Reaction to christian=republican?? What do you guys think?

In response to the postings in this thread, I definitely think that a very direct link can be seen between politics and religion, and research shows that on average the more Christian an individual, the more likely they are to vote Republican. I made my movie for this class on the overlap between the two subjects, and after doing a lot of research it was interesting to see how the factors played out. On this issue, studies are frequently undertaken by the PEW research group, and they represent a good example of the representation of the voting preferences across America. The studies are undertaken on a wide and diverse cross section of the population, and then the results are sorted before being detailed and published on their website, at www.pewresearch.org/

These studies have been used for many years now, and therefore we have been able to see the changes in voter preferences that have transitioned over time. It is obvious to see from the results that Christians have primarily voted republican in the past, and I think this can be attributed to the more conservative policies that they classically promote. Although the United States has a constitutional barrier which actually separates church and state, the vast majority of Americans want their leaders to be religious, as a poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 72% agreed with the statement "The president should have strong religious beliefs." I found this statistic very interesting when I came across it, because I was surprised that religion was such a major issue for so many Americans, and that it played a role in their voting decisions. When thinking about this, I was then also surprised that the Democrats went on to win this most recent election so convincingly, as I would think that religious citizens would generally vote for the more republican centered policy ideas that ban gay marriage and prevent abortion from occurring.

However, even though Obama did win this election so easily, the stats still show how the more religious tend to vote Republican, and although Barack Obama received equal or higher levels of support amongst nearly every religious group compared with the 2004, the research also shows how “a sizeable gap persists between those who attend religious services regularly and those who attend less often.” From this I would say that there is a direct link between those who attend church more being the ones who are more likely to vote Republican, and as a result this election result may also shows a correlation to a decreasing amount of church goers in recent periods?? I’m not sure how religious affiliations are changing throughout the nation as a whole at the moment, but does anyone have any more information on this, or other thoughts on the issue??

In general, I do think that if we look at the voting demographic of the nation as a whole it is easy to see the fact that religious individuals tend to vote Republican. For example the supposedly more religious ‘bible belt’ states in the US always seem to be the ones which are guaranteed to be the Red states. This must surely be because citizens here prefer the slightly more conservative based ideals of the Republican party, and as they are stereotypically the more sheltered Americans, they are also the ones who believe in the more conservative centered policies. I therefore see that Christians do vote republican, and although I see this divide starting to be broken down as the nation becomes more open and diverse, I would be interested to hear what people think may happen in the future, and whether there is anyone out there who would argue religion plays no role at all in US politics??