Before the election, there was much speculation about how evangelicals would feel about voting for a Mormon. Having contraception become a key issue also made predicting the religious vote hard.
But despite the Catholic church hierarchy pretty much declaring war on the Obama candidacy, exit polls show Catholics broke for Obama 50-48%, pretty much the same as the rest of the electorate.
Obama lost non-Catholic Christians (i.e. Protestants) by a hefty 15-point margin, 42-57. but this was more than compensated for by the rest of the pack: Nones (70-26), Jews (69-30), Others (74-23).
Evangelicals in the end don’t seem to have sat on their hands, and they voted for the Mormon candidate at Bushian levels, 78-21. Indeed, evangelicals voted for Romney at exactly the same rate as his own co–religionists. Imagine that.
As for the God Gap, despite earlier signs to the contrary, it again outstripped the Gender Gap. Those who said they attend worship weekly preferred Mitt Romney by 20 points, 59-39. Those who said they attend less frequently went for Obama by 25 points. That compares to a male preference for Romney of seven points and a female preference for Obama of 11.
So it looks like religious Protestants and evangelicals overcame their feeling that Mormonism is a cult.
I’m interested to see if Mormonism retains its “TROO KRISCHUN” status now they no longer need Romney.
@Zinc, I doubt it. I’m thinking they’ll blame their defeat on how Mormonism not being christian enough while Obama was consistant about his religion (desite all the doubts they spread).
Obviously the “cultist” was more preferable to them than the blak man. Very sad.
* black man, not blak man. Misspelling accidental.
I think the willingness of Protestants to accept Mormons, at least as political candidates, has to do more with a regressive social agenda and having the image of “wholesome” white conservatism. I mean, overall Catholics don’t agree with their own church regarding issues like birth control, but then you have Protestants (who of course think the Catholic church is all wrong) advocating for allowing Catholic employers to deny birth control coverage. In the end, I doubt that they care so much about what people believe as to what they will help them accomplish in terms of putting policies they like in place and imposing their will on others.
Of course, there is also the race gap. Obama got only 40% of the white vote.
As Seeing/analyzing said above, they picked the cultist over the black man. It’s enormously depressing to me.
Count me among the 40% white folks. I am not nearly as Mexican as my nym suggests. My only Mexican ancestor was the daughter of a German military consultant at the Battle of Celaya. That’s pretty damn guero. I even put my race down on census forms as other: “Anglo”. That’s a term which dates back to the Mexican Land Grant system administered by Stephen F. Austin. “Anglo” literally means “English-speaker” in the Mexican dialect of the early 1800’s. No racial classification is real unless it is considered an “other” by some different race. That’s why I identify as Anglo.
But WTF, evangelical Protestants were voting for God On Kolob and Jesus in Missouri Mitt Romney? Weren’t all Mormons heretics preaching a false Christ just a few years ago? And don’t evangelicals hate those preaching a false Christ even more than they hate atheists? I really hope they go back to hating on Mormons.
Seriously, the Mormon afterlife is weird. But I still like the Jehova’s Witnesses afterlife better. Humans do not have immortal souls. There is no Hell other than failing to be resurrected by God. Hell is a metaphor for the natural course of destruction all human bodies follow. The saved will be recreated as spirit beings from the data on God’s servers if he chose to save you for that end, other people will be recreated from stored data to live in unageing bodies on a superabundant Earth with almost no suffering.
The JW’s have the most plausible afterlife of any faith. It’s really a precursor to transhumanism.
That’s interesting about the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I did not know what they thought about the afterlife.
The concept of “hell” is the biggest reason for me to reject Christianity. It is so incredibly, obviously unjust that I cannot understand how one can worship a God that would do this to any sentient being. Evil, even.
At least the Mormons and HW’s, as weird as they may be, do not emphasize hell so much.