Religious Habits of U.S. Teens

When I hear “Bible-focused” I tend to interpret that as “agrees with Republican ideologies”. I could be entirely wrong, though.

I grew up in a Christian household, and my father was part of a gospel trio that toured local churches. I spent quite a few Sunday’s in other peoples’ churches, as it were. I never got the feeling that they were that different from my family’s church (which you would probably classify as Bible-focused). The Lutherans had wine instead of grape juice for communion, which fascinated me. We also got a laugh after one service when my dad’s trio group mistakenly sang a song about the Rapture during a Seventh Day Adventist service. However, the Sunday schools were about the same and the services weren’t that much different in my experience.

One of the larger Methodist churches in my area did all of those things, at least they did 25 years ago when I was still going to church. This is probably more of a church to church difference than a difference between denominations. But again, I could be completely wrong here.

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Yes, you are wrong on this particular point, at least, from the point of view of theological principle.

To start with an example, the TEs at BioLogos go to “Bible-focused” churches, but many of them, from their side-comments on social issues, tend to be on the political left.

There is no automatic theological or logical connection between “conservative” or “Biblical” Christianity and Republican voting. There are of course some historical and sociological reasons why those two have become associated in American politics. There is a correlation: in the current culture, the sort of person who is attracted by “conservative” Christianity tends also to be attracted to the political right. But that is not a result of traditional Biblical exegesis or theology; it springs from other cultural factors.

The Democrats actually have themselves (in part) to blame for the strong correlation. Up until about 1972 or so many Christians who were theologically and morally conservative voted for the Democratic Party. Back then, one could be on the “left” on many social and economic issues and still be a very traditional Christian within the Democratic Party, and feel welcome there. Many Catholics, for example, voted Democratic. But sometime in the 1970s the Party seemed to become dominated by intellectuals who were more than merely advocates of redistribution of wealth, and leaned strongly toward secular humanism. So Christians who agreed with things like better medical care for the poor and equal rights for women, but did not agree with other things (e.g., many Catholics regarding abortion) found themselves looking for another party home. And since the small parties play an almost negligible role in electoral politics, their only practical choice for them was to move to the Republicans – even if they were not completely sold on Republican economics. If they felt that they could be very comfortable as Democrats with conservative moral views on many issues, they would have stayed Democrats. Thus, the Republican party became the natural haven of Christian conservatives. If there were a third option, i.e., a party that was left of the Republicans on some economic and other issues, but conservative on many moral and cultural issues, a number of evangelical/conservative Christians would probably support it, rather than the Republicans. This is another case where the crude two-party system in the USA polarizes social and political life. In countries where there are three or four or five major parties, the atmosphere is often less polarized and it’s easier for voters to find a party that aligns more closely with their own views. But Americans have shown very little interest in creating a strong, middle-of-the-road third party.

So obviously, you did not have the experience of UCC or Episcopalian preachers giving sermons that sounded like the lectures of a radical feminist university professor or the program of the left wing of the Democratic Party. You did not have the experience of seeing authority figures in the church, against the wishes of the majority of the worshipers, pushing to changing all “himself” references in sermons, liturgy, etc. to “Godself”. You did not observe the massive exodus of Anglicans from the Episcopalian church over moral and doctrinal issues, to form breakaway Anglican communions. Fine. Our experiences of mainline churches are quite different. But note that the Lutherans, at least the Missouri Synod Lutherans who are more conservative, are not usually examples of what I am calling mainstream liberal Christian churches. Perhaps the other Lutheran groups would be examples of it; I’m not familiar enough with differences among Lutherans to say.

What I’m trying to say is that precisely those churches which have most tried to prove how modern and relevant their Christianity is, by realigning their teaching with current politically correct and secular humanist themes, are the ones whose numbers have been falling pretty steadily for decades now. The only churches that have experienced major growth in the past few decades have been fundamentalist, evangelical or pentecostal ones, the ones who haven’t tried to flatter or imitate the spirit of the age, and have in many cases opposed it.

I agree that individual congregations may differ from the general trend of mainline churches. But overall the big mainline Protestant denominations have de-emphasized classical Christian doctrine and heavily emphasize “updating” Christian faith. Even where they don’t change any formal statements of faith, what is taught from the pulpit, what the ministers says in Bible studies (if the church even has Bible studies – my wife once asked the pastor at a local UCC if they had any Bible studies going, and he looked at her as if she were something from another planet), often contradicts this.

IMO, it has a lot more to do with abortion than secularism. I know of very few Christians who are in favor of a Christian theocracy in the US, and almost all Christians I know support the idea of a secular government. I also tend to think that most Christians are against the idea of discriminating against LGBTQ people. Am I wrong here?

Progressive taxes and redistribution of wealth was already in place well before the 1970’s, and I don’t know of many Christians who would want to get rid of Medicare and Social Security. I really don’t see how a universal healthcare system goes against Christian values anymore than private health insurance does.

I don’t have that much experience with the Anglican denominations. I saw Methodists included on that list which I do have experience with, so that’s what I talked about. Where I grew up it the common Protestant denominations, straight-laced non-denominationals, the offshoots, and lots of LDS. If you want to talk about keeping kids within the church, LDS is another good example.

The LDS church is the fastest growing in the US, btw.

Sometimes I get the impression that classical Christian doctrine is the doctrine from the 1950’s, ignoring the fact that the Christian church has been continuously changing since its inception.

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We’re using secularism in two different ways. You are talking about the separation of private religious beliefs from laws, i.e., one shouldn’t have to be a Christian to work for the federal or state government, and Christian prayers in schools should not be compulsory. Most US Christians agree with that. I was speaking of the philosophy of secular humanism, and it’s along those lines that Christians are split, with many mainstream Protestants showing very strong inclinations in that direction, and more “conservative” Protestants (and many Catholics) resisting it.

What do you mean by “discriminating against”? If you mean, such people should not be denied jobs or housing, etc., then yes, most Christians are against such discrimination. If you mean that in Health class in public, tax-paid schools, Christian parents think it’s great to have their children taught that LGBTQ are valid sexual lifestyles (morally and spiritually valid, that is, aside from questions of legality), then no, I don’t think most Christian parents think that, and I don’t think it’s “discrimination” against such people to strike out from the curriculum words morally endorsing what they do. Biological or anthropological description is fine, of course, as are statements about legal and constitutional rights. But not moral or religious approval. This is the kind of thing that upsets Christian parents, when they have to subsidize with tax dollars moral views coming from secular humanism.

Which was my point. Many Christians, as far back as the New Deal and even farther, have supported such policies. But I was giving an explanation for why, even though Christians don’t object to some policies of that sort, many of them have jumped to the Republicans over the past 40 years or so. You don’t have to like their reasons – I know that you don’t – but I was giving what I think are their reasons. I was giving a sociological or political explanation for why “being traditionally Christian” and “being Republican” have tended to overlap in recent decades. There is the perception that the Democratic Party has become a voice for a secular humanist philosophy of life. The Democrats could change that perception, if they wanted to.

Are you saying that this confirms my analysis, or refutes it? From my acquaintance with that church, I would say it confirms it.

I don’t know what you mean by “doctrine from the 1950s”. The great Protestant confessions go back to the 16th and 17th centuries. The core Christian doctrines held by Catholics and Protestants alike go back much further. I’m unaware of any new Christian doctrines adopted by churches in the 1950s. When “fundamentalism” got started in the early 20th century, it championed not what we today call “fundamentalism” but classical Protestant doctrine. Most of what people object to in fundamentalism today is connected with cultural factors. There is nothing in classical Protestant doctrine that would cause someone to like Donald Trump, to vote Republican, to oppose public education or health care or laws to protect the environment from pollution, etc.

It’s true that many modern fundamentalists believe a number of things that are not part of classical Protestant doctrine, but many of those beliefs (e.g., the belief that Genesis must be read with mechanical literalism) I oppose, and where I agree with them, it’s not on the basis of anything in the Bible or Christian doctrine. For example, I imagine many fundamentalists are opposed to reverse discrimination in hiring, and so am I, but the basis of my opposition is classical 18th-century liberal political theory, not anything in the Bible or theology.

That’s what I mean. Nothing more, nothing less. The moral questions should be outside the purview of government.

I fully agree they have jumped over to the Republican party, but some of the reasons I hear don’t make sense. It seems to be rooted more in tribalism than in a reasoned or logical policy position. From what I can see, the “Culture Wars” have bled over into unrelated policies.

If Christians are not in favor of many different voices and views within a political party then it might make sense if they move over to a political party that will disavow any other views but the preferred Christian view.

I am speaking more of the interaction between church and politics. This would include gay rights, abortion, prayer in schools, and so forth.

Also, if the church didn’t change with the times then there wouldn’t be Protestantism.

I don’t disagree. People’s political allegiances are often the result of a number of hazy reasons. My point is that the Republican Party has become perceived of by many as the religion-friendly party, or at least as less hostile to religion than the Democratic Party. So if religion is a big part of your life (as it is for the Christian types we are discussing here), you are going to be tempted to vote for the Republicans, even if you don’t agree with them on everything.

What they are “not in favor of” is a party that, on religious and related matters, seems to squelch “many different voices”, including the conservative Christian voice. They have no problem with the mere fact that a party has many members that are not Christian.

I gathered that this was your concern, but you used the word “doctrine”, which to a Christian means things such as Creation, Prophecy, Election of Israel, Law, Incarnation, Redemption, Trinity, etc., as well as a general upholding of the inspiration of the Bible. I don’t see that conservative Christians have added any “doctrines” – either in the 1950s or since.

“Hostile to religion”. What a joke.

The GOP in its current guise is dominated by hard-core Dominionists and other overt theocrats, not to mention outright batshit insane legislators who literally believe that the country is overrun by Stanic demons operating pedophile rings.

Or maybe by “hostile to religion” you are thinking of the the many members of the GOP who consider following Islam to be tantamount to treason? If so, then I suppose you are right. Otherwise, I challenge you to quote a single prominent member of the GOP who has every publicly voiced so much as the mildest reservations about Christianity.

Meanwhile, I can only dream of a world in which the Democratic party was openly hostile to religion. But this is the truth of the situation:

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I was explaining why conservative Christians tend to vote Republican. Their perception is that the Democratic Party is hostile to conservative religious values. Whether that is true or not, is not the point I was addressing. I was explaining voter behavior, not justifying it.

I skimmed the article you provided. It has a rather strange emphasis. To me, it’s obvious that left-wing voters are going to vote Democratic whether Biden says nice things about religion or not. They are not going to vote Republican in any case. They may not like Biden sounding so overtly religious, but they will hold their noses and vote for him anyway, because in their minds anything is better than the Republicans and especially anyone is better than Trump.

So Biden’s remarks will not cost him any Democratic votes. But they might gain him some “soft” Republican votes, from people who at heart aren’t really Republican, and only vote Republican because of the perceived hostility of the Democratic Party to traditional religion. If they can be convinced that there is a place for traditional Christian (and Mormon, if you don’t count Mormon as Christian) values in an America with Joe Biden as President, they might swing back to the Democrats. Biden’s remarks are therefore politically prudent. They can’t cost him any votes, and might gain him some.

I would think that people like yourself would hate Trump so much that you would say that the end of getting rid of Trump justifies the strategic means. Would you rather that the Democrats appeared more anti-religious, with the religious vote hardening and Trump winning again as a result, or that the Democrats pulled enough soft Republican votes from conservative religious people to defeat Trump? If I were a Democrat at this moment in history, even if I were a hardcore atheist personally, I would tolerate pro-religious remarks from Biden at this point, as tactically wise.

That’s a misleading way of referring to the cause of the Protestant Reformation! The Reformers were not trying to change the Church to fit “the times”. In fact, their complaint was that the current church had made far too many compromises with “the times” – had adulterated Christian doctrine with pagan thought and ritual, had put the Vatican’s need for money (a need partly met by selling indulgences) for its projects of worldly glory above the correct doctrine of the sacraments, sin, faith, and salvation, etc. The Reformation was reactionary in spirit, inveighing against the effects of the culture on the Church. It sought to reverse many changes in Christianity, and it did so by appealing to the Fathers and the Bible, against contemporary theology and practice. This is the opposite of what happens in modern, liberal, mainstream Protestantism, which bends over backwards to change its liturgy, church government, theology, and ethics so that they won’t offend modern middle-class people steeped in the values of the Enlightenment and of 19th and 20th century social and political thought.

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Before you said that they didn’t like people voicing support for secular humanism.

As far as I am aware, there may be one or two atheists among the Democratic elected officials at the federal level. The rest are theists, primarily Christians with a handful of Muslims. It is rather strange to hear that the Democratic party is squelching the Christian voice when nearly all Democrats are Christians.

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Biden is Roman Catholic. Harris was raised Hindu(?) but now identifies as a Baptist. I have heard more about religion this cycle from the Democrats. I am secular but I don’t mind the Democratic party inclusiveness of all religions including the non-religious over the Republican Party’s divisiveness of Evangelical Christian Nationalism.

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That’s evidently how the Democratic leadership sees it. It’s also why they had so many Republicans speaking at their convention this year. I sometimes wonder what would happen if they did the equivalent of what the GOP has done and openly embraced some of the loony ideas of the radical left, such as anti-vaccination or 9/11 truthism. Not that I am advocating that.

Nothing in my comments implies anything about the personal positions of individual Democrats. The feeling I am reporting is that the kind of values the Democratic Party stands for are secular humanist values, and that the sort of policies they are likely to pass will tend to reflect those values. That, say, Hillary Clinton attends church services on Sunday is not as significant to a conservative Christian as the sort of policies she would pass if in power. (And of course, this applies not just to Presidents but to other elected officials, and at the state level as well.) For example, if a politician stands up and says that as a Catholic he is personally opposed to abortion, while as a Democratic legislator he votes along party lines for policies that will likely increase the number of abortions, the conservative Christian is not likely to be impressed by the Catholic legislator’s church attendance.

I gave an example of what could potentially happen in education (which is a state responsibility, rather than federal, but the issues are the same): it might be that current curricula in Health will promote a certain moral agenda regarding human sexuality, one at odds with conservative Christian faith. If that should happen, it would not matter if the legislators overseeing the education system were Christian; it is not their personal views, but the legislation itself, that would be of concern. What religious conservatives fear is not non-Christian legislators, but anti-Christian legislation.

There is also the point already made, i.e., that from a conservative point of view, the fact that someone says he is Christian does not make it so. Someone might sincerely believe he is Christian while regarding Jesus as non-divine but inspired moral teacher. Someone might sincerely believe she is Christian while holding to views that conservatives find to be in opposition to the plain teaching of the Bible. So saying that lots of Democratic legislators are “Christian” may not be saying much. And of course, this applies to Republican legislators as well. I have already expressed doubts here about the alleged Christian beliefs of Donald Trump. But again, the issue is not how Christian the legislator is, but whether or not the legislation is anti-Christian in effect.

Right or wrong, conservative Christians have the perception that, whether or not the legislators themselves are personally Christian, the tendency in recent years has been to produce a society in which conservative Christians feel less and less comfortable, a society with a moral orientation in conflict with their own. Whether one thinks these developments are good or bad, or only in the imagination of conservative Christians, the fact is that this is how they see that world.

Again, I am explaining why they say and do the things they do. I am offering a political and sociological explanation. And I’m saying that unless the perception of conservative Christians changes, they will keep on being attracted to the Republican Party even though they may not agree with all its policies. And finally, I’m saying that will do no good for atheists and secular humanists to shout at conservative religious people and tell them they are wrong to think and feel the way they do. The only remedy is for the Democratic Party to project in its attitude, and show in its legislation wherever it is in power, that as far as religious and moral questions go, it is no more a threat to Christianity than Republicans are. If and when that ever comes across to Christian voters, there will be some movement back to the Democrats. It will not happen before that, no matter how indignant the voices on sites like this may be. Call it a prophecy, if you like. It can of course be falsified by future voting patterns.

I don’t think that anyone in her/his right mind would claim that Republicans are friendly toward Islam, which I would hope we can agree is a religion.

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Fully agree. Biden’s religiosity is based on inclusiveness whereas Trump’s is based on divisiveness.

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IOW, the Democratic Party understands and accepts the principles of the US Constitution, and the GOP does not. That much has been clear for some time now.

And so tough shit. The US is a secular nation, so conservative Christians don’t get to dictate what gets taught based on what offends their religious doctrine.

That’s because conservative Christians are immoral people, so a moral society is bound to make them uncomfortable. This is a good thing.

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Let me point out that the LGBTQ that they are being taught about are not some hypothetical. They are, in many cases, the children themselves, their classmates and/or their family members.

They likely have endured bullying, and are the subject of demonisation from many conservative Christians.

That they are “valid lifestyles” seems to be well-accepted by the scientific discipline of Psychology, so any religiously-motivated disputation of this would appear to run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

I rather doubt if the curricula in question states that these lifestyles are “morally and spiritually valid,” – as stating that would likewise run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

I also suspect that the example has become exagerated in the retelling among pearl-clutching conservative Christians. Can you actually point to a URL of an actual curriculum on the topic? I would be surprised if such curricula taught anything more than acceptance of LGBTQ members of the community.

At the end of the day, acceptance of homosexuality in the US stands at 72% ( Views of Homosexuality Around the World | Pew Research Center ), so conservative Christians cannot, and should not, expect to be able to impose their minority view, on a majority that considers that view to be bigotted.

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I would fully agree that abortion seems to be the touchstone for much of the divide. Here are a few snippets from an article I read about Trump voters in suburbia:

There does seem to be a lot of scare tactics where people project all of these fears onto a strawman Democratic agenda.

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Has there been a wave of Democratic ‘Christian’ legislators denying the divinity of Christ?

I know that Unitarians do, as a matter of their church’s doctrine. And that there is at least one Unitarian in the US House, Judy Chu. But given that this is their church’s doctrine, and she is apparently open about her affiliation, I don’t see how this is any more a problem than the occasional Muslim Democratic legislator.

Can you point to an uncontroversial “plain teaching of the Bible” that a majority of Democratic ‘Christian’ legislators deny?

Otherwise this seems to be just another case of not ‘The Right Type of Christian’.

A question:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considers alcohol, caffeinated drinks and tobacco to be immoral. Should a Mormon therefore vote to ban these things for everybody?

Likewise Judaism and Islam consider pork to be unclean. Should Jewish and Muslim legislators then vote to ban pork for everybody?

These may seem trivial, but they represent an important issue in a secular, religiously plural society.

Should a Catholic legislator inflict their own religious views on an unwilling majority of Americans that don’t consider abortion to be immoral? Conservative Christians would appear to say “yes”, the spirit of the US Constitution would appear to say no.

And I would also point out that abortion rates tend to be lower under Democrats ( Sharpest drops in abortion under Democrats | News, Sports, Jobs - The Alpena News ). Republicans may make a big song and dance about making abortions harder to get, but (unlike Democrats) they do nothing to reduce the demand for it.

Further evidence on the effect R v D has on demand: Teen Birth Rate Comparison, 2018 | Power to Decide

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