The Church Is Moving To The Left!

Colliding political numbers in the US, with both the US as a whole and religious institutions all moving to the traditional right, while The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints membership moves to the left. Try to make sense of these numbers!

 Raw Transcript

What is going on with politics and the church? Some very strange numbers that have come out just recently, both in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune and the Desireette News about church membership and its politics. People leaning more to the left and yet the the country moving more to the right. Some very, very odd things. numbers and graphs that are kind of colliding with each other and telling a very different story about the membership of the church today than the rest of the country in the United States. We're going to delve into these stats and into these trends and try to figure out what is going on. Now, this episode is brought to you by the Warriors of Tank Men's Retreat. Very, very excited about this. This is something I've thought about for over 20 years. This is finally coming to fruition. This is in Rush Valley, Utah. August 13th to the 15th. Uh, gospel centered masculinity. All right. Three days to reclaim strength, purpose, and identity. What is this all about? 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Hope to see you there. Here we go. An article in the Desireette News. Here's the headliner here. Latter-day Saints are the second most Republican religious group in America. That's not much of a surprise, although we were first 20 years ago and less. It says, "But also the only one shifting away. We're the only religious group shifting away from the Republican party." Isn't that odd? I mean, you're looking back and you say, "Okay, well, well, maybe Christianity is becoming even more conservative overall, especially Christianity, but other groups, too. Uh you've got you've got the black population in the United States has become much more conservative. The Hispanic population has become much more conservative. Uh it's it's it's interesting that here you have the church membership moving in the exact opposite direction. Okay. Now, let's cover a couple of points on this that I think are are very interesting. Number one, the Republican affiliation among Latter-day Saints has fallen 10 points since 2007. This is going against the tide of all other almost all other religious groups which have moved to the Republican party more more conservative. Okay. Second, the GOP affiliation increased among nearly every other religious group over the past two decades. That that's just so odd to me. We are we were the most Republican, the most conservative, and in a sense the politically most homogeneous group outside of maybe atheists that that existed out there in in in religion, right? And then third, those living in LDS enclaves were by far the most likely to rank polarization as a top issue. So others did not care as much about the polarization. They didn't see it as much. I can see how this might be, right? And why why why might that be? Well, number one, we are used to having a much more homogeneous group than others who have, you know, you've got Catholics that are kind of 50/50ish, more or less somewhere in there, and they've been that way for decades and decades, right? And and yet you have Latter-day Saints who have been 70 and before that, we were 70% GOP uh in in just 20 years ago in 2007. But going back further than that, we were 80 to 80 to 90% sometimes up into the area of certainly over 80% in in being a GOP centered uh church membership. Okay. So, so we understand we can see okay well this is changing there is a large shift happening and and it's going in a very direction very different direction than we have seen since at least the early 20th century. And so why is that? Number one. Number two, you can say, okay, well, there's a bigger shift. Well, why? Because you have more people that are against the majority's party, political party, and they're loud and they're speaking out, right? So, you've got you can recognize the shift very much so. So, I think that there for that very reason, we are saying we are one of the most likely to say that polarization is an issue. Now I want to cover cover a couple of other numbers on this and this is this is going to get very very interesting as as we go through this. You see here Latterday Saint partisan composition has changed from 68.5% almost 70% in 2007 to 57.5%. Now stop and think about this. Another shift of 10% in this is going to make Latterday Saints in the US not more Democratic or not not more Democrat necessarily than Republican, but it will be less than half are affiliated with the Republican party because there's a lot of independents and that group is growing stronger as well. Right. So, so you've got a a a what looks to me like a very possible shift from a majority Republicanbased membership of the church to falling below the 50% mark soon right uh with the LA loss evenly split between increases in Democrat affiliation and no affiliation. So a number of people I know these people right have left the the Republican party and have become Democrats and others have left the Republican party. They want no identification with this. A lot of this has to do with anti-Trump sentiment. No question. Uh and and and in fact I would say that's the primary driving issue on all of this. So you can see here in this graph, Latterday Saint political identification, you've got up nearly 80% starting in 2007, moving around. It bumps back up here. Look at this. In about 2012, who's that? That's Mitt Romney with the GOP over there, right? So they're signing up with the GOP because they want one of their own to become president of the United States. And then it drops quickly back down on the next the two 2014 midterm elections. moves around 2016, look what happens, right? 2016 with Republicans, it's during Trump's uh campaign. 201617, you get a big steep drop. So that gives you an idea about a percentage of Latter-day Saints and the anti-Trump, the pro Romney anti-Trump sentiment that has been out there over the last 15 years or so. And then it bumps right back up here during uh Trump's campaign during Trump's um during Trump being in office. It does jump right back up and in fact it increases more than where it was before slightly starts coming down toward the end of his term. And then coming back into 2021 again again going back into campaign mode here in 2020 2021 at the beginning here where where Biden comes in place it it has dropped again significantly and then it starts bumping up during during Biden's approach here his his not his approach his his uh presidency it comes back down a little bit moves in and then interestingly enough this time around in 2024 four with Trump's campaign, it stays close to even to where it was before and then once he is in during that campaign year like 2024 to 2025, this time it increases. So that's very interesting, right? Two campaigns before both dropped. in the last campaign it rose and so maybe there's a little bit of a difference where where maybe it was even worse a year ago than than uh with that that disparity with the GOP. I I don't know but you can see that the difference during the campaign years that have happened uh in these areas. Um the gray line here coming in here Democrat Democrat leaning you see again a big spike up here. That's interesting. uh also happened during that's that's odd also happening about the same time. Um so you have what I would suggest that you got a lot of Democrats moving up here but a lot that also maybe voted for Romney. So this also moves around in basically the exact opposite as it should except for over here with Romney. the exact opposite movement here with uh with the the top line being the Republican leaning and then of course the Democrat leaning. All right, coming down here a little bit more on this uh the national drop in Democrat ID. This is important to understand. So, not only is it a religious change where you've got the majority of religious uh um institutions moving toward a political uh toward toward the Republican party. Let's take a look at this. Okay? I want I want you to I want to show you what this looks like. Take a look at what this is. So, you have got a change in partisan composition of major religious groups in the United States. So, here we are wide evangelical. All right? which used to be number two back in 2007 behind the Latter-day Saints. All right, in 2007 and moving back further, we you know we had been number one. Look what happens here. We get a that 20 point swing coming in here. They had had a move all the way almost a 16point swing going the other way. So now white evangelicals are are by far number one in in their affiliation with the Republican party. Latter-day Saints are still at number two even with a 20% drop over the last 20 years. Okay. Uh everybody, all these other in institutions, white Catholic, white mainline, other Christian, other religion, even nothing in particular, Hispanic Catholic, Jewish, agnostic, even black Protestant. Look at the change from black Protestant. They made quite a big change here as well that we saw that happen in the campaign of Trump in 2024. Uh, and then atheist is the group that moves the other way, right? They're moving even further the the other way here. Wow. So, you see the trend that is being bucked here by Latter-day Saints. Latter-day Saints are becoming more Democrat, more left-leaning than they had been 20 years ago. I I find that to be very interesting to that. What What is What do we attribute that to? You can't attribute that all to just Trump. I mean, this was moving that direction outside of Mitt Romney's little blurp. This was moving in this direction since 2007. So, during Bush, right, during the Bush years and and so what is it that is changing in that direction? And I'm just wondering if there has anything to do with church leadership on this. Does that make a difference? Is it the messaging that's happening there? A change in messaging? Uh what what makes this be what it is? Is it the fact that our culture is moving to be a much more outside of religious groups, much more liberal, much more left-leaning, in some cases leftist culture that we're going into? Is it because the schools have been quite frankly indoctrinating people as being further on the left and they're coming out and they're going to college and the same thing's happening there and then they're going beyond that and they're becoming more on the left. What what do you think the shift is based on? What would that 20 point shift be a result of today? Okay, so here's the next thing and this is the next point that is really important to understand because this is where it gets really bizarre. This is a graph of Democrats shifting sharply leftward and we all know this right there as people say well the the right is getting harder right there is a fraction where that is true and it's mostly a reaction to the void of messaging to men and the void of uh of of sticking to constitutional and traditional um practices. That's that's the rea that's the the issue, right? But the left is going further and further left because there's no check over there. There just hasn't been a check. They have owned the institutions throughout the United States. They now own a large portion even of religion uh which are driven by leftist ideologies. But this is the strange thing. We have had a 20% shift. I I've said 20%. I meant it's a 10% shift in the last 20 years is what it is. Want to be clear on that. A 10% shift in the last 20 years. This is just a couple of examples, right? When you move into affirmative action, which really what we're talking about contemporarily here is is DEI. It's an issue of DEI. And where the Dems moved on this from 1996 at uh 20% who support affirmative action or then is that's what they called it. It moved on here to become DEI. And look what happens in 2012. 2012 you get a massive shift with the Dems moving all the way over here towards 60%. Who support DEI. Okay, big big move there coming in 2012. Look at the rep the the reps the the Republicans here. They're moving. They squirrel a little bit, but there's not much of a change. They're pretty solid in the same place, right? Not much of a change. We go back here and look again at something else like immigration. See, immigration, you can go back and and listen to uh Clinton and the way he talks about it, even sometimes with Obama when he first got into office talking about how they need to stop illegal immigration. Yeah, that that doesn't happen anymore at all. There is no check on that whatsoever. So, you can see that they're not that far off here in in in staying put here, the Democrats with the Republicans during up through up till about 2008. Now 2008 when is when Obama came into office. So you move from 2008 and then boom all the way over here to plus 40%. Over on on immigration issues. Now I don't have a graph here for LGBTQ issues, trans issues, but I think you're going to see pretty close to the same type of movement for the Democrats. In fact, it might even be larger. So in a country where religion is moving to the right, trying to reach back into traditional marriage and traditional families and values and the Constitution and the founding of America and those things that Republicans usually have highlighted for for so long, right? you have instead a a Latter-day Saint base membership that is moving the exact opposite direction during the time which those that they proilitize to the most, right? Those of African descent and those of Hispanic descent have also moved starkly to the right. And and so you've got religion and and those two audiences that that are accepting the gospel more than anybody else. And yet the church overall in the United States has moved in the exact opposite direction. That is really bizarre. It's bizarre. What do you What do you attribute that to? What is that from? Why are we just following the rest of culture more? the the times that are accepting in certain ideologies and things that that other religious groups are not accepting in. I mean, in many ways, we build bridges, I think, better than anybody else out there, despite the fact that we seem to be the most hated of all denominations in Christianity. I think we do a better job of reaching out. Is that reaching out turning into changing attitudes toward politics? What is it that is making that difference? Is it because of the growth of the church in the US that uh we're finding others that have more of a a a different political background and and perspective on things. I I I think it's very interesting. You see that shift, but yet you see a President Oaks and a President Nelson going in and bringing up really some political issues, some very lightning rod political issues such as abortion that would lean to the right, right? If you for for pro-life, they're bringing those things up and and talking about how we need to be pro-life. Uh it's interesting that President Oaks in a number of his last addresses talks about the Constitution and about the free about freedom of religion and about traditional family and the family proclamation. And yet the base is moving further and further with a party that is not as supportive of those things. It's that that's just the truth. It's not as supportive of those things. I would love to know your comments on this. Why is this happening? Is it good? Do we just need a lot of different political diversity or do some of those political issues cross the line and I would suggest are completely against the core doctrines of life and family especially within the church. So why is that happening? would love to see your comments and uh I'll go through those and answer them as best I can. Thanks for listening.