Current Events > I never understood why religious Christians tend to be Republican

(+) Yeah! (+)

Zanzenburger posted...

This is what we call in the research world a confounding variable. Just because there is a correlation between being Christian and being Republican, does not mean that one causes the other or that there is a direct effect (in most cases).

From what I have seen, both tend to stem from a third (confounding) variable: rural living. People in rural areas are more likely to be Republican due to conservative policies (supposedly) benefiting their way of life. People in rural areas are also more traditionally church-going and Christian. I experienced this when I lived in Oklahoma for almost a decade.

Once you start to move to urban areas, you start finding more Christian Democrats. It's more about location than it is anything else.

Yeah I see this

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Ive always wondered about this too, but it makes sense if you go to Christian Church. All the church leaders are also businessmen and business owners, so they are looking out for their own interest.

Reading this as a Christian is a blow to my pride lol

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Being a christian is nothing to be proud about, anyway.

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honestly I can't understand why religious chirstians do anything they do...

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American religion is about alienating outside groups in order to exalt yourself. It's founded on disdain, shame, and hate. Think back to Boston and the 'pilgrims' (called by Europe the separatists). The City on the Hill. Look up ye sinners and repent. For the worldview of these people to stay in tact, there must be outgroups. The uppity. The morally outrageous. The parasites. That hate and shunning is the moral backbone of the Republican party.

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It's mostly because hyper religious people have certain social views that don't coincide with views on the left.

Said views are about marriage
abortion
gay rights
etc...

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Pretty sure Jesus Christ was middle eastern. Which makes the Republican's hatred of anyone of colour, especially middle eastern, all the more ironic.

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Jesus say
Do not judge, or you too will be judged.2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brothers eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye.

Human say
NOPE

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Im a Christian, not a republican or democrat but I know both.

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Religious people are conservative, and the complete opposite of democrats.
The love thy neighbor part is highly debatable, I don't see republicans not respecting their peers, and the provide for the needful is also pretty weird since I believe they have a difference in how they do it, rather than actually doing it or not.

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GiftedACIII posted...

I think its because Christianity is about tradition which is a pretty big aspect for Republicans.

Damn right. For me, at least.

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when you realize protestants aren't really christians it makes more sense

DuranOfForcena posted...

pretty much all modern Christians are "salad bar Christians", who pick and choose the parts of the religion that they want to put on their plate which meshes with their other beliefs, while ignoring everything else they don't agree with

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The GOP wants a theocracy.

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I know a surprising amount of Catholics who vote democrat that are also anti-abortion (some even anti-gay marriage) and are defending Amy Coney Barrett. These people definitely exist and it's kinda wild to see them have these battles with themselves.
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There's usually not one reason. It's like asking why a person chooses one game console over another.

• The "abortion stops a beating heart" argument is obvious. You're alive and have a soul from conception, so it's taking a life to perform an abortion. Whether you agree with that perspective or not (most in this topic won't), that's how many of them view it.
• If an individual is of the mindset that what promotes Christianity is good, what promotes or enables secularism or adherence of other faiths is bad might feel that the left is not Christian enough. Or, because factually some leftists are opposed to religion as a whole, or Christianity in particular, they may generalize and view the left collectively as the anti-religious or anti-Christian side.
• Then you have Israel.
• Then you have the religious authority / vote of confidence approach. The clergy, the church, are the people closest to God. They receive information more directly from God than what we do. So if they say this is the side which represents God's faithful, it must be so.
• And then you have personal interpretation and cherry-picking. Saying that you should give your neighbor a coat if you have two and they have none may sound socialistic, as might distributing the fish and loaves of bread to all, but it's not. It's not because I want to make money -- even if I'm told the love of money is the root of all evil. And the quote about the poor always being with us has historically been translated to ignoring the needs of the poor because it kept be helped; poverty will always exist.
• The basic control factor. Everyone wants to exert their influence and they feel this is the best side to align with in that regard.
• Finally, you have the vote of confidence. If you believe God is your friend, you can convince yourself you're justified in all you do. Leaders have literally justified murder under this premise and it's how bigotry is cultivated in spite of teachings to the contrary.
• Oh, and there are at least six or seven reasons I hadn't even thought of.

I know it sounds a lot like I'm vilifying Republicans, but that isn't my intent. If I gave a list of reasons why one demographic or another voted Democrat, it would likely sound dubious on paper. I just wanted to go into some of the specifics the best I could. It's hard to talk about politics without making it sound like someone has an "agenda." Chances are, they do.


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On the subject of money, I'll confess that one gets me too. Like a lot of Christians, I'd love to be wealthy. It's more about lust than greed though. (At least so I tell myself.) I like money as much as the next guy. I'd love to be financially secure, independent, and able to purchases the amenities of my choosing. But what I really want is a gold digger.

<_<

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Yeah it's like the political sides, which people seem to increasingly follow as if they were religions, have done a switcheroo. Like with gun control.

Endgame posted...

It basically comes down to abortion, really.

This is seriously it. Abortion is such an explosive issue that there are many people who will simply support Republicans not matter what as long as they are pro-life.

As if a man who hung around with 12 male followers in a country occupied by a Hellenic society was ever going to speak out against gay people. I mean, really, people.

What exactly does the Bible say about abortion? I'll wait...


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Tag

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umax555 posted...

I have nothing against Christianity in itself

I sure do. It's a religion and religions are cultist mentalities.

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Sayoria posted...

I sure do. It's a religion and religions are cultist mentalities.

Not all religious people have cultist mentalities. Some religious branches are fine.

Though I am anti religion in general, because as soon as you get to the hyper religious people all logic and decency appears to be thrown out the window.

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Because christian people are like the other Abrahamic faiths in that they want to impose their beliefs of everyone else. Republicans want to impose their beliefs on everyone else, too, so it seems a good match

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https://www.christianpost.com/voices/americas-mayhem-and-massive-decline-in-christianity.html

Only a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, a groundbreaking poll by Pew Research was published highlighting the shocking pace of decline of Christianity in America.

https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip.

The data shows a wide gap between older Americans (Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation) and Millennials in their levels of religious affiliation and attendance. More than eight-in-ten members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945) describe themselves as Christians (84%), as do three-quarters of Baby Boomers (76%). In stark contrast, only half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians; four-in-ten are religious nones, and one-in-ten Millennials identify with non-Christian faiths.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thefreethinker/2020/09/good-news-religion-is-fast-going-down-the-tubes-in-america/

One of the worlds leading social scientists Ronald Inglehart, above, of the University of Michigan claims in a book soon to be published that the United States is experiencing a more dramatic shift away from religion than any other nation.

Religions Sudden Decline: Whats Causing It and What Comes Next is to be released in January by Oxford University Press. Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine in an advance summary titled Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion Dr Inglehart said:

Growing numbers of people no longer find religion a necessary source of support and meaning in their lives. Even the United States long cited as proof that an economically advanced society can be strongly religious has now joined other wealthy countries in moving away from religion

Several forces are driving this trend, but the most powerful one is the waning hold of a set of beliefs closely linked to the imperative of maintaining high birthrates. Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.

Although some religious conservatives warn that the retreat from faith will lead to a collapse of social cohesion and public morality, the evidence doesnt support this claim. As unexpected as it may seem, countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than more religious ones.

Needless to say, religion itself doesnt encourage corruption and crime. This phenomenon reflects the fact that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure: starvation, once pervasive, becomes uncommon; life expectancy increases; murder and other forms of violence diminish. And as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious.

The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the worlds more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data.

Inglehart says that other factors beyond rising levels of economic and technological development help explain the waning of religion.

In the United States, politics accounts for some of the decline. Since the 1990s, the Republican Party has sought to win support by adopting conservative Christian positions on same-sex marriage, abortion, and other cultural issues. But this political appeal to religious voters has had the corollary effect of pushing other voters, especially those who are young and culturally liberal, away from religion.

Junior_AIN posted...

Religious people are conservative, and the complete opposite of democrats.

I mean, there are a ton of religious Democrats. Just fewer white ones.

To the topic question: there was a concerted effort after Roe v. Wade to elevate the issue of abortion among Christian voters to build a reliable voting block for the Republican Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right?wprov=sfla1
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The TC's post has essentially highlighted the problem - we've gotten to the point in our culture where being a "religious Christian" is essentially dependent on how vociferous you advocate for Republican policies, including things such as free market economics and military intervention in foreign countries, neither of which has anything to do with the Christian religion whatsoever, and if anything, are rather antithetical to what the religion actually teaches.

But back in the 70's and 80's, a significant portion of Southern Evangelicals threw their hats in with the Republican Party. Or rather, the Republican Party went out of its way to court southern evangelicals by adopting socially conservative and anti-communist stances. Folks like Billy Graham (he admitted as much in his later years) found themselves drawn to the Republican Party due to its strong anti-communist and anti-Soviet stance. This resulted in an uneasy marriage between the GOP and Evangelical Christianity - in the Election of 1980, for example, the GOP supported the lifelong-irreligious Ronald Reagan from hippie California over Jimmy Carter, who was, you know, an actual Southern Evangelical. This basically brought Republican policies and ideology into Church, and since the church was the center of American life back in the 70's and 80's South, being a 'Godly' individual basically meant supporting Reagan, fighting for lower taxes, and strong advocacy of military intervention.

In the years since, a couple of things have happened that have served to energize the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican party:

1. Churches are less influential than they have been before; church attendance is dwindling, but nonetheless the politics that the church brought into everyday southern/rural life have stayed, so you now have people who are irreligious who nonetheless still steeped deeply in to conservative identity politics, except they identify even stronger with the political aspect now that religion is out of the picture - this is basically what the "alt-right" is - they're people who have essentially dropped the Christian religion but they've retained the desire for belonging and the persecution complex, and thus they cling even stronger to conservative politics and become even more extreme. Some prominent Evangelical denominational leaders and pastors spoke out strongly against Trump back in 2016, but their congregations didn't really listen to them.
2. Some churches have tried to combat this lack of influence by trying to capitalize on people's fear and doubling down on their political stances. Politics gets people riled up *much* better than religion does. Trump draws crowds far better than pastors do, so they're basically trying to leech off him.

Combine these things, and, well, you have an even stronger attachment between Southern Evangelical Christianity and the Republican Party than there was in the 80s. Not a good sign. The thing is, the folks I know who are the most pro-Trump and pro-Republican are not usually the ones who are most well-studied of the Bible or the ones most active in church life - it's always the "Christian identity" and "Christian values" types, and those folks, from my experience, generally have a very poor understanding of the Bible to begin with, so I'm not particularly shocked that they'd be attracted to a charlatan like Trump.

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umax555 posted...

The party's values are literally opposite the core values of Christianity (loving thy neighbor, providing for the weak/poor, etc). I have nothing against Christianity in itself, but it seems like so many people twist it or cherry pick things like gay marriage to fit their own values. Like how can you call yourself a good Christian and simultaneously want to kick out all the illegals?

lolwut? Troll topic.

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mustachedmystic posted...

Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's".

Ironically, Julius Ceaser reduced the Roman grain subsidy by about half.

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Sayoria posted...

I sure do. It's a religion and religions are cultist mentalities.

when you think you've escaped ideology, ideology has you.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

pretty much all modern Christians are "salad bar Christians", who pick and choose the parts of the religion that they want to put on their plate which meshes with their other beliefs, while ignoring everything else they don't agree with

To be fair, Christianity started as "salad bar Christians" until Constantine stepped in and forced the multitude of sects to codify their beliefs and practices. Those that didn't comply were ruthlessly stamped out as heretics.

There used to be versions of Christianity that believed Jesus regularly had sex with his favorite disciple who was a young man.

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Modern Christianity is just an excuse to justify discrimination.

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Sariana21 posted...

What exactly does the Bible say about abortion? I'll wait...

What little it has to say about anything even similar to the subject basically considers it to be damage to property more than anything else.

Which really gives the folks screeching about property damage nowadays an actual shred of consistency, in that they value property over human life in both situations.

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Geist des Durcheinan posted...

Being a christian is nothing to be proud about, anyway.

I disagree, personally.

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Raptornado posted...

What little it has to say about anything even similar to the subject basically considers it to be damage to property more than anything else.

Which really gives the folks screeching about property damage nowadays an actual shred of consistency, in that they value property over human life in both situations.

Holy fucking shit.

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Really?

Cant ever mind their own business/live and let live
Hypocritical
Small minded
Can't think for themselves but are convinced they're the only ones that do

Fits well IMO

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NobleWill8 posted...

I disagree, personally.

If you're a Christian, what are you most proud of?

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The bible says the same thing about every sin Repent and you will be forgiven.

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Also, the reason that Christianity is losing popularity is because the doctrine doesnt match the source material. Why invest time and energy in organized grifting? Literally none of the shit churches tell you you need to do is in Jesus words and most of the time they are telling you the opposite of what Jesus explicitly says.

Jesus actual philosophy is really attractive and relevant to contemporary society but all most people are exposed to are other people trying to play god

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