Study Finds Religious Polarization in U.S. Voters — Duh!

Listen to this flash from Reuters via the Times:

Voters in last year’s presidential election showed a new polarization within some religious faiths, a fact that may make it all the harder for Democrats to recapture the White House, according to a report released on Thursday.

President Bush “depended heavily on traditionalist Christians, while (Democratic opponent John) Kerry had a more diverse coalition characterized by minority faiths, the unaffiliated and modernist (more liberal) Christians,” said the report.

Now haven’t we been saying this all along? And haven’t liberals been denying it? That is, haven’t they been denying that the Republicans have a corner on the Christian market?

Of course there are Christians in the Democratic party and some of them are even political liberals, though the liberal worldview is hard to reconcile with Christianity. But I don’t want to get into that right now. I want to focus on the second paragraph quoted above from the Times article.

If we construct a flow chart based, like we used to do in high school debate, based on the paragraph we’d put Bush supporters at the top of one column and Kerry supporters at the top of the other one. In the Bush column would be Christians, while the Kerry column would include members of other faiths, the non-religious and liberal Christians. If you cut to the chase, what you will find is that liberal Christians may not be Christians at all — if by Christian you mean someone who holds to at least a good part of the fundamental tenets of the faith. Look at people like Bishop Shelby Spong who takes issue with a great deal of the statements attributed to Christ.

Many of these types deny the historicity of the resurrection. Most Christians understand that if there was no resurrection in real history, there is no Christianity. If Christ did not slay physical death, there is no hope, there is no faith for Christians at all. And while there are legitimate differences among Christians — many, many of them in fact — if one denies the bodily resurrection of Christ, or if one denies His deity, I am comfortable saying that he is not a Christian. And a great many of those so-called liberal Christians, while calling themselves Christians, do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and do not believe in His deity. All of which is to say that on the Kerry column you have even fewer real Christians — than might already appear.

And when it comes to values issues in this country, we are really talking about Judeo-Christian values. Those are the values that shaped this country and still guide the majority. No matter how much Democrats protest, no matter how many semantic machinations they engage in, they will not be able to alter the fact that their many in their core constituency do not subscribe to Judeo-Christian values. So they can dress themselves up like Christians, they can call health care and other things “values,” but that won’t change the fact that they’re still out of step with the majority on traditional values issues. And it would be even more pronounced — by far — if the nation hadn’t been brainwashed by the education establishment and the Old Media for the past generation and more.

Disclaimer: I am not saying that liberals can’t be Christians. I know a number of liberals who are. But as I’ve said before, I think they are confused either on their theology or their politics, because the worldviews, as I said, just don’t jibe.