Burning Bush: It appears that Bible thumpers, tongue speakers, snake handlers and full-immersionists are joining Wal-Mart shoppers in turning away from the president and the Republican Party. After reading Jon’s post, I checked my e-mail and, lo and behold, therein found a Pew Research Center poll analysis on the same topic. Following are highlights of the analysis:
White evangelical Protestants make up over a third of those who identify with the GOP and vote for its candidates. But they, like other voters, are feeling voter disillusionment with President Bush and the Republican Party, and their level of support has significantly diminished from where it was in 2002 and 2004.
From 1999 to 2004, the number of evangelicals identifying themselves as Republicans grew dramatically from 39 percent in 1999 to 47 percent in 2001, peaking at 49 percent in 2004 and 2005.
Signs of Evangelical Frustration
The number of evangelicals who have a favorable opinion of the GOP was 74 percent in the 2004 election. But it dropped to 54 percent last fall following Hurricane Katrina, before recovering to 63 percent earlier in 2006. By July of this year, however, it had declined to 54 percent.
There also has been a significant downturn in the number of evangelicals who believe the Republican Party “governs in an honest and ethical way.” In January 2006, a majority of evangelicals (55 percent) said that this phrase better described the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. In a poll conducted this month, however, just 42 percent of evangelicals still held this view, a drop of 13 percentage points.
Evangelicals also became less likely over the past year to say that the Republican Party was “religion friendly.” In a July 2006 poll, 49 percent of white evangelicals described the GOP as friendly to religion, a decline of 14 percent from one year earlier.
Evangelicals and the President
President Bush received a striking 78 percent of white evangelicals’ votes in 2004, up 10 percentage points from 2000 and by far his highest level of support from any demographic group. As he began his second term in office, the president had an approval rating of 72 percent among evangelicals, compared with 50 percent overall.
But evangelicals’ ratings of the president have declined as much since January 2005 as they have among the rest of the public. Following Hurricane Katrina, just 54 percent of evangelicals approved of Bush’s performance in office; his overall approval rating was 36 percent. Since then, the president’s ratings among evangelicals have fluctuated, rallying to 64 percent in December 2005 and slumping to 52 percent in July of this year. Today, Bush’s rating among evangelicals is 57 percent, compared with 37 percent overall.
So Will They Vote?
How will the changing opinions about the president and the party affect the midterms? In Pew’s most recent election survey, Sept. 21-Oct. 4, registered voters favored a Democratic candidate for the House over a Republican candidate by a margin of 51 percent to 38 percent, an eight-point drop from the level of support for Republican candidates on the eve of the 2002 congressional election.
Of all religious groups surveyed, white evangelicals are the most supportive of Republican candidates — 57 percent say they will vote Republican, 31 percent Democratic. But that is a significant decline from the 68 percent who favored Republicans in the 2002 congressional elections, and is lower than in a Pew poll last month when 64 percent of evangelicals said they intended to vote for the GOP. Support for Republicans is down an equivalent amount among nearly all religious groups, compared with 2002. Among white Catholics, 37 percent say they will vote Republican (compared with 49 percent in 2002), and the number of white mainline Protestants intending to vote Republican is down from 48 percent in 2002 to 42 percent now.
Despite discussion about the possibility that turnout among evangelicals might be depressed this year, Pew’s latest poll finds evangelicals no more or less enthusiastic about voting than other groups in the electorate, and they are no different from registered voters as a whole in their overall likelihood of voting.
Hey, but a couple more stunts like Condi and Laura’s, and that could change dramatically.
The Faithful Truth and Moral Beauty of the Amish (Quaint as Geneva Conventions?)
compared to: The ‘Religical’ Lust to Dominate Superpower Democracy
from: PULPIT NONFICTION FOR A CHANGE
Now what a haunting Reminder to America
that horse & buggy funeral procession;
the stricken grandfather in wounded humility
turning his cheek from the camera as if it
just struck
a glancing blow;
the Obeyed Demand of Forgiveness Finding its Way
out to the world’s shock and awe, to mean itself that much,
to Know that unshakably,
affirming their potable depth of Faith and defying
our polluted suspension of Belief
to flow that fresh, that clean,
that lofted through such tears,
a Somehow still-
-guttering
Birthday Candle of Christ in Humanity
~a Wish for His Mercy on Earth NOW
through gaping cracks of absolute innocent Grief…
heart-felt, crushed-open meltdown-light…
An Ageless Example
to the busy Fuss & Bustle of Modern “Faith”
there we have it, Folks–
From the Hopelessly-Quaint
“Horse & Buggy” Set!
Haha. Maybe in the End
The Joke’s
…on Us…
On Echochambered Megachurches
flocking to the Carnival Barker’s Ticket-Pitchcraft:
The Rapture Coaster!
[Must Vote REPUBLICAN to Ride Forever]
Full of a Lesson for the Lastbound “First”?
…what a bittersweet rebuke to evangelical rapturites
those garish Neo-Christian Rodeo Clowns,
those Moon-$hadowed Religitician$
of the Far Right: over-privileged, over-indulged
Sheep-Clothed wolves
howling on behalf of their
darkening Party, urging Thoughtless Legions
to Cast their Votes like Stones
Against the Poor:
Unquestioned
Moral Loss-Leaders (from Pro-”Life” to Pro-War-Pharisees)
pointy-elbowed partakers of upscale lifestyles, Needers of
luxury, overt consumers of ‘Creature Comforts’…
“First-Class Passengers” of Christian Faith:
that’s right–eager butlers for Powers That Be–
take an unflinching look
at these shepherds of Our National Soul–
you will not find a “Better Angel” among them.
Lift Rock & ROLL…
Oop$ee–
the multi-millionaire borne-again goonset
of Bushelzebubba Toadia
“endorsing” assasinations
& “blowin’ ‘em off the face of the Earth
in the name of the LORD”
[aka, “The Prince of Peace”…]
shall we call it ’science’ or is it more an art
telling the smell of $ulphur
from a PResidential Fart?
2
Those Whose Names–
having so
(Heartlessly, Thoughtlessly)
Befriended & Served the Interests
of the Powers that Be,
will never appear on a ‘no-fly’ list here–
may yet
Gnash & Wail at Hell’s Coiled Twist:
O YES–
Famous names, Familiar names:
Whitehouseholed names,
Church-goey ‘Trusted’ names like
Dobson,
Falwell,
Robertson
Might well indeed appear on the
Flight-to-HEAVEN’S
No-Fly list.
And as God is “No Respecter of Persons”
will it matter–at all– that a “PRayerful”
PResident
PRomptly “returned” their “call”?
The line is long indeed of the Last featuring themselves “First”
in Love with Christ…
Hard-Rightwing Left-Behindees?
They will be Surprised, BIGtime. But we shouldn’t be.
Doesn’t Scripture foretell the Thoughtlessly-Willing
Deception of the “Very Elect”?
They “Followed” as they were “Told”.
Ignoring Bitter Truth for Sweet Lies–
What could be simpler:
than to “know them by their fruits”.
Who Said That?
Think he Meant it?
Who has heart-felt eyes to see
at least might glimpse
the $cales of the Beast
“Between the Lines”:
The Lies, and the Father of Lies, stroking,
coveting, stoking our deepest fears
how the Serpent then $hines!
how he Rises, then again “disappears”
~the Moments of Deception far more Telling
and telling far more–than
Moments of Truth
~Proclaiming himself “Decider”
“Serving” the Prince of Peace
…as President of WAR…
An “American” who would be “King”…
–What Whitehouse in “Greener $ervice” to the “Root of all Evil”
than HIS?
3
The bittersweet burden of forgiveness
borne by horse & buggy
their upbrought intentions manifest, in bereavement quivering
but in mercy unshaken–
“quaint” as those Geneva Conventions.
THESE Christians have Kept the Faith: uncontaminated,
manifestly unmistaken.
Of course not in Horse & Buggy per se:
but in, and by, Heart and Soul, Follow their Way.
They were never tempted to take the Broad Self-Righteous Road
of Political Redstatechristianity;
I urge you
Brother and Sister in Christ: long yet sudden in coming
it is now High Time Indeed to Turn
Forever
from the Hard Right’s Misguiding Wrong,
against their barbarous, fear-mongering Absolutes:
Look to Those Untempted by Power & Pride;
Who Never Let Their Faith Be Taken “Hostage”
for the False Ransom of a False Ride…
…Know them by their Fruits–
Who So Quaint by Horse & Buggy
Stay the Truer Course, Unshaken:
Watch and Learn.
Watch and Learn Indeed.
-Rev. Hogtie Potus (Cowboy Noir)
http://www.kyndmusic.com/2006/10/09/the-truth-moral-beauty-of-the-amish/#more-826