Half of New Hampshire has Abandoned the Christian Ship

 


Add together those who poll atheist, agnostic and None in New Hampshire and one gets the most secular state in the U.S. Surrounding states in New England seem to be a little under 40%. The average age of believers is higher than the general population so one could conclude the secular trend will creep higher in coming years. California falls roughly into this category but the New England states poll more secular. The population of New Hampshire is only 1.3 million. 

The nearby states in New England have secular populations a bit smaller than New Hampshire. It seems like the liberal Christianity and secular populations are joining together. That makes is fun to speculate on how this will affect politics in that region and across the country. Beginning in the early 1990's New Hampshire swung from Republican to Democrat in Presidential elections. Nearby states have done the same. 

A majority which polls non Christian would be a milestone in polling. Of course, the importance of religion is not only how people respond to simple questions such as, "Are you a Christian" but how the vote and where they donate money. If there were a way to objectively determine who is and is not a practicing Christian we would have a more clear picture of the faith's importance. 

Complicating the picture of religion in U.S. life is the concept of "cultural Christian." Rural blue collar voters without college degrees poll regularly Christian but do not attend church nor have much interest in church life. They have a history of voting for Trump. Some states in the Midwest have been pushed into the Republican side by these voters. It will be interesting to see polling if Democrats win rural states that have been majority Republican. Will these voters, now having cast votes for a Democrat, poll differently to the question, "Are you a Christian?" Politics is full of the unexpected.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Will We Ever Know How Accurate Current Bibles Are

Image
When I discuss the many times the Bible was copied and recopied by scribes over a couple of thousand years, the reply is often, "I have a book by this (or that) expert who says the Bible is 99% accurate to its original writers." The 99% claim appears in various places defending the Bible. There is one thing we know absolutely: There is no surviving original copy of the Bible. Even the oldest surviving material is a generation or two after the time some of the Bible was written. This means no one can claim he has, or ever will, compare the current Bible to the original Bible and find the two are 99% the same. We cannot claim either that it is not 99% accurate. For the sake of discussion, however, assume the current Bible is 99% accurate. That would mean the one word out of every 100 was inaccurate. It could still mean an important misreading of the original text. An example is the passage referring to punishment for a man who kills a fetus. In the oldest know materia...
Read more

Talarico Looks Like an Obama II

Image
We all have our ideas about what is good or smart politics. I'm no different. Those who read this blog have to hear mine. My thinking is millions of voters will go to the polls in the next two elections for the specific purpose of voting against Trump. Most of these voters, however, will not admit that is why or how they are voting. They will have convinced themselves they are voting for some reason more idealistic and loftier. An example of what they might say to themselves is, "I'm voting for a better country." The job of Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and whomever is to give those voters something that ends the sentence, "I'm voting for someone other than a Republican because..."  The sentence will not end in "...I hate Trump." It will be something else. That is what Texas Govitorial Candidate Talarico is doing so well.   Talarico is telling Texans their state is too big and too important to yield to the narrow views of the far right. T...
Read more

Time to Forget the Christian Nation Thing

Image
While women are forbidden from being priests/preachers in some branches of Christianity thank goodness they are not forbidden from writing and lecturing about Christianity. A great article about the "Christian nation" notion shows us the U.S. is not a Christian nation and hopefully never will be. It is written by a woman with nerve and was published on a very Christian site, Christian Post.  Among the pilgrims were a few that wanted to establish a utopian Christian society. Some of their brethren stayed behind in Europe hoping the push aside worldly forces there and bring sinners to God. Today, whether it is the anti abortion, anti gay/trans, anti immigration or the put prayer back in schools branch there are those who want a version of what some pilgrims wanted, a utopian Christian society. The pilgrims were disappointed. Today's Christian utopians will be also. Here is why. The children of pilgrims did not believe the same things as their parents. Parents were roundly d...
Read more