Phoenix
12-20-2006, 06:30 PM
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=12243
In a Year Dominated by Elections, Americans Voted Against the Status Quo
by Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service
Elections, the late columnist Franklin P. Adams once said, "are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody."
And whatever Americans were voting for in 2006, it seems clear that what they were voting against was the status quo. Episcopalians, for one, decided to give a woman a shot and elected their first female leader, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. U.S. Muslims turned to Ingrid Mattson as the first woman to lead the Islamic Society of North America. Southern Baptists, dissatisfied with the old guard, chose a relative unknown, Frank Page, as their dark-horse choice to lead the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
"I'm not in the `Who's Who' of Baptists," Page said earlier this month. "I'm in the `Who's He?' of Baptists."
In church basements, school gymnasiums and fire stations across the country, Americans in November registered their frustration at the voting booth and gave control of Capitol Hill to the Democrats, making
2006 a year when votes -- sacred and secular -- became the year's biggest religion news story.
After years of vowing to "get religion," Democrats saw modest gains among religiously minded voters after a concerted effort to cast their policies through a moral lens. The party gained ground among Catholics, weekly worship attenders and those who rarely or never attend worship services.
John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, who crunched the numbers, said white evangelicals remained the bedrock of the Republican base, but Democrats wooed enough secular or less religious voters to put them in the majority.
"What that suggests is that the religion gap, or `God gap,' works both ways," Green said. People who attend worship most regularly "can help Republicans, but it (the gap) can also help Democrats by getting a higher vote among the less religious."
With the 2008 run for the White House already heating up, Green said the midterm elections show that religious voters are up for grabs.
"There are a lot of religious votes to be had by both Democrats and Republicans, or whichever party can figure out how to appeal to them,"
Green said. "Religious groups can move around. They do have tendencies, but they can't be taken for granted."
In a Year Dominated by Elections, Americans Voted Against the Status Quo
by Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service
Elections, the late columnist Franklin P. Adams once said, "are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody."
And whatever Americans were voting for in 2006, it seems clear that what they were voting against was the status quo. Episcopalians, for one, decided to give a woman a shot and elected their first female leader, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. U.S. Muslims turned to Ingrid Mattson as the first woman to lead the Islamic Society of North America. Southern Baptists, dissatisfied with the old guard, chose a relative unknown, Frank Page, as their dark-horse choice to lead the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
"I'm not in the `Who's Who' of Baptists," Page said earlier this month. "I'm in the `Who's He?' of Baptists."
In church basements, school gymnasiums and fire stations across the country, Americans in November registered their frustration at the voting booth and gave control of Capitol Hill to the Democrats, making
2006 a year when votes -- sacred and secular -- became the year's biggest religion news story.
After years of vowing to "get religion," Democrats saw modest gains among religiously minded voters after a concerted effort to cast their policies through a moral lens. The party gained ground among Catholics, weekly worship attenders and those who rarely or never attend worship services.
John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, who crunched the numbers, said white evangelicals remained the bedrock of the Republican base, but Democrats wooed enough secular or less religious voters to put them in the majority.
"What that suggests is that the religion gap, or `God gap,' works both ways," Green said. People who attend worship most regularly "can help Republicans, but it (the gap) can also help Democrats by getting a higher vote among the less religious."
With the 2008 run for the White House already heating up, Green said the midterm elections show that religious voters are up for grabs.
"There are a lot of religious votes to be had by both Democrats and Republicans, or whichever party can figure out how to appeal to them,"
Green said. "Religious groups can move around. They do have tendencies, but they can't be taken for granted."