This Week in God
By Steve Benen
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Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:57 AM EDT

Associated Press

The religious left in action.

First up from the God Machine this week is the emergence of a
religio-political force that's long been rumored, but has often
struggled to materialize: a "religious left" that can serve as a
credible counter-force to the "religious right."

This week, the religion, policy and politics project at Brookings
Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute published a study
with some unexpected results. The survey, co-authored by E.J. Dionne,
William Galston, and PRRI leaders, document an important trend:
religious social conservatives represent about 28% of the population,
but they're slowly being eclipsed by a younger, diverse group of
religious progressives.

Religious progressives are significantly younger and more diverse
than their conservative counterparts. The mean age of the religious
progressive population is 44 -- just under the mean age in the general
population of 47 -- while the mean age of religious conservatives is 53.
Twenty-three percent of Millennials (ages 18-33) are religious
progressives, while 17 percent are religious conservatives.

It's a similar demographic issue that's facing the Republican Party:
among Americans 66 and older, 47% self-identify as religious
conservatives and only 12% consider themselves religious progressives.
Among Americans 33 and younger, religious conservatives not only trail
religious progressives, the right also finds itself outnumbered by
secularists.

Complicating matters, religious progressives are not only gaining a
generational advantage, they're also rejecting the basic foundation of
conservatives' religio-political activism: "Nearly 8-in-10 (79 percent)
religious progressives say that being a religious person is mostly about
doing the right thing, compared to 16 percent who say it is about
holding the right beliefs."

We won't see the cultural impact of these changes overnight, but the
report points to a problem conservatives will struggle to overcome: a
future in which a shrinking percentage is moved by the religious right
movement's social agenda and a growing percentage embraces progressive
goals for religious reasons. For too long, the political world
considered "religious issues" and "conservative issues" as synonymous,
and fairly soon, that will no longer apply.

Jack Jenkins added, "Religion has long been co-opted by religious
conservatives as a vehicle for political gain, but this study hints that
the future of faith-based political advocacy could rest with the
left-leaning faithful."

http://tinyurl.com/lew92nb
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Well, well, well. Aging and demographics are killing off the religious
right. That's a good thing, as is the finding that religious
progressives say being a religious person should be about doing the
right thing, not about holding the "right beliefs."

That might translate into doing the right thing by newborn babies,
instead of caring about them only as fetuses, eh?