We Are Becoming Less Religious
.....so Why Do Christian Nationalists Have So Much Power? (Part 1 of 2)
Thanks to Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois, who posted an article in January this year about the declining religiosity of Iowa and the United States. I’ve written much about white Christian Nationalism and its threat to our democratic system. That is still true.
But what Burge brings to our attention (see the map above), is that those who call themselves “evangelical” in most states, make up a minority of the population. And, if we accept that not all evangelicals are Christian Nationalists, then the number who are leading the Christian Nationalist charge is likely less than what is on the map.
Only one state in the country has more than 50% of the population reporting to be evangelical, and that is Mississippi, which explains much about that state. However, the map doesn’t show these numbers relative to the prior decade or two. The numbers in every state are in decline.
Here are the numbers for Iowa, comparing the 2010 census to the 2020 census:
This information is very useful. (Forgive me, I’m a bit of a data geek) Out of 99 counties, 95 have shown a decline in self-described religious adherents. Some of these changes are drastic, especially in the traditionally religious northwest portion of the state. In the county where I live, Washington County, the percentage of religious adherents has fallen by 16%. That explains why some church buildings are empty in my town.
Put in terms of religious attendance, we find that Iowa is now one of the least religious states in the region compared to the states around us. Just consider church attendance. Berge provides this data about church attendance in Iowa and adjoining states. How about that, Iowa, a ruby red state, is even less religious than that bright blue state, Illinois.
If Iowa is less religious than ten years ago, and less religious than some of the states around us, how come we are becoming a religious theocratic state, ruled by clerics and activists on the shrinking religious right? Something doesn’t add up here.
What does all this mean? There are several interpretations that an objective observer can make from these data. Perhaps the biggest question one might ask in light of these numbers is why are evangelicals so well represented politically when in most places, they are a minority? Why has Iowa been described as a “religious” state, when in fact, the data show that religion is declining in terms of adherents in the state? And, the big question is, why are people in Iowa, and across the nation, leaving religion behind?
I’ll deal with that last question in a second post next week. Today, let’s explore how we got here…on the verge of a Christian Theocratic government.
The Oversized Influence of Evangelicals in Iowa
The first question we can attempt to answer is why evangelicals in Iowa (and by extension throughout the country), though a small percentage of the population, have an oversized influence politically.
I witnessed firsthand the evangelical take-over of the Iowa Republican party in the 1980s. It was not a Sunday School picnic. It was fundamentally a process of motivating your tribe, getting them to vote, and bullying those who got in your way.
By the time the 1988 Republican caucuses came around, if you weren’t an evangelical or catered to that group you would not finish well in the Iowa Caucuses. It wasn’t George Bush Sr. who won although he would go on to win the nomination. The televangelist Pat Robertson came out second, just behind Bob Dole. 1988 was the year evangelicals became the power brokers and gatekeepers calling the shots.
The oversized influence of evangelicals since 1988 has grown despite a declining demographic. Evangelicals are a smaller percentage of Iowa’s population today than in 1988 but control much of the state apparatus of government. How did they do it?
Well, evangelicals have a weekly religious-political meeting called Sunday worship in which religious right, Christian Nationalist pastors can preach to their flocks about the Biblical mandate to vote for Republicans, hand out “non-partisan” voter guides, and wave American flags as they sing Jesus Loves Me. The imagery is unmistakable.
Then as parishioners leave the church there are political campaign flyers on their windshields in the parking lot for the latest evangelical-aligned candidates. Bible study groups become built-in, ready-to-go campaign volunteers to knock on doors, hand out flyers, and become caucus workers, Amen!
Then of course there is money. Evangelicals have lots of it. And they are organized by so-called nonprofit groups like the Iowa Christian Alliance and the Family Leader. Throw in the Florida-based, “Moms for Liberty” and their coffers and there is an almost bottomless pit of money going out to support candidates, influence legislation, and oppose State Supreme Court Judges who support a woman’s right to choose or marriage equality. You end up with massive influence from a small cadre of evangelical groups.
The result is that Iowa is now virtually a Christian theocracy. The Governor dares not oppose the right wing-evangelical agenda if she desires to remain the Governor. And other Republicans who might have more common sense than to vote to ban books and the teaching of black history, are bullied into submission by the evangelical political machine.
Iowa is a microcosm of what is happening nationally. In some states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama, you have enough evangelicals proportionally for them to win elections and impose some of the same theocratic rules on their states as Iowa.
But understand…it doesn’t take a majority for these folks to pull the reigns of power. It takes what we’ve seen in Iowa: motivated people who have money and organizations willing to support their efforts.
Remember, 58% of Iowans seldom or never attend a religious service. This number is growing every year. In other words, the number of Iowans affiliated with religious groups is steadily declining. Yet, the majority of the state is now being governed by a religious ideology only shared by, at the most, 25% to 30% of the state.
Why Have White Evangelicals Become a Right-Wing Political Force?
Here is a short history lesson on how we got to where we are today. It revolves around two major evangelical drivers: racial resentment and anti-feminism.
Forget the gospel, winning souls, teaching moral living, and helping the less fortunate. Evangelicals are not motivated by those “woke” ideals.
Racial Resentment
Evangelicals were jolted into political awareness and action in the middle of the 20th century when the Brown v. Board of Education decision came down in 1954. In turn, several white evangelical communities, particularly in the South, opened private schools to oppose school desegregation, framing their hostility to Brown as an expression of religious freedom rather than a defense of racial segregation. It is a ploy they are still using today.
Evangelicals were supporters of segregation and racial hierarchy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Brown lit a match to the resentment of evangelicals for messing with “God’s design.”
Then President Johnson’s Great Society programs and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, further altered the terrain of America’s legalized racial hierarchy creating more resentment at the altering of social caste. White evangelicals were now feeling their grip on social, cultural, and political power sliding away.
The federal government, white evangelical leaders such as Reverend Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich argued, was not only invading local autonomy but was turning its back against whites and favoring African Americans and Latinos. The world, it seemed, was turning upside down. Presidents Nixon and especially Reagan tapped into the energy of the resentment and rode it to electoral landslide victories.
Anti-Feminism
Racial resentment wasn’t the only factor at work. White evangelicals have also historically been opposed to rights for women. Issues about gender roles and the sexual behavior of women have been potent mobilizing forces for a long time, for Catholics as well as evangelicals, going back to the birth control movement and other controversies in the first half of the twentieth century.
Additionally, opposition to feminism has been a force for decades in evangelical circles, culminating in the real success of organizations such as the Concerned Women for America, the Moral Majority, and the Christian Coalition with the election of Ronald Reagan and killing the Equal Rights Amendment.
Today it is the Pro-life Movement and Moms for Liberty at the vanguard of opposition to rights for women. Having little success under Reagan and both Bush Presidents, evangelicals finally found their champion in an unlikely candidate: Donald Trump. By 2016, personal character and moral behavior were no longer a litmus test for evangelical support. Ending abortion was the only criterion.
Opposition to abortion which has led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has now been exposed for what its motivation is…controlling women’s sexual behavior. By stripping 50% of the population of the most fundamental freedom one has, bodily autonomy, the control of the decisions about abortion, and women’s healthcare in general, fall into the hands of white Christian males. That is right where white Christian evangelicals believe it should be.
Racial Resentment and Anti-Feminism Drive the Republican Party
It is no surprise then, when you consider the historic position of evangelicals toward racial issues and feminism that states like Iowa will attack those cultural issues by banning books they feel threaten their ideology, banning gender-affirming care for teens, and banning teaching what they call “critical race theory” which means black history.
Gender and race are central and core elements of the evangelical drive to power. When white Christian Nationalists shout “Make America Great Again” they are referring to a time when women were subordinate and white Christians were in charge culturally and politically. That is what evangelicals and the Christian Nationalists want to take us back to.
It is no surprise that the Republican Party, now dominated by right-wing evangelicals, has little interest in economic issues or even foreign affairs. There is no real platform for the Republican Party. The platform, what there is of one, is about cultural-social issues viewed through the prism of religious-theological ideology. It is about restoring racial hierarchy and suppressing female leadership and rights. Those are the issues that get evangelicals out to vote.
Those issues have galvanized and motivated evangelicals for decades, and they are now in a position to impose their vision of a “godly society” on the whole, despite being well less than a majority. They have mastered the art of minority rule through manipulation, misinformation, organization, crass hypocrisy, and rejection of biblical ethics, and money.
But these tactics will be, in the end, the undoing of this movement. The supposed “success” of the white Christian Nationalist movement has within it the seeds of its own destruction. That is where we’ll go in the next post. We’ll try and answer the question, why are Iowans and Americans everywhere, leaving religion behind?