Evangelical Fear Loss of Children–“Fertility Gap” May Not Be Problem For Liberals

The New York Times provides some information which is relevant to articles in Foreign Policy and The Wall Street Journal on tlhe fertility gap between liberals and conservatives which I previously discussed. The argument previously discussed is that conservatives tend to have more children, both in the United States and internationally, and this will result in greater conservatives and a move towards the right in the future. I did not consider this a serious threat as this contradicts the overall movement of humanity. Conservativism is based upon attempting to turn back the clock on progress, ignore scientific progress, and to deny the advances made over the last couple of centuries.

As we have seen in recent elections, conservatives only prosper when they obfuscate their true positions and convince others to believe their misrepresentations of the views of their opponents. Their support is limited to those who can be conned into believing that the newsmedia has a liberal bias, and only the pseudo-news of partisan right wing extremists can be believed.

This is not a formula for long term success in an era where information is so easily available regardless of the degree to which the corporate owned media acts as lapdogs for the government.

The overall trend in human development is towards freedom over tyranny and reason over superstition. The New York Times provides an example of how having more children does not automatically translate for more supporters of the policies of the authoritarian right. They report that, “Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.” Evangelicals are worried about these trends:

“I’m looking at the data,” said Ron Luce, who organized the meetings and founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, “and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we’re losing.”

The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing 60 denominations and dozens of ministries, passed a resolution this year deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.”

The children of the evangelicals (like some of the current evangelicals) will be less likely to vote for conservative politicians. A “post-Christian America” will be far less likely to support the authoritarian policies of the Republican Party.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    Democrafty says:

    I had the same reaction to this article – the current political climate isn’t sustainable. When children born to conservatives reach voting age, everything will be different.

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