directed the lions share of their resources to denying women and gays their human rights.

“Catholic writers emerged as intellectual leaders of the religious right in universities, the punditocracy, the press, and the courts” observed Howard Schweber, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “In the academy, on the Court, Catholic intellectuals provide the theoretical discourse that shapes conservative arguments across a whole range of issues,” Schweber wrote in 2012.

Racism is not a “moral value”

As the appalling ruthlessness of the neocon lust for plutocratic power fades from memory, the Religious Right is often erroneously conflated with Southern racism. With the exception of voting for Jimmy Carter in 1976, the South abandoned the Democratic Party after Pres. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The GOP’s “Southern Strategy” has always been based on racism.

So, yes, the majority of rural and Southern Evangelicals will continue to support the GOP as the party of white supremacy, not from any expectation that the legalization of same-sex marriage will be reversed. In 2020, 23% of voters identified as born-again or Evangelical and 81% voted for Trump, according to the AP VoteCast survey.

The same survey showed that “among white Catholics, 57% backed Trump,” wrote David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture. “In 2016 Trump won 64% of white Catholics …. particularly in Rust Belt battleground states such as Michigan and Wisconsin,” Gibson noted.

So, yes, the vast majority of Catholic “working-class white men” who vote Republican will continue to do so because they are resentful of being left behind in “lower-paid jobs,” not from religious scruples about abortion.

Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America

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phillybluesfan's picture

It is a mistake to write off All Christian evangelicals as a lost cause. Consider these two examples of evangelicals who have much in common with Caucus99% ... if we take the time to listen to them.

What compels a decorated combat veteran and former missions pastor to study mysticism at a center founded by Fr. Richard Rohr?

Byron McMillan’s story is one of spiritual transformation and realignment, moving from his role as pastor at an evangelical megachurch in Raleigh, North Carolina to studying at the Center for Contemplation and action in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In this podcast interview, Byron discusses his journey following a mystical Jesus. He also describes how contemplative practices, including writing, have changed his faith and outlook on the world.

144953984_10214331635405080_8359902764880185983_o.jpg

Listen to the Unlikely Conversations Podcast: Following a Mystical Jesus
A Conversation with Byron McMillan

An evening with Shane Claiborne

[archived Pendle Hill video chat]

Our faith is not just a way of believing. It is a way of living in the world. Christians are meant to be non-conformists, interrupting the patterns of our world with prophetic imagination. We should be a holy counterculture. Shane will share stories of contemporary communities who are living with beautiful creativity and sometimes getting in a little trouble for it. After all, the Kingdom of God is not just something we hope for when we die, but something that we are to bring on earth as it is in heaven.

[video:https://youtu.be/SiVUi510cvQ]

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Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

@phillybluesfan However, I did not "write off all Christian Evangelicals as a lost cause." I only presented the statistical fact that the majority of Evangelicals dependably vote Republican and opined that they will continue to do so.

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Betty Clermont

phillybluesfan's picture

@Betty Clermont Betty,

I did not mean to imply that you "wrote off" folks like Shane and Byron. But many on the sophisticated left [including at Caucus99percent] won't admit that they have anything worthwhile to say. Seems to me that religion, in particular Christianity, includes both the worst threats to and advocates for for what I personally care about.

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Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

mhagle's picture

@phillybluesfan

I love Father Richard and James Finley and everything coming out of the Center for Action and contemplation. Looking forward to the 2021 podcasts. I also follow Eckhart Tolle, Adyashanti, and Mooji. The message is all the same. A world away from much of the evangelical message. This message is the golden rule, prayer of St. Francis, serenity prayer, etc., etc., etc.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Thanks for this informative collation Betty.
Not sure how trumpet voters expect relief
but remember the chattering class giving
Kennedy low chances due to his catholicism.
Now the supremes are mostly of that persuasion?

just for the helluvit Wink

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RantingRooster's picture

through their heads, employers make the hiring decisions.

No one can steal their job. American companies can ship our jobs overseas, but China didn't steal them. The very "globalists" they claim to hate, are their employers, idols of Wall Street and god's of capitalism.

The very people they elect to government are the ones who sell them out to the "globalists", in the first place. Most of Trump's "products" were manufactured in 3rd world countries for heaven sake.

But that fact, and seemingly any "facts", never seems to get through the concrete like cognitive dissonance of the "religiously devoted". Whether that's organized religion literally or Capitalism more broadly.

This "devotion" to ignorance, if you will. No other facts are allowed to interrupt this one idea, period, full stop.

It's absurd!

Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

@RantingRooster

The very "globalists" they claim to hate, are their employers, idols of Wall Street and god's of capitalism.
The very people they elect to government are the ones who sell them out to the "globalists", in the first place. Most of Trump's "products" were manufactured in 3rd world countries for heaven sake.

What, so Trump supporters are big fans or Clinton or Dubya? On whose watch China was granted Most Favored Nation status and OECD membership which were huge in enabling companies to move operations to China or die attempting to compete with low wages and zero environmental protection costs and low tariffs?

Maybe Trump should and could have done more to source his products in the US, but under current conditions there are a huge range of products that are simply not produced in the US any more, much less at remotely competitive prices.

They just can't get it through their heads, employers make the hiring decisions.
No one can steal their job. American companies can ship our jobs overseas, but China didn't steal them. The very "globalists" they claim to hate, are their employers, idols of Wall Street and god's of capitalism.

So, what - you think Amazon slaves idolize Jeff Bezos? Does the fact that they don't have good alternatives to working there somehow translate to endorsement?

The attitude of smug superiority which your comments suggest towards the unwashed plebes goes a fair way toward explaining why a lot more of what were formerly known as the working class feel that the Republican Party is far more (if very imperfectly) aligned with their interests than the Democrat. Dems are not only no longer the party of the working class, they don't really even pretend to be.

This "devotion" to ignorance, if you will. No other facts are allowed to interrupt this one idea, period, full stop.

In his "People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil" M. Scott Peck's shorthand definition of 'evil' is "militant ignorance". Even if Trump supporters were in the same league ignorance-wise as the ascendant woke fascists - which I very much dispute - at least they are not about trying to impose their values on everyone else.

Very much in contrast to the current efforts to demonize and stamp out any hint of resistance to the erasure of traditional values and assertion of what were supposedly unalienable rights.

That is not only ignorant, but evil. Those supportive of it needn't add to that the further sin of hypocrisy in claiming otherwise. Not that they probably care.

“There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world...”

from the last words of Thorin Oakenshield - "The Hobbit" (book)

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RantingRooster's picture

@Blue Republic my opponent has made my case for me. The plaintiff rests.

Drinks

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

@Blue Republic @Blue Republic
They hate the, Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, whatever that they lost their jobs to, instead of the bosses that gave their jobs to those people. I hate the managers and the politicians. I've gotten to know quite a bit about some H1-B's and their lives in Asia were appalling. And they probably came from a higher economic group than the others. One Chinese man's father was a small businessman before Mao. Another Chinese lady's father was a university professor. Another Chinese lady, a janitor at the post office, came from a landowning family. They didn't liquidate them like the Soviets, but confiscated the land and forced her "to marry a farmer". From her tone of voice I don't think her husband had much joy of her. I was proud to sign her up as a deputy registrar. EDIT I was the deputy registrar. She was the new voter. I do't think I was clear). She wanted to vote for Obama. Most of the Indians were more reticent but at least two were farmers The Indians were more reticent, but at least two had fathers who owned three acre medieval sized farms. IIRC that's as much as one man can handle without power equipment. One had an ox, apparently it doubled as the family pet. They were Hindu so they couldn't eat it anyway. Another Indian was born in Zanzibar, his father was part of a trade mission. He showed me a picture of his father's house. I remarked, "Big". He said, "Everyone in India lives in a big house, as master or servant, or they don't live in a house at all. In a tent or on the street." No middle class there.

So, the people are just people. Some bad, most good. The system and the one per cent are the problem. Not immigrants like our ancestors, unless your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. And most of them were probably OK. But the corporate creeps who make that decision just deflect blue collar anger (and white collar anger, many engineers curse their replacements) instead of the people that fired them to save money!

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

enhydra lutris's picture

a decline in the percentage of the population that views itslf as religious, or at least as a member of a specific sect or cult. As a political force, the "Religious Right" seems to be losing clout or importance or both, but I wonder how much total drop off there is in their beliefs and their attachment to them. Dominionists are still around in large numbers, and similar types as well. It might be partially a case of simply putting their moral values on the back burner or assigning them a lower priority because of the seeming greater urgency of all of their other grievances.

That said (always expect the worst), I do help you are right both as to their existence as a political force, and their existence per se.

Thanks again for all the info.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris

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interesting and informative discussion. Although I agree with QMS, as always I can count on the 99% community for a well-educated and polite debate. Much appreciated!

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Betty Clermont

@Betty Clermont

but I think I will enjoy it.
This fantasy ride people are stuck on
makes little sense to me. I suspect deep
thinkers such as your self may have clarity.

Thanks

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continually growing while the percentage of Americans claiming a religious affiliation is declining. I don't know how much of a "drop-off" there is in the religious beliefs of Republican voters. Recent polls show 50% of Republicans still object to same-sex marriage and would like Roe v. Wade overturned. The question is what now impels Republicans to get out the vote and the opinion writers who I happen to admire are pointing at "white grievances" as a major factor. Exit voting analysis seem to support this. By the way, thank you for your thoughtful and well-stated comment.

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Betty Clermont

mhagle's picture

I hope you are right. It would be lovely to see the religious right fade in influence. Here, a local church that was early on calling the coronavirus fake had an outbreak, and now it seems like they are leading the charge to get people vaccinated.

Things can change.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

So glad to read another post from you Betty.
Wish you would post here more often.
I have read your book.

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I wish I could post more, too, but old age is taking its toll. My fervent hope is that someone much younger than I will take up the challenge of exposing the corruption in the institutional Catholic Church.

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Betty Clermont

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

The "Religious Right" as we knew it from circa 1980-2008 is disappearing because those of that certain personality that most defined it are now being sucked up instead into the "woke progressive" political cult, which has become everything they were (most notably, gormless distractivists serving as "foot-soldiers" in an unholy pact with the embattled oligarchy), and even resumed an alarming number of the same cultural battles they lost 30 years ago.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Well said, The Liberal Moonbat!!

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Betty Clermont