Survey: White Christians are now a minority of US population
The share of Americans who identify as white and Christian has dropped below 50 percent, a transformation fueled by immigration and by growing numbers of people who reject organized religion altogether, according to a new survey released Wednesday. Christians overall remain a large majority in the U.S., at nearly 70 percent of Americans. However, white Christians, once predominant in the country’s religious life, now comprise only 43 percent of the population, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, a polling organization based in Washington. Four decades ago, about eight in 10 Americans were white Christians. The change has occurred across the spectrum of Christian traditions in the U.S., including sharp drops in membership in predominantly white mainline Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians and Lutherans; an increasing Latino presence in the Roman Catholic Church as some non-Hispanic white Catholics leave; and shrinking ranks of white evangelicals, who until recently had been viewed as immune to decline. The trends identified in the survey are fueling anxiety about the place of Christians in society, especially among evangelicals, alarmed by support for gay marriage and by the increasing share of Americans – about one-quarter – who don’t identify with a faith group. President Donald Trump, who repeatedly promised to protect the religious liberty of Christians, drew 80 percent of votes by white evangelicals, a constituency that remains among his strongest supporters. About 17 percent of Americans now identify as white evangelical, compared to 23 percent a decade ago, according to the survey. Membership in the conservative Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant group, dropped to 15.2 million last year, its lowest number since 1990, according to an analysis by Chuck Kelley, president of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. “So often, white evangelicals have been pointing in judgment to white mainline groups, saying when you have liberal theology you decline,” said Robert Jones, chief executive of PRRI. “I think this data really does challenge that interpretation of linking theological conservatism and growth.” The PRRI survey of more than 100,000 people was conducted from January 2016 to January of this year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.4 percentage points. Previous surveys had found that the Protestant majority that shaped the nation’s history had dropped below 50 percent sometime around 2008. The PRRI poll released Wednesday included a more in-depth focus on race and religion. Jones said growth among Latino Christians, and stability in the numbers of African-American Christians, had partly obscured the decline among white Christians. The survey also found that more than a third of all Republicans say they are white evangelicals, and nearly three-quarter identify as white Christians. By comparison, white Christians have become a minority in the Democratic Party, shrinking from 47 percent a decade ago, to 29 percent now. Forty percent of Democrats say they have no religious affiliation. Among American Catholics, 55 percent now identify as white, compared to 87 percent 25 years ago, amid the growing presence of Latino Catholics, according to the report. Over the last decade, the share of white Catholics in the U.S. population dropped from 16 percent to 11 percent. Over the same period, white mainline Protestants declined from 18 percent to 13 percent of all Americans. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
Evangelical leaders rally around Jared Kushner amid Russia probe
Evangelical leaders are rallying around White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as he meets with congressional leaders investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election. A host of Christian leaders, from South Carolina Pastor Mark Burns to Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., have been taking to Twitter and releasing statements voicing their support for Kushner as he spends two days speaking with congressional investigators on Capitol Hill. “I’ve known Jared for many years. He’s a man of integrity, character, and a great, personal friend,” wrote Paula White, a gospel preacher and Trump friend who prayed at Trump’s inaugural. “(E)nough-is-enough,” she wrote. Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. blasted the “endless attempts by the media to keep the fake Russia collusion story alive- solely to obstruct the president’s agenda” in a statement Monday. “In Jared Kushner, they’ve picked the wrong fight. I don’t know a more competent person. He is brilliant and he is a man of the highest integrity,” Falwell wrote. Kushner insisted Monday that he had done nothing improper during the campaign as he met with members of the Senate intelligence committee for nearly three hours behind closed doors. He’s set to meet with lawmakers on the House intelligence committee Tuesday. The coordinated statements are the work of Johnnie Moore, an evangelical activist from California, who recently attended a faith outreach meeting at the White House and tweeted a powerful photo of Christian leaders surrounding the president, heads bowed in prayer. “We’ve all had it,” said Moore, adding that he and other Christian leaders have become close to Jared over the years. Moore said that he decided on Monday morning that he wanted to release a statement and sent a note around to fellow faith leaders asking if they had anything to add. “We didn’t ask permission. They didn’t even know we were doing it,” he said of the White House. “For us it was personal.” Trump won an overwhelming 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in the November election, and a Pew Research Center survey marking his first 100 days in office found three-fourths of white evangelicals approved of his performance as president, versus thirty-nine percent of the general public. Kushner, who is an orthodox Jew, acted as a liaison to the religious community, said Burns, the pastor from South Carolina, who served as an opening act at many Trump rallies. “Jared has been a huge instrument in giving us access to the White House. So this is just us showing our love and support back to him for what he has done for our faith-based community,” said Burns. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Influence of churches, once dominant, now waning in South
Prayers said and the closing hymn sung, tea-drinking churchgoers fill Marble City Grill for Sunday lunch. But hard on their heels comes the afternoon crowd: craft beer-drinking, NFL-watching football fans. Such a scene would have been impossible just months ago because Sunday alcohol sales were long illegal in Sylacauga, hometown of both the actor who played TV’s Gomer Pyle and the white marble used to construct the U.S. Supreme Court building. While the central Alabama city of 12,700 has only one hospital, four public schools and 21 red lights, the chamber of commerce directory lists 78 churches. Yet few were surprised when residents voted overwhelmingly in September to legalize Sunday alcohol sales. Churches lacked either the heart or influence to stop it. That shift is part of a broad pattern across the South: Churches are losing their grip on a region where they could long set community standards with a pulpit-pounding sermon or, more subtly, a sideward glance toward someone walking into a liquor store. In metro Atlanta, youth sports teams regularly practice and play games on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights — times that were strictly off-limits a generation ago because they conflicted with church worship services. In Mississippi, dozens of businesses display anti-discrimination stickers distributed by a gay rights group rather than worry about a church-based backlash. “It doesn’t matter who wants to buy a house,” said real estate agent Diana Britt, who drives around Jackson, Mississippi, in a work vehicle decorated with one of the stickers. “If they want to buy a house, I’ll sell them a house.” Church-based crusaders against gambling also are on a losing streak as all but two Southern states, Alabama and Mississippi, have lotteries. And, perhaps most tellingly, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed 19 percent of Southerners don’t identify with any organized religion. That’s fewer “nones” than in other regions, but the number is up 6 percentage points in the South since 2007. The South is still the Bible Belt, and that same Pew survey found that church affiliation remains stronger in the states of the old Confederacy than anywhere else in the United States. Seventy-six percent of Southerners call themselves Christians, and political advertisements often show candidates in or near church. Religious conservatives remain a powerful force in many Southern statehouses. Still, the same South that often holds itself apart from the rest of the country is becoming more like other U.S. regions when it comes to organized religion, said Jessica Martinez, a senior researcher in religion and public life at Pew. And while race divides many things in the South, the trend is evident among blacks, whites and Hispanic adults, she said. “We’ve seen this sort of broader shift throughout the country as a whole with fewer people identifying as being part of the religious base,” she said. “In the South you see a pattern very similar to what we are seeing in other regions.” Thomas Fuller, a religion professor at Baptist-affiliated Samford University near Birmingham, said there’s no single reason churches are losing the cultural wallop they once packed. Migration into the region and the Internet are but two factors chipping away at a society that seemed much more isolated just a generation ago, he said. “The South is not nearly as homogeneous, is far more diverse culturally now than it’s ever been,” said Fuller. “In a way you’re a little hard-pressed now to talk about Southern culture in a singular fashion. It’s not nearly as one-dimensional anymore or easy to describe.” In Sylacauga, 45 miles southeast of Birmingham, Mayor Doug Murphree said the push for Sunday alcohol sales was linked to attracting new businesses. “We’re not really trying to promote drinking in Sylacauga. But if you look at a big chain restaurant like Ruby Tuesday or O’Charley’s, they’re open on Sunday and a big part of their business is alcohol,” said the mayor. Murphree, who attends a Baptist church, said he met with members of the local ministerial association before the citywide vote to explain the city’s economic situation and the need for Sunday alcohol sales. Pastors listened, and by and large they didn’t preach against it. “They said they were not going to try to block us,” he said. So now, Marble City Grill can sell alcohol after 1 p.m. on Sunday just two blocks up North Broadway Avenue from the white-columned First Baptist Church of Sylacauga. “Things have changed,” said Julie Smith, who owns the restaurant with her husband. “We’ve been open 10 years and at first we had people who wouldn’t come because we sold alcohol. They come now.” Around corner from the restaurant, Dee Walker said he’s attracting a larger crowd every Sunday afternoon at his craft beer and wine shop, The Fermenter’s Market at The Rex, named for the old hotel in which it is located. Walker grew up in neighboring Clay County, the last dry county in Alabama, and recalls the petition drives and fire-and-brimstone sermons anytime someone mentioned legalizing alcohol sales. Southern churches no longer have that kind of influence in many places, Walker said. “You’ve got some diminishing populations when it comes to the religious opposition,” said Walker, standing behind a bar with 36 taps for craft beer. Walker said his customers include church deacons and elders; a Baptist layman quoted Scripture while drinking a hoppy brown ale on a recent weekday afternoon. Joe Godfrey, a Southern Baptist minister and head of a group that calls itself “Alabama’s Moral Compass,” recalls a time when churches were the center of Southern society. “I can remember when schools looking to schedule an event would call the local churches to see if they had anything … that might conflict with the school’s tentative plans. If so, the school would find a different date to hold their event. That is no longer true,” said Godfrey, executive director of Alabama Citizens Action Program. “Today, churches try to find a time to schedule their events when ball teams, schools and civic clubs
Martin Dyckman: They pander the repulsive to the bigoted
The letters, mailed from Vienna in the summer of 1938, spoke of enthusiasm and hopefulness at the prospect of coming to the United States. Nothing revealed the reason except for the stationery that had been hand-altered to show a new address. It was a few months after Hitler had taken over and life was becoming as difficult for Jews in Austria as in Germany. The letters had been sent to relatives in Brooklyn and were in my mother’s papers when she died nearly a half century later. I had them translated from the German. Dr. Jakob Neuer, a lawyer, assured his kin that if they sponsored them, he, his wife and their 13-year-old son, Richard, would not need charity in the United States. “We Neuers want to work,” he wrote. There was one problem. Although he was considered German and qualified for an early visa, his wife was classified Polish. For her, there was a three-year waiting list. The quota had been established in large part to keep Jews out. The Neuers did not have three years. They made it only as far as France, where safety was short-lived. Jakob and his brother, sister-in-law and nephew died in Auschwitz. Richard helped his mother escape to Switzerland and spent the war living by his wits in southern France. In a novel he wrote in French years later, he described an American consul in Vichy France as ever so courteous, always smiling, always saying maybe later. In fact, maybe later meant never to the anti-Semites at the State Department. In 1939, about 900 Jews boarded the steamship SS St. Louis at Hamburg, bound for Cuba, expecting eventually to reach the United States. But the Cubans reneged on the visas they had sold them. They turned the ship away. So did the United States. When it reached Miami, the Coast Guard patrolled the harbor to make sure no one swam for shore. President Franklin Roosevelt ignored their appeals. Although he was a German, ship captain Gustav Schroder refused to take his despairing passengers back to Hamburg. He docked at Antwerp, where Great Britain, France and other western European nations agreed to accept the refugees. By the end of the ensuing war, the Nazis had murdered 250 of them. Polls from that period showed the American public strongly opposed to admitting Jewish refugees, even when the proposal was to take only 10,000 children. It was left to the British to do that. All this comes to mind, with stomach-wrenching disgust, with the news of Jeb Bush and other politicians calling for discrimination against Muslims in admitting Syrian refugees to the United States. Then, the pretext was that the Jews might include German spies. Never mind that the U.S. abounded with native-born, German-speaking Nazi sympathizers. Now, the pretext is that there might be terrorists among the Syrian refugees. Never mind that it was a fake Syrian passport found with one of the Paris terrorists or that they were all European citizens, not refugees. And never mind the eternal shame for closing our borders to Hitler’s intended victims. Unlike Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Chris Christie – who give new meanings to the word “vile” – Bush attempted to clarify his initial statement calling for preference to Syrian Christians. He said he supports welcoming women, children and orphans of any religion. But what about Muslim men? Does Bush mean to keep them out and let only their wives and children in? How does that comport with family values? But at least he’s a shade better than Christie, who said he would not permit even “a 3-year-old orphan” into his state. “Today’s Syrian orphan, it seems, is 1939’s German Jewish child,” said an Internet posting from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom. Any form of religious discrimination is an insult to the American flag. No one who stands for that sort of vetting deserves to sit on a soil and water conservation board, let alone in the Oval Office. Mea culpa. I wrote earlier this month that Bush, unlike the candidates atop the Republican popularity polls, would be a “credible successor to the Oval Office.” Now, he is explaining yet another rash statement and is also calling for sending U.S. troops into Syria. Has he learned nothing, nothing from his brother’s ghastly blunder? It must be in the genes. President Obama called this one right. “When I hear folks say that, well, maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful. That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion.” But it appears that some of us do, including a few who fancy themselves fit to be president. Either they are cowards, catering to the undisguised bigotry and frothing xenophobia that represents a sizable segment of Republican voters, or they are simply bigots themselves. None deserve any decent citizen’s vote. Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the newspaper formerly known as the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Asheville, North Carolina.
Jeb Bush: Stronger ‘Christian voice’ needed in world
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Saturday condemned the Obama administration’s use of “coercive federal power” to limit religious freedom as he courted Christian conservatives at a Liberty University commencement ahead of a likely presidential run. Charging that “the Christian voice” isn’t heard enough in the world, the Republican White House prospect lashed out at the Democratic president’s administration for “demanding obedience in complete disregard of religious conscience.” “The present administration is supporting the use of coercive federal power. What should be easy calls in favor of religious freedom have instead become an aggressive stance against it,” Bush told an estimated 34,000 gathered for a graduation ceremony. “Somebody here is being small-minded and intolerant, and it sure isn’t the nuns, ministers, and laymen and women who ask only to live and practice their faith,” he said. Bush was speaking inside a packed football stadium at Liberty University, an institution founded by the late conservative culture warrior, Rev. Jerry Falwell. Bush, a converted Catholic, is preparing to enter a Republican primary contest that includes Republican competitors considered far more popular with the GOP’s religious right. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz formally announced his presidential campaign at Liberty University last month. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry have all made their Christian faith a centerpiece of prospective campaigns. All have aggressively condemned Obama’s health care overhaul which requires some religion-affiliated organizations to provide health insurance for employees that includes birth control. The measure is among several examples of what Republicans charge is Obama’s attack on religious liberty. “How strange, in our own time, to hear Christianity spoken of as some sort of backward and oppressive force,” Bush said. “Your generation is bringing the Christian voice to where it always is needed, and sometimes isn’t heard enough.” Despite nagging questions about Bush’s conservative credentials, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. noted that Bush was considered a hero among social conservatives as Florida governor. He fought to keep Michael Schiavo from removing the feeding tube from his brain-damaged wife, Terri. Leaders in the anti-abortion movement still praise Bush today. And in a reminder that his path to the presidency depends upon moderate and independents perhaps as much as conservatives, Bush concluded his remarks with a message for non-Christians. “In my experience, at least, you generally find the same good instincts, fair-mindedness, and easygoing spirit among Americans of every type – including, of course, the many who belong to no church at all,” he said. Democrats were paying close attention to Bush’s remarks. “Jeb Bush will not win over any Virginia voters with his close-minded pandering to the right wing,” said Morgan Finkelstein, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia. “By supporting the Indiana discrimination law and attacking women’s reproductive rights, Bush places himself firmly at odds with Virginia values.” Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Here’s an idea: Get the government out of marriage all together
With the recent challenge to the Alabama law defining marriage between a man and a woman, and judicial actions throughout the nation that threaten other states’ laws on marriage, there has been a lot of discussion about same-sex marriage in recent days. This has me thinking there has to be a solution that doesn’t prolong this fight for years to come. The question most talked about is “Can states constitutionally define marriage without denying due process to same-sex couples?” I’d like to pose another question: “Why is the government in the marriage business anyway?” Two thoughts shape my ultimate conclusion that the current fight to redefine marriage is based on a dated concept that the government should even be involved in marriages. First, I agree with the fundamental principle that marriage is a covenant based on one’s faith or religion. Which is why I believe that if a same-sex couple can find a church, minister or clergyman to officiate a service and recognize their unions as a marriage, who is to say it’s not. Christians from different denominations are split on the issue but since when is the government the arbitrator for matters of faith? The government has no business in religious matters — either forcing mandates on them, such as requiring religious schools or hospitals to provide services they’re fundamentally opposed to — or defining them, such as in the case of marriage. In the fight for marriage equality I think we need to establish what it is couples are really fighting over. You can’t change the hearts and minds of those who don’t support your decision to make a lifelong commitment to one another by law. Voters and legislatures throughout the nation have passed marriage laws. I don’t believe these actions were fueled by hate or fear, as many proponents of same-sex marriage will tell you. I believe that this subject is so complex the reasons that range from religious beliefs or tradition to personal preference. In 2008, I supported and voted for the ban on same-sex marriages in the state of Florida based on religious beliefs. The amendment passed with almost 62 percent of the vote. Are 62 percent of Floridians full of hate? No. Am I? No. Statistics are showing that time and social integration of what has, up until recent decades, been considered non-traditional lifestyles have changed public perception of same-sex relationships. Yet the laws continue to be pushed for a ban on marriages. Taking the marriage debate off the table, I believe, would go even further to healing what is a fractured nation. Acknowledging you can’t change hearts and minds by law, what can you change by law? We can determine what rights and obligations the government currently has related to marriage and transition from the use of the word marriage to calling these unions what they are — which is a very specific type of legal contract. This particular contract has complicated implications on tax liability, assumed risks for decision making, emergency notifications and access, and much more, I realize. But maybe in starting over we can even look at the basics of what is covered and why and have a fresh start. Any two consenting adults can enter into a contract at any other time, so let’s remove the barriers to this particular contract and allow people to live their lives. In summary: Have the government recognize legal contracts for all couples the same way and churches recognize marriages. Practice some good old-fashioned common sense and common courtesy and carry on. Let’s focus on building stronger communities together regardless of sexual orientation. Let us take one more thing from the government and return it to the people and the church. This column appeared first on AL.com. Apryl Marie Fogel is a new Alabama resident who works as a conservative political activist.
