Christian conservatives, for more than two decades a pivotal force in American politics, are grappling with Election Day results that repudiated their influence and suggested that the cultural tide — especially on gay issues — has shifted against them.
They are reeling not only from the loss of the presidency, but from what many of them see as a rejection of their agenda. They lost fights against same-sex marriage in all four states where it was on the ballot, and saw anti-abortion-rights Senate candidates defeated and two states vote to legalize marijuana for recreational use. ...NYT
They are facing an increasing number of "nones" -- the non-religious, non-affiliated, secular Americans and voters -- in their landscape. Worse for the evangelical profit machine, that seems to be the wave of the future.
The younger generation is even less religious: about one-third of Americans ages 18 to 22 say they are either atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular. ...NYT
But we need to make a distinction between Protestant and Catholic Christians. The Catholics stayed with Obama in about the same proportion as America did as a whole, and "solid majorities of Catholics supported same-sex marriage."
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