Pew Survey: White Christians No Longer a Majority

Click image to enlarge

The latest Pew Research Center Religious Landscape survey results released yesterday have what in my view is very good news except perhaps for the Republican Party:  only 46 percent of American adults are white Christians, a decrease from 55 percent in 2007.  That's right, now the GOP is chasing the vote of a minority of the adult voting population.  When one winnows out the non-Christofascist elements, the number likely support the quasi-theocratic agenda of the Republican Party is even further reduced. Specifically, 31 percent of White Christians identify as supporting Democrats, so the net number supporting the GOP equates to just 31.7 percent of the adult Americans constitute the religious extremist base of the GOP.  Politico looks at the new survey findings.  Here are highlights:

White Christians now make up less than half of the U.S. population, largely receding from the majorities of most demographic groups, with one notable exception: the Republican Party.

According to the latest results from Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape survey published Monday by National Journal's Next America project, just 46 percent of American adults are white Christians, down from 55 percent in 2007.

At the same time, according to the report, the share of white Christians identifying as Republican has remained steady, even equal with the share of the party that carried President Ronald Reagan to his 1984 reelection. Nearly seven in 10 white Christians — 69 percent — identify with or lean toward the GOP, while just 31 percent do the same with Democrats.

Among nonwhite Christians, meanwhile, 32 percent identify with or lean toward Democrats, and just 13 percent do the same with Republicans.

In less than a decade, the gap in Christian identification between Democrats and Republicans has increased by 50 percent. According to the data presented, in 2007, 88 percent of white Republicans and 70 percent of white Democrats identified as Christian, an 18-point disparity. By 2014, 84 percent of white Republicans identified as Christian, but the share of white Democrats identifying as Christian fell by 13 points, to 57 percent, a 27-point gap.

The National Journal had this additional findings:

In a land­mark shift, few­er than half of White Demo­crats with a col­lege de­gree now identi­fy as Chris­ti­ans; that’s a much smal­ler per­cent­age than among the party’s Blacks and Lati­nos.

54 per­cent of all Amer­ic­ans who don’t identi­fy with any re­li­gious tra­di­tion now call them­selves Demo­crats. Just 23 per­cent of the “nones” identi­fy as Re­pub­lic­ans, with 22 per­cent call­ing them­selves in­de­pend­ents.

[W]hile black and Latino Demo­crats do some­times take dif­fer­ent views on so­cial is­sues than sec­u­lar white lib­er­als, af­fin­ity on oth­er is­sues—from im­mig­ra­tion to gov­ern­ment act­iv­ism—so far has trumped those dis­agree­ments. “You are not see­ing any evid­ence that there is less sup­port for Demo­crats among ra­cial and eth­nic minor­it­ies be­cause [re­li­gious] ‘nones’ are a grow­ing share of the party,” . . .

Personally,  I long for the day when Christians of all races are a small, powerless minority of Americans and they are no longer to infuse their hate and bigotry into the civil laws.  As for the right wing Christians, they best be hoping that as they become a smaller and smaller minority of the population the new majority doesn't treat them the way these godly folk have treated others.