US Politics: Conservative Belief in Religion Supersedes Spirituality

Conservatives have come up with a number of reasons to explain their loss in the 2012 presidential election. Some of these theories are quite valid – appeal to a limited electorate, a number of campaign blunders, etc. – and can be easily remedied before the next mid-term elections while others – lack of communication with the electorate, an insufficient marketing campaign, etc. – smell of desperation and a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues. Still others are just cuckoo and, unfortunately, a number of these are being aggressively promoted by talk radio hosts and a number of conservative blogs.

By the way, I can, and do, totally understand the reasons behind the marketing of the cuckoo theories. Sane points of view never get the same level of outrage and the resulting eyeballs. Therefore, in order to increase ratings and page views, show runners and editors are essentially forced to come up with and justify the existence of these cocoa puff theories.

I generally tend to ignore this noise pollution but the one that is being aggressively promoted is interesting for a number of reasons and the topic for today’s post. This theory is based on exit polls that showed people who identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious” voted for the Democrats in large numbers. Consequently, these folks are now being attacked on a number of conservative sites.

The attacks don’t target any specific policy but simply propose that individuals who identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious” have no moral center and thus are immoral. The conservative theory goes that unless one follows a religion – and this I assume means Christianity or, perhaps, Judaism – a spiritual person is no better than an atheist, agnostic, pagan, or even a Muslim!

I am not in the market to explain or correct someone’s thinking but, rather, to discuss the practical implications of certain actions. In that spirit, I would recommend that these conservatives think about the implications of their comments. Conservatives have already written off minorities, women, youth, and non-Christians. The audience that is receptive to their ideas is now white people – a group with a bright history but a darker future (pun intended). With these kinds of statements, the conservatives are telling an important subset of this group – white spiritualists – to go the way of the Dodo. If these conservatives stay on this path the only group that may vote for them will be white, suburban, Christians who believe that the end is nigh; in which case, they will most likely be prepping their storm shelters on the day of the election!