The Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes on American Politics

On February 4, 2016, I attended a cultural talk presented at Elon where Robert P. Jones, founder and CEO of Public Religion Research Institute, as well as an author, spoke on the impact of religious and cultural changes on American politics.The first part of his statistical findings focused primarily on the shifting American religious affiliations. From 1974 to 2016, the percentage of Protestants decreased from 63 to 46 percent. Adding on to this he explained that most of the decline of these Protestants are whites, whereas Hispanics are growing to be more Protestant, likely because of immigration. Catholics also declined by five percent within the same time period, and the unaffiliated rose sixteen percent, the highest number it has ever been. The second part that Jones discussed was the Economic anxiety and pessimism in Americans. In 2015, his data showed that 72 percent of Americans still believed the country was in a recession. Along with this, there is a widespread agreement that the government is looking out for the wealthy. When people that were surveyed were asked if they still believed the American dream was still a reality, 42 percent said it still holds true, and 48 percent thought it used to but does not anymore. Part three of the talk dealt with cultural anxieties. From 2012 to 2016, there has been an increase on whether or not it bothers Americans when an immigrant does not speak English. Today, 48 percent say it bothers them. Another fact Jones touched on was that there has been an increase in whether Islams are at odds with America's’ own values. Lastly, Jones tied religion into the presidential elections. According to his statistics, in 2012, 79 percent of votes to Mitt Romney were white evangelicals, and 95 percent who voted for Barack Obama were black protestants.

Overall, I was glad I attended the talk because I have always been ignorant to the correlation between religion and politics, and this helped me become more aware. This talk tied into out class because it talked about the importance that religion is having on out time period, just as it did thousands of years ago. Also, the differing of cultures today, such as Americans being bothered by an immigrant speaking another language, or Islams having different values, relates to the spread of Hellenism. Also we see that there was a gymnasium which lead to the undoing of circumcision which was sacred for the Jews, but Greeks did not like body imperfections. Differing cultures affected this time period, as well as today.