President Trump has had a powerful mobilizing effect on the liberal and secular left in U.S. politics.

But will religious liberals also play a significant role in getting out the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in November?

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, some commentators began heralding the likelihood that a revived religious left would emerge from what many liberals considered the ashes of Trump’s victory.

But such hopes may be based more on a wing and a prayer than solid evidence of any such new awakening. Rather, there are several signs indicating “a notable decline” in political activity among religious liberals.

New research analyzing data from sources such as the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study finds that secular liberals, religious conservatives and even religious moderates are trending higher in voting percentages, but that religious liberals have fallen far behind.

In 2016, the religious left first faced a choice between Trump and a liberal who would have been the first woman president. In that election, those who placed greater importance of faith in their lives were dramatically less likely to go to the polls.

There is still time for this to change, sociologists Joseph Baker of East Tennessee State University and Gerardo Marti of Davidson College note in the latest issue of Sociology of Religion.

But, they state, “Until demonstrated otherwise, the narrative of resurgence among the Religious Left is wishful thinking rather than empirical reality.”

Whither the religious left?

In searching for use of the phrase “Religious Left” in major American newspapers, Baker and Marti found that stories mentioning the term occurred more times in 2019 than in any other year going back to 1984.

In particular, the early success of former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a committed Christian and openly gay candidate, raised hopes that he could help Democrats build a strong coalition among secular and religious liberals.

But the new study suggests several obstacles exist to any major influence of the religious left this fall. They include:

• “A numbers problem.” The General Social Survey found that the proportion of people who consider themselves both politically liberal and moderately or very religious has declined 20 percent in the past two decades, falling from 15.1 percent of the population in 1998 to 11.9 percent in 2018.
• Signs of retreat. In the 2004 election, religious liberals were as likely as religious conservatives to self-report voting. In the bitterly contested 2016 election, the voting rates of religious liberals had fallen sharply, declining to the level of secular conservatives. All other groups, secular liberals, religious conservatives and secular and religious moderates, increased their voting rates in 2016.
• Less room at the political inn. While religious liberals dropped in overall numbers and voting in presidential elections, the percentage of nonreligious liberals in the U.S. jumped from 13.3 percent in 1998 to 17.8 percent in 2018. In the last three presidential elections, the secular left has been the most politically engaged group. Atheists and agnostics, who make up about half of the religiously unaffiliated, are particularly likely to identify as liberal and vote Democratic.

The best case for the Democrats in 2020 would be to mobilize a broad-based coalition between the secular left and religious left, Baker and Marti suggest.

But that scenario is complicated.

Middle ground is elusive

One bright shining political moment for religious liberals in recent presidential elections came in the 2008 election, when Barack Obama made a concerted effort to appeal to religious voters.

The probability of religious liberals voting that year was just below secular liberals and higher than religious conservatives.

The reasons for the political free fall of religious liberal influence in 2016 could be the result of several factors, Baker and Marti indicate, from Hillary Clinton’s unusually low favorability rating to her campaign’s relative lack of effort to engage religious voters.

This time around, the more centrist Biden won the Democratic nomination in large part because he was seen as the best chance to beat Trump. But he faces significant pressure to move further left on issues such as abortion and religious freedom that concern many moderate and liberal religious Americans.

Bridging theological and political differences may be a special challenge for atheists and agnostics, who are more likely “to be against religion as a whole and sometimes anti-religious” in their rhetoric, Baker said.

All of this matters.

“Regardless of the root causes of declining voting rates among political liberals who are religious, if the same pattern holds in 2020 it will again be a considerable advantage for Donald Trump,” Baker and Marti state. “But if the Religious Left as a voting bloc can reengage to levels similar to 2012, or especially 2008, then it could be a much more important player in the 2020 election.”

The tumultuous events of recent months, from a pandemic that has claimed more than 100,000 lives and the killings of unarmed black men that have filled the streets with Americans demanding racial justice, are among the many reasons one cannot predict who will turn out – and who will win – in November.

But at least the pre-Covid-19 reports of the political rebirth of religious liberals appear to be premature.

“So, is the Religious Left resurgent?” Baker and Marti asked themselves. “In a word, no.”

Image by Adam Schultz / Biden for President, via Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
Image by The White House, via Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain]