There was some choice turns of phrase in this one Ryan. Electing someone without faith is far from someone "actively speaking against faith" and electing someone with faith is far from electing a "religious extremist". Sure, both of those kinds of people exist and certainly some groups of voters will believe they exist more than they do but I imagine most people accurately understand that the middle ground would be most likely.
I'm not sure I interpret your first question in the same way you do. What I see is that 42% of agnostics disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that they prefer that the President be a person of faith. But that doesn't mean they do not want the President to be a person of faith. (Or do you mean that they don't *expressly* want a person of faith in the White House, i.e., they don't mind either way?)
As a matter of fact, as an atheist and assuming I were American, I'm not sure how I would answer this question. I strongly disagree with the idea that I prefer the President to be a person of faith, but I think it's fine for them to be so, assuming (which is a big if) they view themselves as equally the President of all Americans, including the nonbelieving ones. (Americans are much more religious and ostentatiously Christian than people in my country, so the vast majority of potential presidents will openly be people of faith anyway.) So would "Neutral" be more likely to be understood as my actual position?
I haven't thanked you in a while, but--again--thank you for recording a version of this for us to listen to. Every time the AI voice reads Nones, it is as "Know-ness".
This is a good priors update for the thinking in the US electorate and public at large. It is important to remember that government representation is where the Christian Nationalism specter is raised; not in the hearts and minds of the electorate.
It's a good question to ask. I suspect that almost everyone read "Christian" into this, even with the statement "person of faith."
I'd be curious if age made any difference here. To me, as a Millennial evangelical, the insistence that a President identify as Christian regardless of demonstrating any further commitment to Christian belief or to the church, comes across as very Mainline Boomer (or older -- my WW2-gen grandparents thought this way more strongly than my parents). Not that it's even bad; on balance it's probably good, but it's so far off from my ways of thinking that I can't really relate to it.
It has something to do with a presupposition of cultural Christianity; that someone who doesn't at least pay lip service to Christianity is "other", and by this standard no major party Presidential candidate of recent history has really been "other" because all of them paid the lip service. It was against this cultural backdrop that liberal Christianity thrived, and it's interesting how many of our Presidents openly associated with liberal forms of Christianity, almost from the beginning of this republic but right through to Obama.
At least part of the difference, from what I can tell, is that something like Masterpiece Cakeshop was inconceivable in those days, and from where I'm sitting, there is no daylight between the more ostensibly pious Democrats and the more secular ones on issues of religious freedom like that. So what difference does the ostensible piety make?
There was some choice turns of phrase in this one Ryan. Electing someone without faith is far from someone "actively speaking against faith" and electing someone with faith is far from electing a "religious extremist". Sure, both of those kinds of people exist and certainly some groups of voters will believe they exist more than they do but I imagine most people accurately understand that the middle ground would be most likely.
Excellent stuff.
> For agnostics, nearly half were
> ambivalent, but nearly the same share
> (42%) did not want a person of faith in
> the White House.
I'm not sure I interpret your first question in the same way you do. What I see is that 42% of agnostics disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that they prefer that the President be a person of faith. But that doesn't mean they do not want the President to be a person of faith. (Or do you mean that they don't *expressly* want a person of faith in the White House, i.e., they don't mind either way?)
As a matter of fact, as an atheist and assuming I were American, I'm not sure how I would answer this question. I strongly disagree with the idea that I prefer the President to be a person of faith, but I think it's fine for them to be so, assuming (which is a big if) they view themselves as equally the President of all Americans, including the nonbelieving ones. (Americans are much more religious and ostentatiously Christian than people in my country, so the vast majority of potential presidents will openly be people of faith anyway.) So would "Neutral" be more likely to be understood as my actual position?
I haven't thanked you in a while, but--again--thank you for recording a version of this for us to listen to. Every time the AI voice reads Nones, it is as "Know-ness".
This is a good priors update for the thinking in the US electorate and public at large. It is important to remember that government representation is where the Christian Nationalism specter is raised; not in the hearts and minds of the electorate.
It's a good question to ask. I suspect that almost everyone read "Christian" into this, even with the statement "person of faith."
I'd be curious if age made any difference here. To me, as a Millennial evangelical, the insistence that a President identify as Christian regardless of demonstrating any further commitment to Christian belief or to the church, comes across as very Mainline Boomer (or older -- my WW2-gen grandparents thought this way more strongly than my parents). Not that it's even bad; on balance it's probably good, but it's so far off from my ways of thinking that I can't really relate to it.
It has something to do with a presupposition of cultural Christianity; that someone who doesn't at least pay lip service to Christianity is "other", and by this standard no major party Presidential candidate of recent history has really been "other" because all of them paid the lip service. It was against this cultural backdrop that liberal Christianity thrived, and it's interesting how many of our Presidents openly associated with liberal forms of Christianity, almost from the beginning of this republic but right through to Obama.
At least part of the difference, from what I can tell, is that something like Masterpiece Cakeshop was inconceivable in those days, and from where I'm sitting, there is no daylight between the more ostensibly pious Democrats and the more secular ones on issues of religious freedom like that. So what difference does the ostensible piety make?
Will we ever elect an atheist? Does anybody really truly believe that Trump really believes in a God other than himself?
I think that Hemant Mehta (the friendly atheist) has a long-standing theory that people will elect an atheist when they like the rest of the person.