Why White Christian Nationalists Are Doomed
It’s inevitable. Because Demographics Are Destiny:
The white Christian portion of the U.S. adult population includes 14% who are white evangelical Protestant, 14% who are white mainline (non-evangelical) Protestant, 13% who are white Catholic, and small proportions of white Latter-Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Orthodox Christians. The proportion of white evangelical Protestants in the population steadily declined starting in 2006 (when they made up 23% of the population) before settling at about 14% over the past few years. White mainline (non-evangelical) Protestants and white Catholics accounted for similar portions of the population in 2022, at 14% and 13%, respectively. Both these groups have declined as a proportion of the population since 2006, when they were at 18% and 16%, respectively. However, these drop-offs of roughly four percentage points are less pronounced than the nine-percentage-point decline in white evangelical Protestant affiliation. The religiously unaffiliated category has absorbed much of the fall-off.
Why, you may ask, has this happened? The main reason, something that Lindsey Graham pointed out years ago, is that angry white people are dying off. Because they’re older:
Republicans resemble older Americans — the vast majority are white Christian, and, while the religiously unaffiliated portion is growing, it is not a substantial constituency within the party. However, Republicans are more likely to be white evangelical Christians than those ages 65 and older, and the proportion of unaffiliated Americans is higher in the older age category than among Republicans.
Jennifer Rubin lays out why this trend may not change:
The group that has declined the most is at the core of the MAGA movement, the group most devoted to Christian nationalism. “White evangelical Protestants have experienced the steepest decline. As recently as 2006, white evangelical Protestants comprised nearly one-quarter of Americans (23%). By the time of Trump’s rise to power, their numbers had dipped to 16.8%,” Jones explains. “Today, white evangelical Protestants comprise only 13.6% of Americans.”
And that decline may yet accelerate, because they skew older than the population as a whole. Put differently, there are far more baby boomers in this group than Generation Z members. White evangelicals are “losing” people with each successive generation. (“White Christian subgroups have each lost approximately half their market share just across the generations who are alive today,” according to Jones.) If your business had lost half its market share, you would be panicking, too.
With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about “fixing” what’s wrong by adapting to a changing market. Instead, many in this cohort have doubled down, becoming the foot soldiers in the red-hatted MAGA movement. The decline isn’t going to be reversed by angry, gray-haired folks demanding abortion bans and “don’t say gay” bills.
It will likely take awhile to undo the court-packing of recent years, but the MAGA Movement is doomed!
Just some good news to start your week.
“With those kind of numbers, the responsible thing to do would be to think about “fixing” what’s wrong by adapting to a changing market. ”
There was a brief moment of opportunity for he GOP to bring in religious African Americans and Latinos, but they were too in love with the racism.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/rnc-completes-autopsy-2012-loss-calls-inclusion-policy/story?id=18755809
Oh well.
They actually do a lot better than they should among Latinos.
Not sure how accurate this is but I think conventional wisdom is that Republicans are good at red-scaring immigrants from socialist states like Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua. Democrats have not developed a response to that.
Says the white racist.
Congratulations, you’re in the lead for the weakest troll of the week.
It takes longer than a typical human life span but at least evolution has a way of reducing some maladaptive traits.
Greetings from the Atheist Camp! (You knew it was coming), the current state of the “Believers” reflects a global trend, and as ever America trails much of the world. The Evangelicals live in the festival of superstition we call The Old Testament, as such are most vulnerable to people waking the hell up. Religion is in decline in much of the world. Asia, Europe, Canada are seeing the general lack of light in religion. But religion still remains a potent tool in the festival of “Don’t put your lips on it!” we call the south, ridicule or not. Interesting to note pedophile Youth Pastors and Priests or not they still give them money.
did you see the atheist day resolution failed in the del legislature because some down state yahoo thinks we need more religion because if not we only have death and disease to think about and no hope. and of course the continuing persecution of anyone who isnt christian
That quote caught my attention. From Sussex flat-earther Richard Collins:
“Rep. Richard Collins, R-Millsboro, said he takes issue with atheism because it would mean there isn’t a place people go after death, and that more young people are nonreligious and feeling more suicidal.
“One of the things that concerns me about the concept of atheism is that those of us who believe in something greater than ourselves believe there’s somewhere better to go to in the future,” Collins said. “But without that, all we have to look forward to is disease, disability and death…the suicide rate among men is four times higher than females, and rapidly increasing.”
Hmmm, the suicide rate among men is four times that of women?
That’s a bad thing HOW, exactly?
“Women also are even more likely than men to attempt suicide. In the US for example, adult women in the US reported a suicide attempt 1.2 times as often as men. But male suicide methods are often more violent, making them more likely to be completed before anyone can intervene. Access to means is a big contributing factor: in the US for example, six-in-10 gun owners are men – and firearms account for more than half of suicides.”
Emphasis mine.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190313-why-more-men-kill-themselves-than-women
So — let me explain that this is logic, because our troll class won’t recognize it if it’s not pointed out — If Richie Rich is so worried about the male suicide rate, he should be in favor of gun control. He isn’t.
And he also assumes that the suicides are borne by atheists are the only once committing suicide where i’ve venture a guess its mostly christians who arent allowed to live their life freely and they think its the only way out
Absolutely nonsensical.
Even weaker.
I’m an atheist who has committed to an international mass movement. I personally won’t ever realize a world of every day people having control of the earth’s resources and delivering them broadly and everywhere. Ensuring a good human existence.
This idea is bigger than myself. There is a strong spiritual aspect too. And although I won’t “go anywhere after I’m dead,” this collective human consciousness will persist. In this way I actually am part of something pretty great that will endure.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/feb/11/featuresreviews.guardianreview25
..
“If that is true, then it is perhaps because it was not the production of a complete philosophy or the hastening of revolution that obsessed Gramsci, but the injustices of ordinary life, and the way they might be redressed. The answers for him lay as much in culture, humanity and compassion as they did in political theory. And while prison did not form that conviction, it tested it beyond what anyone should tolerate.
There can be no better evidence that his spirit triumphed than the last letter he sent Delio: ‘Darling Delio, I am feeling a little tired and can’t write much. But please write to me all the same and tell me everything at school that interests you. I think you must like history, as I liked it when I was your age, because it deals with living people, and everything that concerns people, as many people as possible, all people in the world, in so far as they unite together in society and work and struggle and make a bid for a better life. All that can’t fail to please you more than anything else, isn’t that right?'”
This is church for me
We should be good to one another not because there is a god, but because there is not one.
Seconded. Collins’ childish view is that to “believe in something greater than ourselves” means believing in his god. I believe in empathy and that is something both greater than myself, and of more benefit to society than his capricious and prickly Old Testament Sky Dad.
Counterpoint: anecdotally, the white christian nationalists seem to be a lot better at having greater than 2 kids per couple. they may be declining in number, but the most rational among us might be declining faster
This assumes kids all turn out like their parents. They don’t.
I like to think I’m a prime example of that point.
Even so, WCN are pulling out all the stops to ensure that their kids end up just like them, starting with education
‘Twas ever thus.