{"id":150,"date":"2008-09-19T18:42:06","date_gmt":"2008-09-19T18:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/abortion-gay-marriage-its-the.html"},"modified":"2008-09-19T18:42:06","modified_gmt":"2008-09-19T18:42:06","slug":"abortion-gay-marriage-its-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/abortion-gay-marriage-its-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Abortion? Gay marriage? It’s the (stupid) economy–again!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do the hot-button culture war issues like abortion and gay marriage matter? If you read only blogs or the news coverage (such as this NYTimes story, “Abortion Issue Again Dividing Catholics”<\/a>) you might get the impression that these are the central issues, and indeed the key to victory for McCain or Obama in November.<\/p>\n

Think again. Religion research guru John Green of the University of Akron (and the Pew Forum) today released the results of his fifth national mid-summer survey of voters, taken every four years during June, July and August, and this year’s results show two things: <\/p>\n

One is a remarkable stability in religious voting blocs, with the numbers preferring McCain and Obama at almost the same the ratios for Bush and Kerry in 2004. (Though Obama is somewhat ahead overall–or was in the summer. This was before the conventions, before the Palin pick, though Green echoes others who indicate Palin energized the base to a great degree, but may not have shifted many independents.) <\/p>\n

The second and really dramatic shift is in voter priorities. Social issues (abortion, gay rights, stem cells, et al) are way down the list. In 2004, more than 19 percent of all voters listed social issues as the top priority, and 28 percent said they were “very important.” This year just 11.1 percent said they were the “top priority” and almost the same, 27.2 percent, said they were very important. <\/p>\n

Conversely, in 2004, about 27 percent of voters put the economy as No. 1. Now that’s nearly doubled, at 51.3 percent. And this was a poll completed weeks before the current economic meltdown.<\/p>\n

Even more remarkable is the shift among the most conservative believers. Green–knowing full well that any labels are insufficient–has three categories for each denomination, Traditionalist, Centrist, and Modernist, determined by 11 questions each respondent (4,017 in random nat’l sample with 1.5 percent margin of error) answers. <\/p>\n

Among traditionalist Catholics, for example, 57 percent say the economy is the top priority, and just 18 percent (!) cite social issues. That’s almost the reverse of 2004, when 17. 4 percent of trad Catholics said the economy was tops, and 38 percent said it was social issues. The shift is pretty much across the board, though evangelicals of course remain more solidly GOP and are as likely to see social issues as important as the economy. Specific concerns on civil unions, same-sex marriage, and stem cells also dropped off considerably among all categories. (Another factor is that Catholics across the board are much more likely to support an active government role–in keeping with Catholicism’s social justice and communitarian traditions–than evangelicals.) <\/p>\n

The upshot? For all his faith outreach efforts and God talk, Barack Obama has made little headway with evangelicals compared to 2004. “I was really quite surprised by that given the foment,” Green said. There have been some changes, with traditionalist Catholics significantly less supportive of McCain than of Bush (46 now to 55.3 percent then), but a bigger and perhaps more enduring shift of Latino Protestants from the GOP to the Dems. <\/p>\n

Of course much has transpired since August, and Green noted that this year there are still more “persuadable” voters than in 2004. And the economy seems key, and it is the wild card in these last few weeks–the time when voters actually start paying attention.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, religious communities (especially Catholics) will be tearing themselves up over abortion and gay marriage and the like, while voters will be looking elsewhere. That is a strong argument to look for common ground to move ahead on these contested topics. “The differences between and within religious communities may be deep-seated, producing a close contest with a high level of religious polarization,” Green predicted. “Many of these religious divisions have developed over the last 20 years, so they have a certain momentum to them.”<\/p>\n

Green also noted that “there is a great yearning for a resolution to these disputes (among voters), but we don’t seem able to find one.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}