Americans who regularly attend church are significantly more likely to also be conservative, according to new data graphed by statistician Ryan Burge.
Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, Burge found that 59% of weekly churchgoers were either conservative or very conservative, compared to just 14% who were liberal or very liberal. Among those who never went to church, 21% were conservative, while 46% were liberal.
Burge wrote that the findings remained consistent when he broke the data down by race and Christian affiliation. He also tested Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus to see if the same principle applied—and while Jews seemed to follow the same patterns, there did not seem to be a connection between church attendance and liberalism among the other three religions.
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“For anyone born in the last forty years or so, the only conception that they have of religious activism is likely tied up with the Religious Right. Which, of course, was a conservative movement,” Burge wrote. “Maybe the idea that religion can push people toward left-leaning ideas is over for good. It’s hard to say, or maybe the pendulum will swing back in the other direction at some point in the future.”
He concluded:
From this data driven vantage point – there’s plenty of evidence that American religion is now inextricably linked to one political viewpoint. For good or for ill.
Burge’s complete analysis can be found online.
LifeNews Note: Hannah Hiester writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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