The Great Sort

A fairly dramatic change in our religious culture has occurred over the last thirty years or so.  It involves where people go to church, and what kind of denomination they choose.

The match between one's religious preferences and one's particular politics used to be less clear than it is now, particularly among protestant churches.  Each church might have a healthy mix of Democratic, Republican and Independent voters.  Even among evangelicals, although clearly socially conservative, it wasn't an entire predictor of how they would vote.

But that changed starting in the seventies and accelerating to the present.  People began to gravitate towards certain churches not just based on religious preferences but also political.  This seems to be true regardless about how much the congregation feels the preacher/religious leader was directly expressing political opinions. So now, even though Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were all Southern Baptists, today you would be hard pressed to find a Southern Baptist congregation that had all but the tiniest smattering of Democrats.  And self-confessed liberals in these congregations are as rare as unicorns or Bigfoot.

The effect of this in Pierce County has been devastating.  The political loyalties of the entire county has been heavily swayed by the power of some of the local mega-churches preaching conservative politics from the pulpit.  One church contemplated whether it was possible for Democrats to even be Christians.  That church has run or promoted specific candidates.  Just in the time I have been here, Pierce County has gone from a county that was about 45% Democrat to something around 15% or less.  It is now very unpleasant for that handful to speak openly about what they think.

UPDATE:  As of the 2014 election, the Great Sort is continuing.  The average Democratic vote in Pierce County was around 13%.  My son, Benjamin, had some problems with the 2012 election, in that his political values were mocked and scorned, and he even received physical threats.  I did not hear that in the 2014 election.  He is slightly older, and that may have made him use more discretion in how he expressed himself, and his peers are probably more mature as well.  The school was still overwhelmingly Christian right, and there is much denominationally driven open prayer, legal or not.  But he is finding his own niche.  And it's not that Benjamin is unchurched.  He goes to church as much or more than most of his peers.

African American and Jewish churches have always had a political bent, mostly because of the centrality of social justice issues in their faith practice.  The energizing of the evangelical base is relatively new.  People who are moderate to liberal are either in mainline churches such as Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Episcopalian, United Methodist, or they are dropping out altogether, which is very sad.

If you are a church-going Christian, but of a liberal political and/or theological bent, as far as I know, outside of the African-American churches there are only two choices in this area -Blackshear Presbyterian and Grace Episcopal church. I don't think either one of these churches are majority liberal, but there are places you can go to and not feel under attack.

I go to Grace Episcopal and am very proud of it.  It is an open, tolerant church, and we have a wide variety of people from all walks of life going to it.  We have very conservative parishioners, and very liberal parishioners.  It's the only Episcopal church in the area, so if you get mad, you can't go to another Episcopal church - you just stop being an active Episcopalian.  I like being in a church where people are able to express a variety of opinions.  I'm not sure I would even like to go to a church where everybody agreed with everything I believed.  What kind of growth or learning would there be in that?

So our church defies The Great Sort.  I wish more churches would do the same.