A More Secular America Is Not Just a Problem for Republicans (New York Times, opinion by Ryan Burge, professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, yesterday)

He dispenses right away with the Republican Party in the piece, as they are now essentially the Christian Party. As the USA becomes more non-religious, that makes an existential problem for the party. Sometimes overlooked is over half of white Protestants of all denominations voted for Donald Trump.

His essay is on the more diverse Democratic Party. The numbers don’t lie; each generation is successively more atheistic, and those atheists vote for Democrats. However, the most reliable voting block in the Democratic Party is Black Protestants, who take very progressive positions on economic policy while taking extremely conservative positions on social policy. The Democratic Party’s issue is keeping its diverse coalition of social liberal atheists and social conservative Christians together as a coherent group.

Since 1988, the General Social Survey has been asking Americans of different ages what they believe about God. For decades, the answer did not change much. Around 70 percent of members of the Silent Generation said that they “know God really exists” and “have no doubts about it.” That same sentiment was shared by about 63 percent of baby boomers and Generation Xers.

But in 2018, millennials expressed a lot less certainty. Only 44 percent had no doubts about the existence of God. Even more doubtful were members of Generation Z — just one-third claimed certain belief in God.

Today, scholars are finding that by almost any metric they use to measure religiosity, younger generations are much more secular than their parents or grandparents. In responses to survey questions, over 40 percent of the youngest Americans claim no religious affiliation, and just a quarter say they attend religious services weekly or more.

This is why Omaha state senator Megan Hunt, running as an atheist, had to head off Democratic attacks rather than Republican ones, over religion (which she won). Megan Hunt won by appealing to non-Christian views on social issues.

At the same time, Democrats must not take for granted the increasing number of atheists and agnostics in their coalition. Atheists provide a particularly difficult problem for Democrats. When asked to place themselves in ideological space, the average atheist sees the Democratic Party as becoming more conservative over the last three years, while they themselves have become more liberal. Data indicates that atheists are the most politically active religious group in the United States in recent years. In a 2018 survey, atheists were twice as likely to donate money or work for a political candidate as white evangelicals. Atheists want the Democratic Party to become more progressive and are unlikely to remain silent if they don’t see changes.