As a devout lifelong member of the church in the UK, I feel I am merely an observer, having a tacit association with the church in the US. Here we have devout members openly voting left of center, with an extremely small minority openly supporting hard right/alt-right views similar to moderate Republican views, let alone MAGA, though it would be great to see actual statistics to confirm that impression. As previously commented, the cognitive dissonance I endure as a member of an American church which predominantly supports Republican values, and appears to flirt with Christian Nationalism is torturous, especially acknowledging Article of Faith 11, and the doctrine of agency, which I was raised to believe was a core tenet of our faith.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have been looking into possible international data sources for broader insights, but they are difficult to find. I'll continue looking and may publish something in the future because I think that info would be so interesting!
From where I live in SLC (which you know well since you served with us as a missionary), there is a large representation of highly-educated, devout, left-leaning members of the church. I don't know if that is a quirk of SLC East side or not. What I have observed is that left-leaning members who stick around get a lot of practice in cognitive dissonance, in thinking through areas where they differ from official church policies or from prominent church leaders, and in finding ways to manage that. The LGBTQ policies and events of the past ten years have pushed some of these people out, but many have found ways to remain in church activity and belief despite the challenges. I think the pandemic and the rise of MAGA are pushing some of our right-leaning members into those spaces of cognitive dissonance and conflict with leaders (remember President Nelson asking us to wear masks to church!, or church statements on rooting out racism or immigration policies), and I suspect they are not as experienced in navigating them (and possibly their personality types and worldviews actually make that type of gray-zone thinking more difficult for them). I don't know if you have any data about that, but it could partially explain the shrinking "highly devout" category and the leftward shift, since the highly devout left-thinkers have already had many challenges to their faith over the years so may be a relatively stable demographic.
Hi Lash -- thanks for sharing your thoughts here and hope you are doing well! I think you are right that this would be really interesting to look at; i think it is a really plausible hypothesis and it actually relates to one of my previous posts where (other than young folks) the most likely group to leave the devout category were Republicans!(find that post here: https://mormonmetrics.com/p/what-is-driving-decline-of-lds-devotion) I'll think about ways to measure cognitive dissonance. It might be possible with data already available. Really appreciate your thoughts here.
Fascinating. Great analysis. It is surprising to me that in the midst of all that change in the relative size of the buckets the bucket locations stayed constant. Does it suggest some cosmic law that LDS religious devoutness is associated with right-leaning American politics? If so, which way does the causal arrow point? Does decreasing devoutness cause a leftward shift in politics? Does a leftward shift in politics cause decreasing devoutness? Something else?
Thanks Stephen. You are always giving me great ideas for future posts. There is some longitudinal panel data for the CES that could shed on this question. I'll try to revisit this after the report.
As a devout lifelong member of the church in the UK, I feel I am merely an observer, having a tacit association with the church in the US. Here we have devout members openly voting left of center, with an extremely small minority openly supporting hard right/alt-right views similar to moderate Republican views, let alone MAGA, though it would be great to see actual statistics to confirm that impression. As previously commented, the cognitive dissonance I endure as a member of an American church which predominantly supports Republican values, and appears to flirt with Christian Nationalism is torturous, especially acknowledging Article of Faith 11, and the doctrine of agency, which I was raised to believe was a core tenet of our faith.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have been looking into possible international data sources for broader insights, but they are difficult to find. I'll continue looking and may publish something in the future because I think that info would be so interesting!
From where I live in SLC (which you know well since you served with us as a missionary), there is a large representation of highly-educated, devout, left-leaning members of the church. I don't know if that is a quirk of SLC East side or not. What I have observed is that left-leaning members who stick around get a lot of practice in cognitive dissonance, in thinking through areas where they differ from official church policies or from prominent church leaders, and in finding ways to manage that. The LGBTQ policies and events of the past ten years have pushed some of these people out, but many have found ways to remain in church activity and belief despite the challenges. I think the pandemic and the rise of MAGA are pushing some of our right-leaning members into those spaces of cognitive dissonance and conflict with leaders (remember President Nelson asking us to wear masks to church!, or church statements on rooting out racism or immigration policies), and I suspect they are not as experienced in navigating them (and possibly their personality types and worldviews actually make that type of gray-zone thinking more difficult for them). I don't know if you have any data about that, but it could partially explain the shrinking "highly devout" category and the leftward shift, since the highly devout left-thinkers have already had many challenges to their faith over the years so may be a relatively stable demographic.
Hi Lash -- thanks for sharing your thoughts here and hope you are doing well! I think you are right that this would be really interesting to look at; i think it is a really plausible hypothesis and it actually relates to one of my previous posts where (other than young folks) the most likely group to leave the devout category were Republicans!(find that post here: https://mormonmetrics.com/p/what-is-driving-decline-of-lds-devotion) I'll think about ways to measure cognitive dissonance. It might be possible with data already available. Really appreciate your thoughts here.
Fascinating. Great analysis. It is surprising to me that in the midst of all that change in the relative size of the buckets the bucket locations stayed constant. Does it suggest some cosmic law that LDS religious devoutness is associated with right-leaning American politics? If so, which way does the causal arrow point? Does decreasing devoutness cause a leftward shift in politics? Does a leftward shift in politics cause decreasing devoutness? Something else?
Thanks Stephen. You are always giving me great ideas for future posts. There is some longitudinal panel data for the CES that could shed on this question. I'll try to revisit this after the report.