That’s Michael Kazin’s take, at the New Republic, on the Christian Right (Rick Santorum’s base):
Put simply, the Christian Right is getting old. According to the largest and most recent study we have of American religion and politics, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, almost twice as many people 18 to 29 confess to no faith at all as adhere to evangelical Protestantism. Young people who have attended college, a growing percentage of the population, are more secular still. Catholicism has held its own only because the Church keeps gathering in newcomers from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, few of whom are likely to show up at a Santorum rally.
Translation: Christian nationalism is long past its high tide in American politics, and is now on the wane. The broken wheel squeaks loudest.
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for this trend, if true. But I suspect it’s not. Wait till the war with Iran starts up later this year, and see how religious revivalist Americans will suddenly become.
War is the food on which fundamentalism feeds. May there be peace.
Prometheus Unbound 