{"id":333,"date":"2008-09-30T10:36:54","date_gmt":"2008-09-30T10:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html"},"modified":"2008-09-30T10:36:54","modified_gmt":"2008-09-30T10:36:54","slug":"are-the-centrist-tribes-moving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html","title":{"rendered":"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the past I&#8217;ve written that the basic dilemma for Moderate Evangelicals and centrist Catholics has been that they&#8217;re liberal on the war and other issues but conservative on the social issues. They&#8217;re reluctant to pull the lever for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Obama<\/p>\n<p>Well, I&#8217;d like to revise my view. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/236\/story_23639_1.html\">new Twelve Tribes study<\/a> shows that a sizable chunk of these evangelicals and Catholics are pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and have moved in that direction.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, while only 14% of Moderate Evangelicals call themselves &#8220;liberal,&#8221; a stunning 46% of them now say they are pro-choice, compared to 41% in 2004. They are coming very close to the national average which is at 52%.&nbsp; This same&nbsp;trend is occuring&nbsp;for positions on&nbsp;gay marriage.<\/p>\n<p>And what of Convertible Catholics? 51% called themselves pro-choice in 2004; now 55% do. The coverage of the Bishops&#8217; views on abortion can lead us to forget that this pivotal swing bloc of Catholics is now more pro choice than the population as a whole.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, being pro-choice should not preclude a Democrat making sizable headway among Moderate Evangelicals or Convertible Catholics. <\/p>\n<p>However, Obama was actually underperforming among both in the summer of 2008, according to this poll. If he were winning all of the pro-choice evangelicals, he&#8217;d be getting 46% of the Moderate Evangelicals, instead of the 37% he actually was getting. If he was getting all of the pro-choice Catholics, he&#8217;d be getting 55% instead of the 40%.<\/p>\n<p>That may mean they&#8217;re pro-choice but view Obama as a pro-choice &#8220;extremist&#8221; or simply that they have the reasons they don&#8217;t like him.<\/p>\n<p><em>More on the Twelve Tribes study <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/236\/story_23639_1.html\">here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the past I&#8217;ve written that the basic dilemma for Moderate Evangelicals and centrist Catholics has been that they&#8217;re liberal on the war and other issues but conservative on the social issues. They&#8217;re reluctant to pull the lever for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Obama Well, I&#8217;d like to revise my view. The new&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the past I&#8217;ve written that the basic dilemma for Moderate Evangelicals and centrist Catholics has been that they&#8217;re liberal on the war and other issues but conservative on the social issues. They&#8217;re reluctant to pull the lever for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Obama Well, I&#8217;d like to revise my view. The new&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-30T10:36:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"In the past I&#8217;ve written that the basic dilemma for Moderate Evangelicals and centrist Catholics has been that they&#8217;re liberal on the war and other issues but conservative on the social issues. They&#8217;re reluctant to pull the lever for a pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate like Obama Well, I&#8217;d like to revise my view. The new&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-09-30T10:36:54+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html","name":"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-09-30T10:36:54+00:00","dateModified":"2008-09-30T10:36:54+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/are-the-centrist-tribes-moving.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Are the Centrist Tribes Moving Left on Abortion?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}