A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Survey: Fewer Americans Believe in God, Atheism Driven by Leftist Political Convictions April 26, 2018

Ever since the “New Left” captured the leadership of the democrat party in the early 70s, both that party and its adherents have undergone a closely tied, two-element transformation – they have moved ever more radically to the Left, and they have become increasingly atheistic.  These movements are not unrelated.  Indeed, they are incredibly closely coupled – Leftist politics becomes a substitute religion for those who reject traditional morality informed by religious belief, especially Christian belief.  Or, as I have noted in the past, leftism is religion for immoral people.  That is to say, personal immorality, in the Christian sense, very often (if not invariably) both proceeds and informs those who develop and adhere to Leftist political beliefs.  There are exceptions, but they are increasingly rare.  Speaking across the broad spectrum of millions of people, my aphorism is much more true than not.

Of course, I have written at length on the subject numerous times in the past, so as not to bore you, some recent data  shows the increasing secularization/paganization of American society, and its tight correlation with the leftist political-social outlook (with the usual caveats that polls can be wrong, the way poll questions are answered have a huge impact on the results, as does the accuracy of the sampling, etc).  First, a new poll reveals that only 56% of Americans self-define as believing in the God of the Bible (Good Lord, Jordan Peterson could spend 50,000 words dissecting what “believe” and “God of the Bible” mean), but this disbelief is centered in one particular cultural political grouping – white democrats:

Solid majorities of black Democrats as well as Republicans of all races describe themselves as Bible-believers, but the numbers fall off the table for white Dems — so much so that the number of white Dems who don’t believe in God at all is slowly catching up to the share that counts themselves as Bible-believers. In fact, if you count the share that believes in some vague “higher power” or “spiritual force” as not belonging to a “faith” in any meaningful way, then fully two-thirds of white Democrats are post-religious. The share of white Dems that describe themselves as Bible-believers is so low that, even with a strong contingent of black Bible-believers, just 45 percent of Democrats overall say they believe in the God of the Bible. Effectively, the Democratic Party is post-Christian.

The supporting data for that paragraph is below:

But the overall survey purports to show that 19% of Americans overall are atheists, or fall into the yellow category –

Now, not to  undermine my own point, but this data does not make sense to me.  If 19% of Americans don’t have any belief in God or a higher power (are avowedly atheist), but only 5% of Republicans AND non-white democrats are atheists, how do we wind up with an overall population that is 19% atheist, when only 21% of even white democrats describe themselves that way?  That would imply there is an even higher percentage of atheist independents, which doesn’t make any sense, either.  This makes me wonder whether this survey was not severely skewed to include white democrats in its sampling – if Pew interviewed 80% white democrats for this survey the overall results would match the more detailed ones, but it would not be a valid representation of the nation overall.

That aside, the collapse of Christian belief among white liberals/leftists is amazing.  So is the divide between Republicans and democrats – goodness, white (native) Republicans are nearly 2 1/2 times more likely to believe in God than similar democrats.  This is very troubling for the future of this nation, and points to the increasing irreconcilable differences between vast swaths of this nation’s population. I would like to see the age breakdown on those white democrat believers – I would hazard they are far older than the general democrat population.  Which means liberal Christianity is dying breed – which our Church leaders should really take note of.  The future of the Church in this country is not they and their cohort – it is those they loathe and have sought to ostracize and ignore.

Back to the main point, another poll on a more generic question of “how religious are you” does provide further evidence of the correlation between leftism and atheism, as if we needed it after reading Solzhenitsyn and doing even the most rudimentary study of 20th century Russian and Chinese history:

This month, Gallup released the results of their annual poll on religious practice in America.

The most religious state? Mississippi, which has held the crown since 2008. According to the poll, 59% of Mississippi’s residents report being “Very religious,” meaning that “religion is important to them, and they attend religious services weekly or almost weekly.”

And the least religious state? It’s Vermont, where 59% of their residents report being “Not religious,” meaning “religion is not important to them, and they seldom or never attend services.”

Gallup also noted that only 16% of Vermont’s residents reported being “Very religious”—a figure that was six points lower than any other state.

If you look at the map of the poll’s results below, you’ll see that religious behavior tends to be a regional phenomenon. The most religious states in America are in the Southwest and Southeast—which is heavily Protestant—and the least religious states are clustered in New England and on the West Coast. After Vermont, the least religious states—in order—are Maine (55% “Not religious”), New Hampshire (51%), Massachusetts (49%), Oregon (48%), and Washington and Alaska (both 47%).

Some of the least religious states are also states that have, or had, a substantially higher number of Catholics than the national average.  Establishment Catholicism is dying as fast or faster than any major Church group aside from reform Judaism and a handful of “mainline” sects.  One wonders how many of these new atheists are former Catholics. Probably millions. And what role have the attempts to radically redefine the Church into some nebulous humanist construct by the neo-modernist Vatican II crowd played in that unprecedented falling away?

In spite of serious quibbles with the Pew poll’s methodology, the fact that a growing number of Americans describe themselves as atheists or non-believers is not in dispute.  From low single-digits forty years ago to repeated surveys that indicate 15-20% self-describe as atheists today, a huge swath of the nation has never held, or in most cases fallen away, from some kind of belief, almost always Christianity of one form or another.  Similarly, there is no doubt that an increasing number of Americans – and the number has soared in the last 20 years – embrace far left political views, largely as a result of thorough propagandizing in the schools and university.  Historically and worldwide, there has been an extremely strong correlation between atheistic belief, and leftist politics.  From the French Revolution through all the 19th century social upheavals through the communist empires of the 20th century and down to today, hedonism tends to presage leftism which leads to widespread atheism.  It is unbelievably sad to see the nation I grew up in becoming everything it stood against when I was a kid, but there it is.

Which is why I hate to say it, but an amicable, agreed upon divorce is about the best option I can see for this nation.  I don’t see how two such radically different belief sets, and ones which are growing apart at an accelerating rate!, can long coexist in the same nation.

What do you think, along that line?  Is it simply silly, or unthinkable, to prophecy the breakup of these United States?  Pending some kind of miraculous Catholic revival, is there any way to co-exist without increasing violence and disaffection from each side to the other?  If they regain the presidency, will the democrats ever give it up again? (and mind you, the endless furor over the supposedly “unprecedented” immorality and illegality of Trump would have been applied to ANY other Republican/non-member of the statist monoculture who won – just as they are now rehabilitating the once “worst ever Republican” Bush 43 into a “relatively good one.” Remember the protests?  Remember the assassination fantasies?  Remember all the loathing and jeering from Hollywood and the statist media?  And yet I heard Bill Maher over the weekend relate how leftists wouldn’t be freaking out to the degree they are if Trump were another Bush or a Romney.  That Trump somehow represents a “unique threat to American democracy.”  BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT BUSH!  Just like they called McCain and Romney racists.  Give me a break. The freakouts and attempted impeachments are just a means to the same end they are always after  -power).

But what happens if they succeed?  What if upon some travesty of justice they hound Trump from office?  How will 100 million Americans react?  As Jordan Peterson tries very gently but insistently to infer below – this will not end well, and they had better reconsider what they are doing before they do something that can’t be undone (language warning):