I’ve monitored the religious right for the better part of the last two decades, dating back to my days in high school and as a student at the University of North Carolina. Over the years, I’ve pretty much come to expect that when a Christian conservative opens his or her mouth, eventually he or she is going to say something that sounds incredibly tone-deaf to the ears of most of us. There’s a reason for that–Christian conservatives think they’re preaching to the choir. Much of their audience lives in a world where American Family Radio, The 700 Club, and other Christian media outlets are the main news sources alongside Fox News Channel. But research from the Brookings Institution suggests that choir is getting along in years.
Late Tuesday, Brookings released a report on the role of religious progressives in the fight for social justice. However, Mother Jones was intrigued by what was revealed about the demographics of self-identified religious conservatives and religious progressives in a poll conducted by Brookings and the Public Religion Research Institute. A whopping 62 percent of religious conservatives are 49 or older, while just 36 percent are 48 or younger. While millennials and Generation Xers are increasingly less inclined toward religion, the ones that identify as religious are more liberal in their leanings–56 percent of religious progressives are 48 or younger.? Translation–the religious right isn’t just losing the battle for the younger generation, it’s losing badly. In a colossal understatement, Brookings suggests that because religious conservatives lack a “strong foothold” among young people, they face a “troubled future” in the long run. Indeed, most of the current leaders of the religious right are in their 50s or older, and there don’t seem to be any potential religious right heavyweights among Generation X or the millennials ready to take up the torch–not just yet, anyway.
The Brookings study also found that the current political climate is more akin to the era prior to the civil rights movement than the era in which the religious right first rose to prominence–and that’s something that can only help the Christian left in the long run.
Just as the civil rights movement spoke to a widespread desire in the nation to perfect the post-war social contract to include African-Americans, so do new social movements on behalf of greater equality and mobility speak to a broadly felt need for a new social contract. The religious right spoke to the country’s worries about social change. The religious progressive movement speaks to the country’s desire for economic change. In the late 20th Century, ?family values? were invoked in opposition to what many saw (and feared) as a cultural revolution. In the early 21st Century, family stability is most threatened by an economic revolution that has created a growing gap between the economy’s productivity gains and the wage growth of most American workers.
It’s long been said that the religious right is the Republican Party at prayer. While Brookings pointed out that religious progressives will never really fit as neatly within the Democratic Party, their concern for social justice makes those who are politically motivated more receptive to the Democratic message. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that as older religious conservatives die off, the religious right is going to find the going even harder than it is now. And that can only be a good thing. After all, largely due to their influence, some of the poorest areas of the South give Republicans ludicrous margins even though economically they have no business voting Republican. If this study is any indication, as time goes on it’ll be a lot easier for Democrats to reach their children and grandchildren.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
Edited/Published by: WG
