Many religious voters feel alienated from the
Democratic party. Donald Trump overwhelmingly won
Christian voters, including 81% of White Evangelicals
and 60% of White Catholics.
The obvious reason is that Donald Trump offered these
voters more of what they wanted like overturning
Roe vs. Wade and appointing conservative Supreme
Court justices, but there's something bigger going on.
Democrats often have trouble speaking in moral or
religious language, and they're part of a broader culture
that doesn't take religion seriously.
Democrats don't know how to talk to a lot of these
people that go to church, people of value.
I mean the Democratic party has become
a secular party.
So is the Democratic party really secular?
To a large extent, yes.
28% of Democrats don't identify with any particular
religion compared to just 14% of Republicans.
And only one third of Democrats say they go to religious
services at least once a week.
Just 10% of Democrats weren't religious in 1996.
That number has tripled over the last two decades,
and the trend is only likely to continue as more
young people join the party.
Pop culture can also be pretty hostile to religion.
Some comedians, journalists and artists actively
antagonize people of faith.
It worries me that people are running my country
who believe in a talking snake. You don't have to pass
an IQ test to be in the Senate though.
Partly as a response, Christians and other groups have
formed their own subcultures of movies
and music and news. For instance, Trump voters really
love the movie God's Not Dead, which is a movie about
religious liberty that a lot of progressives have probably
never heard of. Something wrong?
I can't do what you want. I'm a Christian.
If you cannot bring yourself to admit that
God's not dead, then you will need to defend
the antithesis.
Of course, a lot of Democrats are religious.
Black Protestants for example have consistently
supported the Democratic party, even though a lot
of these voters are conservative on issues like
same sex marriage and abortion. But their views aren't
always reflected in the party.
Roughly one third of Democrats identify as pro-life,
but only a handful of Democratic politicians share their
views.
Democratic leaders can also be uncomfortable with
the language of morality and religion.
Sometimes, this has resulted in wipeouts that
are insulting.
They get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion.
Other times, it's just embarrassing. One White House
staffer recently reported that a former colleague
kept deleting the phrase "The Least of These"
from the title of a memo wondering whether the
famous teaching from Jesus was a typo.
This is a shift from the past. Progressive achievements
like the Civil Rights Movement relied heavily on
religious rhetoric.
But I want you to know tonight that we as a people
will get to the Promised Land.
Leaders from Martin Luther King to Jimmy Carter
framed their ideals in explicitly religious terms.
Audiences were receptive to those messages.
Some progressive leaders do this today.
Reverend William Barber, the head of the North Carolina
NAACP has successfully led a Moral Mondays
protest movement against the racist policies
of the state legislature.
I'm a preacher, and I'm a theologically conservative
liberal evangelical biblicist.
You could also argue that Bernie Sanders fired up
millions of young Americans with his explicitly
moral language about economic inequality.
But both of these men are outsiders in
the Democratic party.
If Democrats really want to be the party of inclusion,
it can't just be about skin tone and sexuality,
it has to be about belief, too.
This is Unpresidented, a weekly series in which
Atlantic writers explore what's going on in this new
era of American politics. Let us know what topics
you'd like us to explore in the comments.
I'm Emma Green. Thanks for watching!
