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Overview :

The exclusive charts and data on this site - and others that we link to - illustrate two very important points that need to be made about religion and politics in America today.  Most of the data for this first chart comes from the extremely thorough polling and research made during the 1996 election cycle by the highly regarded Pew Charitable Trust. 
        More recent research (2005) shows that little has changed since the charts below were created for this web page.  Http://wid.ap.org/polls/050606religion.html , for example, shows the results of an extensive poll comparing 10 major countries, in which the U.S. was found to be much more religious and more willing to mix religion and politics than any of the others.
        The lack of interest in religion by the great majority of those in leadership positions in the Democratic Party has caused too many of them to underestimate its importance for a vast number of American voters.  The tendency of such Democrats to put their heads in the sand when it comes to religion is a recipe for political suicide. 

The British empiricist philosopher, David Hume, once said,  " 'Tis impossible to refute a system, which has never been explained. In such a matter as fighting in the dark, a man loses his blows in the air, and often places them where the enemy is not present. "

Far from becoming less important to Americans, research shows that religion is more important than ever to them,  at least on a superficial level. And, that is all it takes for religion to have serious political consequences.-

Liberals & Democrats should be winning elections with America's
"Christian vote" instead of losing elections because of it.

According to what people themselves say about their interest in religion, many more voters identify themselves with churches today than ever before in America.  But even when they don't go to any church, many Americans vote on what have come to be called "moral issues" as opposed to the so-called "economic issues" which motivate liberal Democrats.  This fact was brought home to me on election day in 2000 when I took a break from campaigning at the local McDonald's in a heavily populated, working-class neighborhood.  When I noticed a bunch of old bulls like myself talking politics, I asked if I could join them, assuming that I would be among friends.  But the minute they found out I was working for the Democrats they all pounced on me with something like "How can you support those baby killers?"  They and their families and their country were getting screwed up one side and down the other, but for them, as for many other American voters, this religious view trumps everything else!  And as a minister, I assure you these weren't the kind of guys that I saw in church very often. 
        ( I say so-called "economic issues" because Democrats who think and refer to them only as economic are making a big mistake.  They could be having a much greater impact on people for whom morality decides their vote, if they stressed the moral dimension of who pays how much for government and who gets how much services from the government.  These people would respond if Democrats argued, as I do in many other pages of this web site, that what Republicans are all about is immoral, and contrary to the teaching of the Bible, while Democrats are all about doing exactly what the Bible says that people should do.
        In 2002, a Pew Research Council survey found that 82 percent of the U.S. populace considered itself to be Christian, while 10 percent identified with no religious group.

        When the Harris Poll did a study of the religious beliefs of today's U. S. electorate, they reported some very interesting findings at harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=359, among them :

• The 90% of adults who believe in God include 93% of women, 96% of African-Americans and 93% of Republicans but only 86% of men, 85% of those with postgraduate degrees, and 87% of political independents.
• The 84% of those who believe in the survival of the soul after death include 89% of women but only 78% of men, 86% of those without a college degree but only 78% of those with postgraduate degrees.
• The 84% of the public who believe in miracles falls to 72% among those with postgraduate degrees, and rises to 90% among women and 90% among African-Americans.
• The 82% who believe in heaven includes 89% of women but only 75% of men and falls to 71% among people aged 25 to 29 and those with postgraduate degrees.
• The survey findings show that a large majority of Americans consider religion important in their personal lives and closely associate religion and morality. Furthermore, Pew Forum surveys over several years show that Americans are generally more comfortable (than Europeans) with religion playing a major role in public life.

The next graph is exclusive to this web site, as I myself created it, to illustrate the extremely valuable information collected by the Pew Trust.  This graph may explain why liberals and Democrats went from practically owning every major public office in this country fifty years ago to being practically locked out of most of them now.  Younger people may not realize it, and older people may have forgotten, but Democrats did far more than just control Congress following the "Great Depression."  During the 36 years prior to Nixon's taking the White House in 1968, the only Republican to sit in the oval office was World War II hero, Gen. "Ike" Eisenhower.  And with control of the presidency came control of the Supreme Court.  And the Democratic Party not only controlled Congress during those years, but most of the state legislatures, the state houses and the leadership of the major cities throughout the country as well.
        What has happened since 1968 to turn all of that on its head, so that between 1968 and 1992, Democrats were able to win the presidency for only the four Carter years?  Why have Democrats been denied majorities in both houses of Congress, and the state houses of several of our most populous states: New York, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, and until recently, even California?  Democrats have even been denied the leadership of several of our largest Democratic cities!
        The reasons, to be sure, are numerous, but one of the principal ones, I would argue, is the brave, generous, very moral, but very costly stand which Democrats took under the leadership of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, to reverse America's racist past, for which L.B.J. rightly predicted the Democratic party would pay dearly, not just in the South, but nationwide.
        But I believe another major reason is illustrated in this next graph, which shows why liberals and/or Democrats   -  who seem to be courting the votes of the groups on the Left end of this chart (i.e. the non-religious 6% of the American electorate and the 2% of the voters who are Jewish)  -  are being trounced in the political arena by the conservatives and/or Republicans   -  who are making no bones about courting the three groups on the Right end of this chart:  white evangelicals, mainline white protestants and Roman Catholics.   --  Each of the three blocks the G.O.P. is courting represents close to ="25%" of the population, adding up to 75% .  The G.O.P. is quite content to let the Democrats have the rest.  But as wonderful as the Jews, Muslims, the minorities and non-believers may be,  all together they only add up to a quarter of the voting public!  (The percentages have changed some since 1996, but while Republicans work to make the most of the situation, Democrats continue to be oblivious to it.)

So long as Democrats settle for that one quarter of the pie, it is no wonder that they keep losing ground.  But this is especially sad, considering what the polling reveals, i.e.   that despite the efforts of the G.O.P. and their allies of the Religious Right,  and the lethargy of the Democrats,  the only religious group that actually favored the G.O.P. in the summer leading up to the 1996 elections was the "white evangelicals" and only by a surprisingly small margin at that!   If only the Democratic Party had capitalized on this dramatic advantage, instead of ignoring it,   the outcome of those elections might have been Democratic control of Congress, along with the Presidency!
        Click here for more recent, and very interesting statistics which show what portion of the electorate votes largely on the basis of moral values, and how that vote effected the outcome of the first election of this millennium: "Values Voters" in the 2000 election.
        Those who assume that the G.O.P. "owns" the Christian vote are simply mistaken.  They may even be contributing to a self-fulfilling prophecy, by repelling Christians into the arms of the Republican Party.  We "Liberals Like Christ" are trying to help our fellow Christians see that in America today the Democratic Party is much closer to the teaching of Jesus and the other great prophets of the Bible than is today's Republican Party.
        Conservatives, however, dominate to various degrees most of the white Christian churches in America today.  Even those that ARE sympathetic are so self-centered that they will do nothing to promote "Liberals Like Christ" because we do not promote their denomination.  So if word is going to get out about "Liberals Like Christ", it will only happen if liberals and Democrats like yourselves do it.

The chart below illustrates one of the principal reasons why the Democrats have lost so many offices to the Republican party, since their party embraced the rights of the few to be treated fairly by the many.
        For the 36 years after the Depression, The Democratic Party completely dominated not only Congress, but most state houses and the Supreme Court.  And the public kept a Democrat in the White House for all but the eight Eisenhower years.  Then came the promotion and passage of the Civil Rights & Voting bills of 1964 & 1968.  And that is when everything changed, almost overnight!

The Bottom Line:

Before the promotion and passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills of '64 & '65, the vast majority of the white voters of all 13 of the former Confederate states were zealous "Dixiecrats", i.e. short for Dixie Democrats. Before the ink of those laws had dried those same voters became nt from being solidly Democratic to voting 70% against the National Democratic Party thereafter.   And the vote for George Wallace shows exactly who moved from the pre-civil rights Democratic Party  to the post-civil rights Republican Party  and why.
        Although the effect was less dramatic in other parts of the country, it was one of the most important factors in the country going in a few short years from almost complete Democratic control of the U.S. Congress, many state legislatures, and the governorships of most states, to almost complete Republican control of most of those bodies, including some of the most Democratic of our states..  And from 1968 through 2008 only Republicans, and Democratic governors from the Deep South, have been able to win the presidency.

When it comes to states with the highest
vs. the lowest Divorce Rates

1. Nevada   6.8
2. Arkansas   6.6
3. Wyoming   6.1
4. Idaho   5.6
5. Kentucky   5.5
6. Florida   5.4 .
7. Mississippi   5.4
8. Alabama   5.3
9. Tennessee   5.2
10. West Virginia   5.2

40. Pennsylvania   3.2
41. Kansas   3.2 (conservative)
42. Iowa   3.2 (conservative)
43. Illinois   3.2
44. New York   3.0
45. Maryland   3.0
46. Connecticut   2.9
47. North Dakota   2.7 (conservative)
48. Montana   2.6 (conservative)
49. Massachusetts   2.4

When it comes to states with the highest
vs. the lowest Divorce Rates

1. Nevada   6.6
2. Arkansas   5.6
3. Wyoming   5.2
4. Idaho   5.0
5. Kentucky   4.6
6. Oklahoma 4.6
7. Alaska 4.4
8. Florida   4.3
9. Maine   4.3
10. Colorado   4.2

40. Wisconsin 3.0
41. Maryland   2.8
42. New Jersey  2.8
43. Illinois   2.6
44. North Dakota   2.5 (conservative)
45. South Carolina   2.6 (conservative)
46. New York   2.5
47. Iowa   2.5 (conservative)
48. Pennsylvania   2.3
49. Massachusetts   1.8

Teen Pregnancy Rates by state :

all but one
are considered
"CONSERVATIVE" :

Murder Rate, by State,

When it comes to states with the highest
vs. the lowest Suicide rates
( i.e. per 100,000 for the year 2003 )

The eight states with
the lowest Suicide rates are ALL
considered "LIBERAL" :

1. Nevada   22.3
2. Wyoming   20.4
3. Montana   18.4
4. New Mexico   18.3
5. Arizona   16.0
6. Alaska   15.5
7. Oklahoma   14.7
8. Idaho   14.5

1. California   9.3
2. Minnesota   9.2
3. Maryland   8.4
4. Illinois   8.4
5. Connecticut   8.3
6. Massachusetts   7.0
7. New Jersey   6.9
8. New York   6.6

Pictures of the charts above are available in addition to the tables above: BlueMinWage.jpg vs . RedMinWage.jpg.  As of October, 2006 (prior to the 2006 elections, in which several progressive initiatives improved the situation in several of the Red states above, only two of the 33 conservative states had seen fit to require minimum wage workers be paid more than the disgraceful 1997 national minimum wage, while only ONE of the 17 liberal states had not seen fit to require higher minimum wages within their own borders.
      Contrary to the claim by opponents to raises in the minimum wage that such increases result in job losses, states which have increased the minimum wage have seen job increases.

In last 2006, the House agreed to a $3,100 pay raise for Congress next year to $165,200 after defeating an effort to roll it back.
        "It�s not a pay raise,� said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. �It�s an adjustment so that they�re not losing their purchasing power.�
        Federal minimum wage has been $5.15 since 1997. Loss of purchasing power: About 19.4%.
        In 1997, Congressional salaries were $133,600. The congressmen have raised their salaries a whopping $31,600 since 1997, or 23.7%, but have failed to provide any adjustment of even one penny to enable the working poor to cope with the tremendous increase in the cost of living since 1997.

On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that children under age 18, who commit serious crimes such as murder, may not be executed, and stated that execution of children constitutes a violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. It should be noted that more than half of the countries in the world have entirely eliminated the death penalty, and that there are four international human rights treaties that exclude child offenders from the death penalty. In a worldwide study of the execution of children between 1994 and 2002, two-thirds of the executions of children occurred in the United States.
        While it has been said that Bush was elected by the "values voters", I have previously found that the states that voted for Bush in the November, 2004 election had higher divorce rates, higher murder rates, and higher teen pregnancy rates. So, when I heard that there were 19 states that had allowed execution of children, I wondered if the "values voters" states - those who voted for Bush - were more or less likely to allow the execution of children. Following is the list of states that allowed execution of children prior to the Supreme Court ruling, and how they voted in the recent presidential election.

American Religiosity by state

For some great graphs comparing economic conditions under Democratic vs. Republican presidents, see my Liberal-Insights.Org/+Reasonable/busheconomy.html.

When people think of political corruption, they are probably aware of a few scandals involving Democrats, but ask them to point to significant scandals involving contemporary liberal Democrats, as opposed to scandals dating back decades, when the Democratic Party was dominated by conservative Southerners.  They won't be able to come up with anything near the corruption that has dominated the Republican Party in recent years (i.e. since its take-over by the "Bible Belt" conservatives), as I lay bare at

Correlation between level of education & Presidential vote ( in 2004 )

Gallup 2009 poll results, asking Americans
how they identified themselves

Republican vs. Democratic Presidents :

Is there any hope for Congress?

The Limits of Smarts in America:

Countering Conservative Junk Science :

Why don't "Conservatives" care more about the Environment ?

Work should PAY !

The "Other-centered" vs the "Self-centered" :

Should the Rich Do More ?

Access to Education :

Countering America's Gun Madness:

Feminism Advocacy in Posters :

LGBT Advocacy in Posters :