America's religious faiths and the 2016 election Interesting statistics from a Pew preliminary study of religion and voting in the 2016 election, "Presidential vote by religious affiliation and race." The change from 2012 to 2016 featured all religious groups except Jews showing declines in support for the Democrats -and the Jewish gain in support was only 2%. In comparison, 8% of Hispanic Catholics, compared to number four years ago, fled from the Democrats, Protestants generally (mostly Evangelicals) fled at a 3% rate, and -most surprising- "other" religions fled at a 12% rate. Even 2% of "nones" ran away from the Democrats. About the "others" -since we know from different sources that Muslim voters held steady for Democrats, this means that Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Confucians, etc, have been reassessing their support for Democrats. In 2016 the Hillary factor surely played a part in this phenomenon but the size of the shift tells us that far more than the fact that Hillary was the most disliked candidate in American political history except Trump. That is, given values questions and the similarity of Hindu, Buddhist, etc, values to Jewish and Christian values, and the dissimilarity of Muslim values (some would say Muslim values are close to exactly opposite), America's "other" faiths, including approximately 3 to 5 million Buddhists (as many or more than Muslims) and as many as 2 million Hindus, we may be seeing the start of a shift to the GOP in these groups. The question is whether Christians and Jews can accept these groups as part of the political coalition they adhere to, given how unalike the theologies of Dharmic religions are to Biblical religions. That is, there is theological incompatibility, at least to judge from a traditional perspective, but a political necessity. For your consideration Billy
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