From the WaPo:

I tend to be sympathetic to the conservative position on this issue on policy and legal grounds, although I haven't looked at this case closely. However, while I think there are broad social trends towards secularization that should concern conservatives, current legal protection for religious liberty in the US are strong, so I struggle to understand on charitable grounds why it as the political priority so much of the GOP seems to view it as.

To me, this seems more likely a political response to the loss by religious conservatives on same-sex marriage (not at heart a religious liberty issue imo). And here, while Obergefell was the coup de grace, the real failure of Christians was culturally, where they failed to persuade people (including young Christians) that their views on homosexuality weren't capricious and cruel towards undeserving victims. And a Republican president that struggles to communicate the cultural cues that would portray him as a heartfelt Christian will have a strong incentive to emphasize his role as a (legal) defender of the faith.

I think at this point it's hard to distinguish between what is a White Evangelical position, and what is a White Conservative position. The two camps are now so enmeshed I don't know that we can sift out religious considerations from the overall Conservative agenda. I believe that White middle America at large now feels the need to protect what they view as the traditional 'American' way of life; and Christianity is but one aspect of that.

More to your point, I think you are totally correct that religious freedoms are not in any palpable danger currently. Black Evangelicals clearly do not feel their religious liberties are being threatened, and neither do the Catholics. Of course these are vast over-simplifications I am making, but Catholics are generally split in their support, while Black Evangelicals are overwhelmingly voting D. Furthermore, White Evangelicals, rather than Christians as a whole, are drivers of Islamaphobia in this country. Therefore I am of the mind that what we are seeing is a reaction to a perceived threat to the White Judeo-Christian cultural identity, rather than Evangelicals feeling their individual religious freedoms are actually under attack.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-vote-for-him/

https://www.newsweek.com/white-evang...-shows-1433592

if you are going to give money to private schools, of course you have to give it to parochial schools as well, the original decision is beyond stupid

if a state decides not to give aid to any private schools, fine.

I had intended to post the link to the SCOTUS decision a while ago, but never got around to it:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...-1195_g314.pdf

I didn't do a deep reading of it.

It's pretty much as Mets summarized. The Court held that denying religious schools state funding (ostensibly due to the Establishment clause), while funding all other private schools, on the sole basis of their being religious institutions, is a violation of the Free Exercise clause.

I think it was a fair decision.

Hello mets. I don't remember if we like each other or not -- it's been a long time. Regardless, I an in absolute agreement with this post.

If a private school is properly credentialed, then it is a school. If a state chooses to give money to private schools, then it must be to ALL private schools.

I don't care if it's all girl, all boy, all gay, Jewish, Islamic, Christian, etc. If it is a credentialed private school, it must be treated equally with ANY private school.

+1

Home schooling is the way to go.

+1

im pretty sure we got along, but i have apparantly made some enemies

but hai!

the fact that this is 5-4 shows how bad the liberal judges are

the conservative judges side with the liberal judges when things are obv wrong, but i dont get how the 4 judges vote against this

I purposely left out home schooling, and purposely mentioned "credentialed".

When it comes to the state subsidizing home schooling, that opens up a can of worms I'm not currently willing to munch on.

You can read the dissents from the link.

I agree that white evangelical Christians are increasingly likely to identify as conservative and be part of the largely white GOP "conservative" political coalition (in 2007 50% identified as conservative, in 2014 56% did so). I disagree that their positions have diffused into a broader cultural conservatism within the GOP coalition. My sense is that Trump and his faction of trolls aren't personally very exercised by the standard concerns of evangelicals like stopping abortion or promoting traditional family values, but rather they are interested in promoting American nationalism. The evangelicals I know are quite aware that Trump is not one of them, even if they are mostly happy with his leadership of their party.

However, the big mistake to avoid here imo is to think that evangelicalism is mostly about the political positions associated with conservatives. For most evangelicals, especially those in whom it has its biggest impact, the most important impact on their lives are things like: going to church every week, praying and meditating on spiritual topics, reading the Bible and devotional material, living according to Christian morality and ways of life, believing Christian theology about God, the world, and other people, associating with other Christians, talking with God, and so on. Relatively speaking, the impact of being a political conservative on a person's life is small.

You're wrong to claim that Catholics do not think their religious liberties in the US are being threatened. For instance, Catholic hospitals and aid organizations have been in litigation for years over whether they are required to abide by the contraceptive mandate in the ACA. I'm not sure about black evangelicals, but I wouldn't assume they don't from them supporting Democratic politicians.

I'm okay with state-subsidized funds for homeschooling if done properly. For instance, homeschoolers in California can register with dedicated charter schools that provide funds for tutoring and classes for homeschooled kids. I see little evidence that homeschooled kids get on average a worse education than kids that go to school (disclaimer: I was mostly homeschooled).

Not taking the bait OP. (get it? can of worms, bait...)

Never mind. Not going there.

My point is not that the White Evangelicals are in a coalition with the GOP trolls, it is that they are the GOP trolls. They constitute a very significant part of the electorate and they are now voting almost exclusively R.

Also, the data you provide appears to be not for white evangelicals, but all evangelicals, which includes the predominantly liberal black evangelicals. I am also pretty sure that if the % is changed to include the 'lean' R's, the number skyrockets. At any rate, at the end of the day, I don't think it really matters what they self-identify as, as much as it matters who they are actually voting for. Do you agree?

Some Numbers

• White Evangelicals voted Trump 80-16 in 2016.

Source

• June of this year: 82% of White Evangelicals still voting for Trump

Source

• White Evangelicals less likely to report income >$150k [note: I believe the vast majority have a total household income < $100k] or possess a Bachelors or higher, while they are more likely to be older (which is the core Trump demographic).

Source


No Distinct Political Positions

• White Evangelicals R's have no disparate political positions as a group with which we can make any meaningful distinctions between them and the non-evangelical R's.

Ibid

• Case in point: despite the bible teaching us to be kind and welcoming to immigrants, White Evangelicals choose to conveniently ignore that teaching and subscribe to the overall GOP anti-immigration hysteria.

Source


Thus,

I am forced to conclude that the White Evangelicals and the Trumpers are one and the same. Trump won by making a naked appeal to traditional White cultural values and nostalgia, and there is no mistaking that this nation was founded in Christian values and White hegemony. The message has clearly resonated with White Evangelicals.

The impact may be small on a personal level, and I think I agree there, however they are in perfect alignment with the current iteration of the GOP, so again I don't think any meaningful distinctions can be made in the aggregate.

You make a good counter-point with the Catholics. My overall point is that the GOP/White Evangelical alliance is more about a white cultural identity struggle, rather than a fight for religious liberties. This is just my opinion, and I very well may be completely wrong.

You also may very well be correct on your original point that this is just an overall Christian response to the same-sex marriage loss. However, there is still a difference between White Evangelicals and other Christians on these (ostensibly) religious issues and I think it can still be shown that one the whole these issues seem to concern White Evangelicals more than other Christian groups.

Source

Sorry for the protracted political derail, I guess I'm just a politard at heart. Feel free to delete if you feel my posts are inappropriate for this forum.

Good stuff. Definitely NOT a derail! Keep up the good work!

Long NYT piece on this topic yesterday. I think it's worth a read (mostly just interviews of Evangelicals). It's paywalled, hopefully y'all got some free articles left on the month.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/u...gtype=Homepage

I won't bother to comment on the legal aspect of it, but a principle I support is that a state can pay for teachings on religion, but should not pay for teaching a religion. So teaching that "this religion believes God created the earth" is fine, but teaching "this God created the earth" means no public funds.

People can get their religion at home or using private funds. That's more in line with religious freedom anyway.

Interesting, but irrelevant to the situation. Setting aside the "legal" (as hard as that is since the entire thing is about legality):

The "philosophical" argument is a comparison between whether the state can "support" a church in any aspect whatsoever. For example, there are examples of religious schools unable to get grant funding that was otherwise available to schools for playground safety. There is zero relevance for the "teaching" of religion in that funding, but some argue that using state funds to support a church at any level is a violation of the core separation doctrines. But then there are others who say that the money should not go towards "teaching religion" so that money for playgrounds should be acceptable.

Does Scientology count as a religion? What about those that teach that you should not give your children blood transfusions?

I don't really get your point here. While most white evangelicals support Trump, only 46% of Trump voters are white evangelicals. Thus, clearly it would be false to equate the GOP with white evangelicals. My argument is that while white evangelicals are loyal GOP voters, that they are a distinct social group with interests and values that can and do diverge from other parts of the GOP coalition. They are also loyal to different leaders and institutions and their intellectuals have a different ideology.

Sorry about the miscite there. However, it is not true that black evangelicals are predominantly liberal (although 73% vote Democratic). Pew has 36% identifying as conservative, 33% as moderate and 24% as liberal. They oppose same-sex marriage by 59% to 32% and support banning abortion in most or all cases by 51% to 45%. However, we are not in disagreement about the level of support among white evangelicals for the GOP generally or Trump specifically.

The main point I wanted to emphasize is a disagreement with the bolded. Saying what matters in the end is who someone actually votes for is to collapse people's other identities (religious in this case) into a mostly deracinated political identity. Just as a practical matter, a person's presidential vote has very little impact on their life (as opposed to who is actually president), generally far smaller than eg Christian teachings on child-rearing. Fair enough that people who care about who wins elections focus on it - but it is in itself only a small part of what it means to be an evangelical.

This doesn't really show that evangelicals don't have distinct political position, just that they are no more likely to diverge from the general GOP consensus than non-evangelicals. That's not really surprising given that evangelicals are such a large part of the GOP coalition.

Meh, that article is not very good. Yes, the Bible and Christian tradition says to love your neighbor. No, this doesn't imply that Christians should support permeable borders or "radical hospitality." That is going from one of the broadest commands in Christianity to specific policy positions in a political system not envisioned by the authors of the Bible.
If what you mean by "Trumper" is "someone who voted for Trump," then yes I agree that nearly all white evangelical voters voted for Trump. If you mean something more ideologically or politically robust, then I'm doubtful.

Not sure what counts as a meaningful distinction for you.

While I think preserving the power of white people was part of the reason for the alliance between the GOP and white evangelicals, I think framing it as you do here as being more about "white cultural identity" is misleading because it elides the very real and important religious motivation for this alliance. The civil rights reforms did have a major impact in politically activating white Christians (eg in increased support for a private religious schools), but the more lasting causes of the religious right tended to result more from the sexual revolution of the seventies, which was (imo correctly) perceived by conservative Christians as a rejection of their way of life and a challenge to their values. For Christians who understood their views on abortion, premarital sex, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, contraception, egalitarian marriage, and so on as being the result of important moral teachings of Christianity, the rise of different views among Democrats led to increased support for the GOP. This seems pretty ordinary and unsurprising to me. Reducing this to a fight about white cultural identity is misleading - evangelicalism is a religious identity, not an ethnic nor racial one.

I'm pretty sure that legally, yes.

WTF with blood transfusions?

I'm only responding because I know you just like to "drive-by" and will likely never return.

Nice hyphen.