White Christians decline in USA but dominate GOP
Study finds another major difference that factionalizes politics
White Christians are no longer a majority in America, but they still make up nearly three-quarters of the Republican Party, according to a sweeping study of faith in America released Wednesday.
White Christians accounted for 80% of the U.S. population when Jimmy Carter was president; that number had dropped to 54% by 2006, and white Christians now make up 43% of the U.S. population as the number of people unaffiliated with any religion has swelled.
The GOP remains about 73% white Christian — down slightly from 10 years ago — and 30% evangelical, despite the fact that white evangelical Protestants make up only 17% of the U.S. population, according to the yearlong survey of more than 100,000 people by PRRI, a public policy research firm that specializes in issues of faith.
By contrast, fewer than onethird of Democrats are white Christians, down from about 50% a decade ago.
“We are seeing this widening gap between the two political parties,” PRRI CEO Robert Jones said.
“If you think about some of the big worries the Founding Fathers had about political parties, it was that they would accentuate factionalism rather than smoothing it over,” Jones said. “I think we are really seeing that. We are seeing increasingly the Republican Party becoming more and more a white Christian party that is heavily rooted in the South and Midwest and the Democratic Party kind of following along these demographic changes, becoming less white and less Christian.”
As race and religion become strong predictors of party affiliation, Jones said, “this looks more and more like a tribal identity than a political affiliation.”
Outside politics, the PRRI survey shows a shift in the nation’s religious views: a big increase in the number of people — especially young people — declaring themselves “unaffiliated.” About 24% of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, up from about 10% in 1995. Among people ages 18-29, that number rises to almost 40%.
The PRRI survey found 20 states where the “unaffiliated” make up a larger percentage population than single faith groups, including Democratic strongholds such as Vermont, Oregon and Washington, along with traditional “red” states such as Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
These unaffiliated Americans are not much of a political force. PRRI reported in September that the unaffiliated make up only about 12% of the vote in any national election. The Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life reported in January that the 115th Congress is a little more than 90% Christian, a number that has remained largely unchanged for decades.
John Green, director of the Bliss Center of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said the numbers in the PRRI survey largely reaffirm long-developing trends in American politics, but that does not mean they are without concern for both parties.
“There are real costs for political parties becoming too closely identified with one religious group or cultural group,” Green said. Some Republicans voiced concern in the 1980s, as the party began to emphasize a strong faith-based agenda, that it would be at risk of alienating moderates and non-religious people.