THE DIVERGENCE:

In God, Americans are trusting more
(MICHAEL VALPY, Aug 9, 2004, Globe and Mail)

Religion has become a systemic, hard-wired feature of U.S. presidential elections, driven by a new coalition of conservative Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants and fuelled by fear that American culture is being taken over by militant secularism, according to the head of one of America's most respected public research organizations.

Luis Lugo, director of the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said he is frankly shocked by recent research showing that the United States stands increasingly alone among the advanced industrialized democracies as a deeply religious country. He pointed out that twice as many adult Americans as adult Canadians now consider religion personally important.

He said the key electoral constituencies of both the Republican and Democratic parties are now the two most highly religious segments of the U.S. public -- black Americans on the Democratic side and white evangelical Protestants on the Republican side, together representing more than a quarter of the electorate.

"The views of the two communities on religion and public life are virtually identical," Mr. Lugo said. "They differ on economic policy, they differ on foreign policy. But in talking about religion in public life, about taking religion into account in public policy and the use of religion in political campaigns -- these are the two communities from which we get the highest favourables in the country."

When the religious mix is adjusted to include conservative, observant Catholics, who are divided between the two parties, the total reaches about 40 per cent of the electorate, he said.

Mr. Lugo was a speaker at the annual conference of the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs, held north of Toronto. The theme of this year's conference, which ended yesterday, was "God's Back with a Vengeance: Religion, Pluralism and the Secular State."

Mr. Lugo said the emerging alliance between more traditional Catholics and evangelical Christian Protestants is "one of the huge stories in U.S. politics -- it's a political realignment of major proportions."

And explains, almost in its entirety, why America keeps getting more and more dominant while the secularizing West declines.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 15, 2004 9:36 AM