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Monday, June 7th, 2021

How Is The GOP Adjusting To A Less Religious America?

Author:     DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN
Source:     npr
Publication Date:     June 4, 20218:00 AM ET
 Link: How Is The GOP Adjusting To A Less Religious America?
Stephan:   Two important political trends are going on: one, the linkage between the Republican Party and White evangelical protestants. It has been a powerful trend. But now a countervailing trend is emerging. Fewer and fewer young people are affiliating with religious communities of any kind, older people are dying off, and more and more older people are falling away. This demographic, so important to the Republican Party as reliable votes, is shrinking. This report lays out the issues in this trend.
Donald Trump attends a worship service in Las Vegas when he was a presidential candidate in 2016. Trump won over many white conservative Christians by wrapping their traditional priorities in with his own particular cultural fixations.
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty

When Ronald Reagan accepted the 1980 Republican presidential nomination, he ended his speech with a piousrequest.

“I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest — I’m more afraid not to — that we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer,” he said.

It was the preface to a presidency that would help make white evangelicals the staunchly Republican voting bloc they are today.

Fast-forward to a 2015 campaign event, when Republican consultant Frank Luntz worked to pin down soon-to-be-President Donald Trump on a simple question of faith:

“Have you ever asked God for forgiveness?” Luntz asked Trump twice, before getting this answer: “I’m not sure I have. I just go and try and do a better job from there. I don’t think so.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/NyDbOHvfdiE?rel=0

Trump benefited from the white evangelical support that Reagan helped solidify, but he also presided over […]

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