The Dunnoist Caucus

It seems that Democrats have bought into the new conventional wisdom that candidates must espouse a thoroughgoing religiosity in order to be competitive in national elections. Is this a sign that finally America's flirtation with secularism has given up the ghost? Or is it more like a sell signal, similar to the stock market where the surest sign that a bull market has topped is when your grandma is taking out her savings to buy stock? Could the Democrats getting religion foreshadow not the triumph of shirtsleeve religiosity in politics but the topping out and gradual decline of the Religious Right's influence on American politics?

Exhibit A for the prosecution is the Pew Research Center's recently released survey "Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2007
POLITICAL LANDSCAPE MORE FAVORABLE TO DEMOCRATS" which shows a declining trend for religious belief among younger age cohorts:

The survey also finds that the number of Americans who say they are atheist or agnostic, or choose not to identify with a religious tradition has increased modestly over the past two decades. In Pew surveys since the beginning of 2006, 12% have identified themselves as secular or unaffiliated with a religious tradition. That compares with 8% in the Pew values survey in 1987. This change appears to be generational in nature, with new cohorts coming of age with lower levels of commitment to a religious tradition. Among respondents born before the baby boom (that is, prior to 1946), only about 5% are secular or unaffiliated. But the number is more than double that (11%) among the Baby Boomers. The most secular Americans are those 30 and younger – those born after 1976 and sometimes called “Generation Y” – 19% of whom do not identify with a religious tradition.

Pew surveys taken over the past 20 years show that the size of the secular group has remained constant over time within each age cohort. In other words, the number of seculars within each generational group is about the same in 2007 as it was 10 or 20 years before. Thus it appears that people have not become less secular as they have aged. For example, 14% of members of “Generation X” (born 1965-1976) did not identify with a religious tradition in 1997, about the same as in 2007.

Whether younger generational cohorts will continue to be less religious than the previous ones is not known, but the data suggest there has been a strong, undeniable trend beginning with the Baby Boomers. And as the older cohort dies out the percentage of non-religious in the population will continue to grow.

Is the Democrat party the natural home for the non-religious? For now at least, but it doesn't have to remain so. Non-religious people, like any minority group, tends to vote for the party it perceives as less hostile to them. When white southern opponents to the Civil Rights movement bolted the Democrat party for the Republican, African Americans became a core voting block for Democrats. Jews have long seen the Democrat party as their natural home due to the old school anti-semitism of the traditional country club Republicans. Modern day Republicans under the influence of the Religious Right have made no secret of their hostility towards secular people. With a growing demographic of highly educated non-religious voters they can no longer afford to do so.