Talk Elections

I didn't know that Ryan was a Catholic. Are there any anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic Protestants out there or have they all died out?

There are still plenty of anti-Catholic Protestants in the south.

Well, Biden's a catholic and Obama is black. I am guessing the anti-mormon and catholic protestants would also be anti-black?

Or maybe the country's moved on?

Evidently, to a remarkable degree. The question is, how much of the country.

The part of the country that hasn't moved on has probably moved on even less from the whole "hating black people and/or secret muslins" thing.

Probably not many realize it, but there are no Protestants on SCOTUS.

Indeed, six Catholics and three Jews.

A lot of "firsts" can be overstated. Is this the first ticket with two surnames containing the letter "y" ?

Where is the evangelical Protestant? I don't see one. Neither party has a Protestant in the ticket.

Possibly. Not going to check through the defeated ones. Certainly not if we add given names, though, there've been about half a dozen successful ones alone in that case. ;D

You wonder whether this was on some GOP insiders' mind. (Probably not, though. The Protestant-Catholic divide has become quite unimportant.) Back in '28, the first neither-British-nor-Dutch GOP candidate (not in the male line anyhow) had a part-Native running mate... and was up against the first ever Catholic nominee.

You must be devastated.

Barack Obama is a Protestant.

I'm pretty sure Obama is an atheist.  That's not a bad thing, but it does make him not a Protestant.

Crap. We are all royally screwed now!

If he's an athiest, he is at least a Protestant athiest.

The issue is that he isn't the right kind of Protestant.

The white kind of Protestant?

The conservative/evangelical kind of Protestant.

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ryan, but him not being a protestant is not one of them.

Mind you, what could be more deeply American than the United Church of Christ, the lineal descendant of the Puritans?

But, but, but... they're LIBUHRULS!

I think we should all admit that white Catholics are the most powerful swing voters in this country.  The republicans know that the southern evangelicals will always vote for them. 

Now in order to win the swing states, the GOP needs to appeal to the "Reagan Democrats" which are essentially white Catholics (who voted for Kennedy, FDR, etc.). 

The southern evangelicals may stay home, but then they concede to the half-black Obama and the Liberal Democrats. 

Catholic Paul Ryan ensures Romney victories in Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin. 

No one ensures victories anywhere.

No, because the Catholic vote is now so fragmented that I doubt it will transform into a bloc vote.

Oh the LDS is Protestant enough for government work. As one with no particular dog in the hunt, I am often quite amused by the proprietary attitude about branding of all the little sects that compete with each other for adherents.  It's quite ludicrous really. And the Catholics are closer to mainline Protestantism in general, than mainliners are to many of the other "Protestant" sects.

And just who gives a damn anyway?

The Catholic vote is indistinguishable from the American electorate as a whole.

Interestingly enough, with Romney, Biden and the Prohibition Party ticket (which still exists), there are 4 non-drinkers on presidential tickets this year.

Oh, and Mormons are Protestant Christians, just to let you know. Odd ones yes, but still Protestants.

I don't have a dog in the hunt, but that is a very contentious point of view. Mormons may believe they are in the Protestant tradition, but lots of Protestant sects don't even accept they are Christian.

They consider themselves Protestant Christians, but many Protestants don't actually consider them Protestant.

No, they aren't. They have very different theology from Protestants.

Some Protestant sects don't consider Catholics Christian.

Very true. It would be easier not to play the game at all... but if I can't resist being baited by NY Jew on a similar topic...

And then there is the attitude of the Orthodox Jews (many of them), about Reform Jews, whom many consider the next best thing to Godless. :P

Oh my, I added my bit while Brittain33 added his bit independently on exactly the same thing. Brittain33 we may be becoming clones of each other. Ponder that for awhile. :P

That is certainly a superficial remark, and perhaps alludes to America being more atheist and secular.  

Different states have different demographics.  Reagan really brought white Catholics into the mainstream.  He was part Irish.  But then again, most of the country voted for Reagan.  The great fear is that Catholics going back to the working class/pro-immigrant Democrat Party.  Many Kennedy Catholics and Norrthern Catholics are socially liberal.  

Ohio is the perfect bellweather state because it has a mix of Catholics and Protestants, and high number of working class voters.  

Its not specifically the religion label, but how the candidate speaks culturally to religious groups.  Rick Santorum appealed strongly to Evangelicals.  George W Bush appealed to Catholics.  Paul Ryan should be able to cross over to Evangelicals and also connect to devout Catholic voters.  

Pollsters look for anything that gives them an advantage, and present day, a Catholic appeals to swing voters far more than a evangelical candidate.

The USA is becoming more Catholic as a whole, especially with more Hispanic immigrants. 

It makes complete sense for the GOP to embrace Catholic candidates if they want to survive for the next 50 years. 

Democrats think they have a lock on Hispanic and Catholic voters, but that will go away. 

Its pretty cool to think that Catholics have taken over from the Protestants as the most powerful religious group in the country. 

The GOP already has many Catholic politicians. But voting patterns simply have lost their sectarian character.

That would be true if Hispanics as a bloc remain true to their Catholic heritage, but with so many (even in their countries-of-origin) turning toward evangelical Protestant sects as an alternative, I am not so sure.  

Is that important to you?

Reagan Democrats did exist, but by and large, they weren't the people the media describes as Reagan Democrats. For the most part, they were conservative, traditionally Democratic white and rural Southerners, they type who had voted Wallace in '68, Nixon in '72, Carter in '76, and Reagan in '80 and '84, and who have been reliably Republican since. Reagan didn't win over working-class White Catholics in the North anywhere near as much as the popular mythology holds: just look at the county results from 1984 if you don't believe me.

This.

You don't consider President Obama a Protestant?  Muslim insinuations aside, his background has been largely Protestant (in an African-American sense).  

What we need is more Episcopalians.

I made that joke already. It's pretty clear he meant a White Conservative Protestant.

The bolded part is false. The US is not becoming more Catholic. Immigrants to the US as a whole are about 40% Catholic, but this only modest increase only offsets the loss of Catholics already here in conversions. The Catholic Church only keeps about 68% of its followers from one generation to the next, truthfully a higher percentage than almost all of the Protestant sects, but the Catholic Church only attracts a very small number of converts compared to other sects, so the overall percentage would be decreasing with no immigration. The two effects roughly offset.

This will be the first all non-WASP (or Scotch-Irish Protestant) ticket on both sides in history!

But the other immigrants are likely Muslims, Indian-Hindus, Asian-buddists/atheists.  So its not like the WASP population is growing in the US from more WASP immigrants. 

No, the WASP percentage is shrinking rather quickly. But it isn't the Catholic percentage that's increasing, it's the none/other.

Last I checked Mormons were Protestants.

Dude, the usual issue to debate is whether they're Christians. Theologically, that's a less-than-exactly-orthodox proposition.
Of course, they're culturally Protestant allright.

I mean a Consevative Protestant!!!!!

Mormans are their own thing. They are not Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical or Pentacostal. Look at the core teaching of the LDS. There are drastic difference to why I view them in the typical lens.

Why do we need a conservative Protestant? What's wrong with a normal Protestant, like an Episcopalian, Methodist, or Presbyterian (or, say, a Congregationalist)?

I thought Lutherens were the most popular denomination. 

We need more Quakers - like Nixon.

Why does church doctrine matter more the the faith derived ideology? The former is very exclusive and self-defeating. 

As an organized political force, that would make Catholic church members the fastest growing group.  The immigrants from Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, are quite small compared to Catholics.  Therefore Catholics win by default. 

From everything I have read, LDS officially does not consider itself Protestant.

Absolutely!

The  point I wanted to make was that this election is already complicated enough with Obamacare and what-not; adding religion/faith only adds unnecessary 'heat'. That there is/isn't a Protestant on the ticket this year shouldn't be important in and of itself, though I am typing at half-2 in the morning with an English accent.

If this is the first "double y" nomination, that should be as much a trivial note to make as 'two Amish' or 'two lapsed Catholics".

What about Morwomen?

That's not how it goes. It goes Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. All forms of Christianity fall under one of the three.

Mormen and Mormaids.

Says who? Mormons may be Christian, but it's hard to call them Protestant, and they certainly aren't Catholic or Orthodox!

Also, you have Churches like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_East
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christadelphians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_Movement
Which doctrinally, are clearly outside the Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, but which nonetheless consider themselves Christian.

So what kind of Catholics would support a Romney/Ryan ticket, in general? I don't see their economic views being particularly appealing to many (most?) Catholics. And they are basically running on the economy.

Catholics are such a fragmented religion when it comes to politics. This is because the Catholic Church is very pro-environmental, pro-peace, pro-welfare, and anti-gay rights, anti-abortion.  It's a mixed bag politically, that's why you have Catholic politicians like Paul Ryan and John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden on the other. 

I think if anything it isn't going to change the church's voting patterns, especially among minority Catholics, they're going to vote mostly against Romney/Ryan.

Oh boy, don't know where to begin. Granted this isn't so full of absurdity, ignorance and bad posts as it is info that just needs more clarification for the most part. I'll start here:


Well that depends on how we're defining "sect". Might be true for the First Baptist Church of Podunk County South of Mason Dixon and plenty of churches that are basically cults and consider just about all other Christian denoms to not be Christian either (think of Westboro Baptist or that Koran burning guy in Florida), but there is no actual serious Christian denomination that holds a theology stating Catholics are not Christians. Even the Seventh Day Adventists, who formed under a rather anti-Catholic theology (that Sunday worship is the mark of the beast, and that the Catholic Church is responsible for distorting this and misleading God's people), don't hold to this view, granted they've deemphasized most of the anti-Catholic stuff in the last century and hold it only nominally now, but even their founder said in one of her writings that she admits there might be true followers of Christ in the Catholic Church, even if misled. Bob Jones University, Jack Chick and the like aren't affiliated with any real denominations.

Now there is no Catholic voting bloc. There never really has been either, but there certainly isn't now. The Catholic vote is so bellwether that it went Gore-Bush-Obama in the last three elections, and in fact the last election it probably deviated from the popular vote winner is 1968, and even then it was probably pretty close in a pretty close election. Prior to that you'd have to go back to...1928. Even if Catholics were a unified bloc, both tickets are the same in that they are led by a non-Catholic with a Catholic as VP so this is basically the biggest non-factor ever.

I've always found the idea that evangelicals are staunchly anti-Catholic as a rule to be largely an invention of Catholics with a persecution complex and secularists trying to make evangelicals out to be even more bigoted then they really are, and I'd say that Rick Santorum's campaign provides quite a bit of evidence in favor. The only anti-Catholic evangelicals I've ever met have been either A) ex-Catholics themselves and likely bitter in the same way Catholics turned mainline/other religion/nothing usually are and/or B) liberal evangelicals that are against the church due its policies on women and gays. Granted I'm not the top guy to talk to for the opinions of conservative evangelicals, but once again, please look toward Rick Santorum's campaign.

BRTD, right-wing evangelicals aren't as bigoted against Catholics as they used to be, sure-but what of Al Smith's campaign in 1928? Or Kennedy's in 1960? Hell, you even had a good deal of mainline Protestants opposing them on the grounds that they would be dictated by the RCC.

And right-wing evangelicals liked Santorum only because he spoke their language. Using him to argue that right-wing evangelicals aren't anti-Catholic is like saying Alan Keyes or Herman Cain proves that Republicans don't have a sizable racist voting bloc.

Well if you have to go back at least 52 years to find examples...

Mind you JFK still won and won most of the most heavily evangelical states (even in Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky he won the historically Democratic areas, the historically Republican ones came out against him), and Al Smith's best areas were evangelical, true the elections at the time weren't exactly democratic, but there were plenty of other issues besides Catholicism. The idea that either one would submit the US to the rule of the Pope is a lot like Birtherism or believing Obama is a Muslim, it might've been believed by some very uneducated types and hacks who weren't going to vote for either one anyway, but it was very very far from a widespread belief that most people adhered to.


Neither one has ever won a Republican primary. What it shows is that not all Republicans are so racist they'll vote against any black (and Lewis has noted that there is evidence that hardcore conservative activists are probably less racist than rank and file GOP voters, not surprising and indicative considering where their support has come from.) Worth noting that by most counts Santorum performed even better with evangelical voters than Huckabee in 2008 did.

I don't really consider Anglicans to be Protestants, though I suppose they could be. I've always thought about them as a sort of in between Catholicism and Protestantism, somewhat like the Orthodox Church but not as close to Catholicism. That might just be me though. Also, Mormonism and JW had roots independent of the Reformation, so it's difficult to call them Protestants in the traditional sense.

Catholics were a pretty unified bloc in 1964 and 1960, for sure. Just look at the results from Louisiana. They also generally voted Democratic before that, though there were exceptions.


There is definitely an anti-Catholic evangelical sentiment, but it's really, really small nowadays, and it generally only shows up in certain parts of the South (again, like Louisiana).

Cajuns were a pretty unified bloc in 1960 no doubt (though as noted also before that), but as for Catholics in general:

()

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Eastern Wisconsin, especially northeast is where the Catholics live (BTW JFK only won Brown county by about 200 votes), and Long Island and Staten Island are fairly obvious (also JFK only got about 54% in Queens.) Even if JFK did particularly united Catholic voters (which he did in some places) it's quite obvious the reason why.

And in 1964 everyone was a unified voting bloc who wasn't a hardline partisan GOP voter whose area had been voting Republican for a century prior or white southernor.

Well, Wisconsin Catholics are a bit different than most, generally coming from Germany and with a more conservative mindset, and they were always much more Republican than Irish Catholics, for example. I suppose calling them unified might be a stretch, but they were, in general, much less divided than they are now.

You're pretty spot on actually. I mentioned this in the other thread on the issue, but the more political conservative-evangelicals tend to be, the more pro-Catholic they are. People who attend evangelical churches for cultural reasons (a good chunk of the evangelical community) see Catholics as brothers in arms more than anything.

Institutions like Wheaton, Fuller, Christianity Today, et al are pretty representative of evangelicalism as a whole, and I doubt you'd hear anything coming out of those schools or from that magazine that proclaims Catholics to be non-Christian. Hell, Billy Graham was considered the determining factor in whether or not one was a fundamentalist or an evangelical in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. What was the issue that caused fundamentalists to scorn Graham? He did his crusades alongside Catholics. C.S. Lewis is a revered figure in evangelical academia, and they all know he believed in purgatory, prayers for the dead, etc.

But of course it's the backwoods fundamentalist who says gays should be put in concentration camps that gets slapped with the "evangelical" label by the media, because they don't know any better. Evangelicalism, for what its worth, was always slightly left-leaning before a bunch of fundamentalists started calling themselves evangelicals and got involved in politics in the late 70s. Those fundamentalists morphed into what we call "conservative evangelicals" today, and they're largely concerned with politics more than they are with theology. It's only natural that they'd gravitate towards a guy like Santorum, because he's culturally conservative, their litmus test.

    

Yeah evangelicals were even relatively socially liberal until the Moral Majority. Lots of evangelical churches ordained women prior to the mainline denominations doing so.

This is a good case where you have to really draw an evangelical/fundamentalist distinction, and the fundamentalists of the frothingly anti-Catholic variety tend to be extreme even by fundamentalist standards and big on things like KJV-only and consider about 90% of evangelical preachers as well to be heretics and false teachers, Jack Chick has called C. S. Lewis's works Satanic actually.

This is certainly true. I've never had any problems with evangelicals, and the only Catholics I personally know who have were in parts of the South that are pretty backwoods-y following Hurricane Katrina doing relief work.

There isn't any particularly good reason why Catholics, Evangelicals, and Mormons for that matter shouldn't be allies on a lot of issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWdCKPtnYE

Don't you have the feeling that Obama is becoming Agnostic? If so then we have an Agnostic/Catholic ticket vs. the Mormon/Catholic ticket.

What's the basis for these claims of an Obama apostasy?

It's implied so far, but I think he might be leaning there. His new same-sex marriage stance reflects this.

I imagine it originates from his "cling to guns and religion" comment and the fact that he is an intellectual.

If he announced that he was an agnostic, I would be pleased, but I fear we have another 2-3 decades to go before America would tolerate a non-religious candidacy.

I'd be pleased too, but I would have to agree on the tolerance of a non-religious candidacy. It will happen soon I bet, but it would be pretty hard.

What? No it doesn't. Not necessarily, anyway.

Yeah, plenty of liberal Protestants support gay marriage and don't care for people who "cling" to guns or religion, whatever that means.

Paul Ryan is undoubtedly an atheist.

And on what do you base such an accusation?

He's a Randite and proud social Darwinist.

He holds several mutually contradictory sets of beliefs at once, in common with the rest of us. We're living in modernity.

There are many Randites that follow her economic philosophy but not her views on religion. Which is a shame, because while she's extreme on economics, she was more spot-on on the subject of religion. :P

The first thing she said to Bill Buckley was that he struck her as too smart to believe in God. That's not 'spot-on', that's just being an unreconstructed asshole.

Depends on which side of the veil of religion you're on. As a non-believer, I find that to be quite the compliment for Bill Buckley. Still, I understand how it comes off as negative and tactless.

Many atheists who understand religion partially as a cultural marker would find it culturally insensitive even if they didn't disagree with a baseline statement of the underlying assumption.

Can't we agree that the Mormons are non-Protestant Christians? Of course I don't really care which branch of the Abrahamic religion people think they are.

The correct term is Mormaid.

Almost all Protestant theologians recognise Catholics and Orthodox as fellow Christians and they return the favour, none of these recognise the Mormons as Christians, and being Christian are necessary to be Protestant. Of course laymen do see Mormons as a Christian sect, and outside the theology, Mormons are descendent of the Christian and Protestant traditions.

And which 'tradition' do they descend from?

The Anglo-Saxon mess of semi-Low Church sects (all those different Protestant groups which spread in 17th and early 18th century on the British Isles like Baptist, Methodist, Quaker etc).

I'm not Christian, so I don't have an opinion other than to defer to how they identify themselves, but there are lots of people out there who have an issue with it.

Some other fun facts:

1. This is the first time two Catholics (Biden and Ryan) are running against each other for either Presidency or Vice Presidency
2. This is the first time a resident of Wisconsin was nominated by a major party for either Presidet or Vice President (the only notable major third-party candidacy I can think of is Pat Lucey in 1980)
3. This is the first time since 1984 a sitting member of the House was nominated

How can you forget Fighting Bob LaFollette (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._La_Follette,_Sr.)?  The Progressive Party nominee in 1924 and winner of Wisconsin's 13 EVs.

Another fun fact:

America has yet to elect a President who has both self-identified as being an 'Evangelical Protestant" and is also from an Evangelical Protestant denomination.

And Jehovah's Witnesses - like Eisenhower.

Baptists are anabaptists and come from a very different origin than Methodists.

Yes and I would have called them 2nd Reformation sects, but that mean something different to English speakers, than to us other Protestants, so semi-Low Church is Close enough for government work.

Carter

If you think of Catholics as a "tradition" branched off of Judaism, (disregard Orthodox), and Protestants as a branch off of Catholics, than wouldn't Mormons be a branch off of Protestants AND (weirdly) Judaism?  It forms a nice circle.     

..has said in interviews that he does NOT identify as being "evangelical."

Did he while he was in office?

Which one did not apply to W. Bush?

Bush is a Methodist.

Personally, I consider Mormonism to be a Protestant denomination.  I'm not a theologist, but to my thinking, they are Christians who are not Roman Catholic and not Eastern Orthodox (Russian, Greek, Serbian, Ukranian, Armenian, etc).  They were born out of Protestant traditions in the U.S. in the 1820s.  I realize that many Protestant denominations do not recognize their baptisms, but some do (such as the Episcopal Church in Utah). 

Protestantism spans a wide range of denominations from "main line" Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans (ELC), Episcopals, United Church of Christ, many Unitarians; to Penticostals, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, and all varieties of Evangelicals.  If you've been in the Armed Forces, there are generally Protestant Chaplains and Catholic Chaplains.  At larger bases, there will be a Jewish Chaplain and sometimes even an Orthodox Christain Chaplain.  But the Protestant Chaplain is trained to serve all denominations in religious services that are not Catholic, Jewish, or Orthodox.  Perhaps they would even serve a Mormon--more likely to than a Catholic or Orthdox Chaplain.

He said he was evangelical in office and I heard an interview with him from earlier this year where he called himself evangelical. In addition he's always described himself as "born again." I don't know what Progressive Realist is talking about...

Edit: Also he did leave the SBC, but that was over their attitude towards women in ministry (something I agree with him on). It was the SBC that changed it's position, not him.