1. Role of Relig/Spirit in your life:
Very important 48.8%
Somewhat important 29.9%
Not that important 11.4%
Not at all important 9.5%
NS 0.5%

4. How important faith/values in deciding your vote for President:
Very important 42.7%
Somewhat important 23.4%
Not that important 12.8%
Not at all important 19.9%
NS 0.1%

9.During campaign did you see/hear messages from:
Religious conservatives 34.3%
Relig liberals 0.8%
Both 37.0%
Other relig groups 1.3%
Neither 21.4%
NS 5.2%

This scares me for two reasons. The first is that as democrats or progressives, we cannot turn our back on religion or we will never again win an election. When religion plays an important role in 78.7% of the population’s life and directly affects 66.1% of people’s choice for a president, it is something that we must address. Obviously the deist founders of our country are spinning in their graves right now, but as religion continues to influence people’s lives so exorbitantly we must find a way to deal with it. Remember this isn’t the first time in American history that religion played a large part in politics, so it probably won’t be the last.

The other thing that worries me is less than 1% said they heard the voices of religious liberals, 34% said religious conservatives, but 37% said both. If there truely was a presence from both sides more than 0.8% should have identified religious liberals. It is impossible to have a statistic that so disprotionately favors one side, yet have an intersection between the two. This in itself says to me that 37% of the country is in disillusion and 21.4%- who said neither- are completely ignoring the obvious. We can’t fall into that 21%

I do believe that focusing on reality in a time of religious zealousness is appropriate, but I don’t think trying to alienate such a large percentage of the electorate will have any good effects. I grew up a Lutheran and when I was in highschool got grief from people with other religious values for my own. This really helped shape my impressions of these other, basically cults. We need to be tolerant of these people, so that their religious ardor becomes the question and not our compassion.

Great work! There are a lot of freethinkers at morons.org who would probably be interested in the Church of Reality.

If you’re not familiar with it, you may want to check it out and let folks there know about it.

Anselm