I kid, but these polling results about attitudes towards COVID show how one of these demographic groups is not like the others:
Until we learn to say the phrase “White Christian supremacy”–as uncomfortable as that might be for some Christians (nominal or devout)–we will not understand a key feature of U.S. politics. How the ‘religious’ right was disappeared down the memory hole, even as they still play a huge role in U.S. politics, escapes me. But it happened!
I think the idea that the Christian Right was in decline didn’t appear in a vacuum, it was due to the collapse of the Bush administration and then the rapid change in public opinion on gay marriage. But yes, we spoke too soon.
The R’s use of churches as the basis for organizing mirrors the civil rights movement’s similar use of churches.
One other item: R’s are interested in stirring up dissent. They have zero principles about this since the New Deal was too popular to overcome otherwise. So Jerry Falwell was a fan of abortion until his political masters showed him it would be a wedge issue, then he opposed it. The dissent and subsequent sabotage are the point, not the morality, or principles of any stripe.
I knew a Presbyterian fairly high up in the church. He left (and started attending synagogue!) because the fundamentalist evangelicals were taking over. Fundamentalism–taking the (typically King James translation) Bible literally–is Bible-olatry, but principles don’t matter here. Political power is the point.
Meanwhile, a nearby Presbyterian church just paid $1.2 million to the Presbyterians for their facility so they could exit that protestant denomination and continue to exclude the gays. Because they’re icky, and a two-millennium old document–the Bible–says a few bad things about them, in spite of its thousands of admonitions to be compassionate even to the “least of these.”