Walking To Church

I want to make one little addition to my post about hypocrisy in the values laden swath of Republican Red. I think that it's important to point out that this notion of hyperactive church attendance in the US is largely a crock.

The Gallup organization has pegged regular weekly church attendance at around 40% of the population for decades. This is a self-reported statistic, usually arrived at by asking the question "have you attended church in the last seven days" or something like it. It was largely unremarked upon until the 90's when some sociologists decided to follow up. What they found is that people vastly "overreport" their church attendance.

This was tested in a number of ways, through actual headcounts followed up by telephone polls to checking a long term study of driving habits (PDF) that showed that people somehow "neglected" to mention driving back and forth to church every week but reported that they attended when asked directly.Religious writers have looked at these numbers and found them to be overstated, as well.

I don't write this to indict the fine churchgoing people in this country who obviously number in the tens of millions. But, before the Democrats go off half cocked and move too far in the direction of the social conservatives, they need to insure that they are dealing with reality and not Republican hype.

I have lived in states both blue and red and towns both small and large. And it is certainly true that people tend to talk about religion more openly in the smaller, redder areas. But, this is likely because they are more homogenous than big cities where there is a lot more religious diversity and therefore a bigger chance of getting into an argument or having an uncomfortable social interaction. It's not surprising that people in rural America are more likely to lie about their church attendance because there is more social pressure to conform to what is perceived to be required as an upstanding citizen. (It's also possible that people in big cities lie to pollsters about their opinions about contentious issues because of the social pressure to be tolerant in places where there is a lot of diversity.) The point is that if people are actually lying about their religious fervor to pollsters there is every liklihood that acceding to a religiously based political agenda is counterproductive. For reasons outlined in my previous posts of these past couple of weeks, I don't believe it will work in any case. It isn't about values with "values" voters.

As I look at the situation as it's likely to play out over the next four years, I think that with the theocratic, authoritarian Right in ascendance, an old fashioned freedom cry of "Mind Your Own Business" might have some salience in the libertarian southwest and mountain states. Everything from the Patriot Act atrocities to corporations selling your personal information to compelling you to adhere to specific religious teachings goes against the western grain. The key to this would be to continuously highlight the corporate and extremist religious right's stranglehold on a Republican Party that seems to believe that the president is the public's boss instead of its servant. This does not sit well with the individualistic strain of the west. Combine it with a critique of their trashing of the environment without consideration of local concerns and their overwhelming fiscal irresponsibility and you've got the beginning of a helluva wedge. (This oft cited article about the Montana governor's race is instructive. This blog post from Left In The West is even more so.)

Here's the hook. Democrats believe in freedom. The Republicans believe in forced conformity and injecting themselves into every aspect of their citizens' lives. Turn their own libertarian message against them. Clearly, they were full of shit about everything but the tax cuts. If there are any libertarian types out there who value their personal freedom as much as their money (and I think there are more than few) our message might just speak to them. Nobody likes the IRS, but unelected preachers and businessmen using the power of the state to tell you how to live is against all first principles of what it means to be a free American.

I am a left libertarian by philosophy and temperament. I'm big on civil liberties and the Bill Of Rights. I don't think that reasonable taxation comes anywhere close to being as coercive to the individual as unregulated business, theocratic political factions or an unfettered police state. I think there are some people in the current Republican coalition who might hear that message and I think they are far more likely to be open to it than the (largely hypocritical) "values" voters who are fighting a tribal war for dominance. The west isn't about dominance or submission. It's about live and let live. They consider themselves true independents. We can do business with these people.