Steven Waldman, the editor of Beliefnet, a leading religion Web site, recently wrote an article for Slate pointing out that 61 percent of the voters for one of the nation's two major political parties claim to pray daily and more than 90 percent of them believe in life after death.
Mr. Waldman added, "There's a hard-core subgroup in this party" of particularly zealous Christians. Not only are these party loyalists largely hostile to gay marriage, half of them would prefer even more religious language from President Bush rather than less and believe that the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state is a divinely ordained step toward the Second Coming of Jesus.
The voters Mr. Waldman is describing are Democrats. And that highly religious core of party loyalists consists of blacks.
Mr. Waldman was not denying that more Republicans than Democrats are religious and regular churchgoers, nor that the small but growing group of secular Americans is more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. He admits that both these tendencies - the growing place of religious conservatives in the Republican Party and of secular liberals among the Democrats - have come to weigh more heavily in the way the two parties define themselves.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/national/10beliefs.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1089476488-58MKchKz2ulhu9QUv0XGPA