The Youngest Generation of American Voters and Evangelicals

Essentially, evangelicals Suck! (Think about that one for a moment...hehehehehe..."essentially" coming from "esssence.")

This does not bode well for the Gopers in coming elections.

Hey, maybe that's why Rudy. G is doing so well among the pundit elite. They see the writing on the wall, so to speak. The word, evangelical" is about to become electorally irrelevant or, more likely, despised

At least Rudy G is good for corporations, the GOP's real base, and our very worst enemy.

Poll: Intolerance of Gays Drives Up Christianity’s Negatives among Young People

Posted by Jon Ponder | Oct. 13, 2007, 10:39 am

Opposition to gay civil rights has become an extremely effective fundraising tool for the Christian right. In 2005, for example, four of the leading organizations focused on institutionalizing homophobia — Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition (which advocates execution of gays) — raised $169 million.

Overall, 91 percent of 16- to 29-year-old non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers believe Christianity is anti-gay.

But the effectiveness with which these groups have gotten their message out is proving to be a double-edged sword. While it has ginned up antipathy toward gays — which simultaneously stalled progress on gay civil rights and served as a powerful political tool that Republicans used to seize power — a poll released last month by Barna, a Christian research group, suggests that the relentless intolerance has seriously damaged the image of Christianity among young people:

Interestingly, the study discovered a new image that has steadily grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of [16- to 29-year-old] non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity.

As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else. Moreover, they claim that the church has not helped them apply the biblical teaching on homosexuality to their friendships with gays and lesbians.

Attitudes toward Christianity among today’s youth are much more negative than they were a generation ago, says Barna:

For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. Currently, however, just 16 percent of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a “good impression” of Christianity.

The poll found that, in the broadest sense, Christians’ intolerance and hypocrisy were key factors in their approval:

Among young non-Christians, nine out of the top 12 perceptions were negative. Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), old-fashioned (78 percent), and too involved in politics (75 percent) - representing large proportions of young outsiders who attach these negative labels to Christians …

Even among young Christians … [half] of young churchgoers said they perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political. One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality.

One side note: Evangelicals remain the Christian sect viewed most negatively:

The new study shows that only 3 percent of 16- to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable views of evangelicals. This means that today’s young non-Christians are eight times less likely to experience positive associations toward evangelicals than were non-Christians of the Boomer generation (25 percent).

Evangelicals view any negative reaction as persecution:

91 percent of the nation’s evangelicals believe that “Americans are becoming more hostile and negative toward Christianity.”

(Evangelicals think not being liked is martyrdom. They love it! They wouldn't care too much for real martyrdom, like torture and execution. All kinds of people aren't liked by some body. Not being liked does not a martyr make. Being the focus of hostility by large percentages of people in the general population does not a martyr make either. But it could lead to it. Most of my lifetime, Christianity was well thought of for the simple reason that most people, be they Christian or not, do have some handle on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the one known as the Prince of Peace. Those teaching seem about as far from evangelical dogma as truth is to the Bush administration. Our Youth get it. They got it much quicker than we did.)

Unfortunately for evangelicals (and especially for the people they persecute), they will never get it that they bring this hostility onto themselves

(Oh but they do, in ways that are so apparent to the rest of us)

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Internet Gaining Readers, Activists and Power

Published on Thursday, January 18, 2006 by the San Jose Mercury News (California)

Internet as Political Force Grows, Poll FindsShift Away from TV, Papers Continues
by Frank Davies

Candidates and those who run their campaigns have known for some time how the Internet has energized politics and reshuffled the old rules of how office-seekers, the media and the public operate. A survey released Wednesday about online activities and the 2006 election shows just how dramatic that shift has been.

Americans who received most of their political information online (15 percent) has doubled since the previous midterm election in 2002. And almost a third of the public -- 31 percent -- used the Internet during the 2006 campaign to get political news and discuss the election through e-mail.

Those findings came from a telephone survey of 2,562 adults, conducted for the Pew Internet and American Life Project between Nov. 8 and Dec. 4, and included interviews with 200 people who use cell phones only, to reflect the growing number of people without traditional land lines.
Spurred by greater broadband use, a growing number of Internet political activists -- about 14 million people, according to the survey -- are generating and sharing political content, including video clips that had a major impact on some races.

``There's a viral, grass-roots system for sharing information now that gets around the traditional gate-keeping function of the mainstream media,'' said Lee Rainie, director of the project for the non-partisan Pew Research Center, which reports on trends and attitudes.
A classic example from the 2006 campaign was the widely circulated video clip of Sen. George Allen, R-Va., disparaging a videographer for his rival's campaign, calling him ``macaca,'' an apparent ethnic slur. The clip circulated for days on the Web before newspapers and TV networks picked up the story. Allen narrowly lost to Democrat James Webb, and the ``macaca moment'' was a turning point in the race.

Age matters

One Internet analyst, John Palfrey, said a key finding of the Pew survey was how younger people interested in politics are relying on information online. Asked to list their two primary sources of election news, broadband users under 36 ranked the Internet (35 percent) behind television (57 percent), with newspapers at 18 percent.

For broadband users 51 and older, television ranked first with 73 percent, followed by newspapers (45 percent) and the Internet (17 percent).

``It's not a news flash about younger people, but it underscores the trend away from dependency on television and newspapers,'' said Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. ``This week it was no accident that Sen. Barack Obama announced his exploratory campaign for president in a high-resolution video on his Web site.''

The survey showed that mainstream news sites on the Web -- including those run by broadcast networks, newspapers and other periodicals -- dominated online activity, but that other sources are catching up.

Respondents were allowed to cite multiple sources of information, and as many as 60 percent of Internet users said they got information from local or national newspaper sites, network TV sites or large news portals such as Google and Yahoo News, which often link to mainstream news sites.

But 24 percent said they got news from issues-oriented sites. Another 20 percent said they got information from blogs, international news sites or candidate Web sites. And 19 percent said they used satirical sites, including ``The Daily Show'' and ``The Onion.''

The Pew survey also includes some intriguing data on a key question: Has better, wider online access boosted civic activism and helped democracy?

It certainly has helped fundraising. The survey found that 3 percent of Internet users contributed to a campaign in 2006, which Rainie said tracks the activity of the last two presidential campaigns, when John McCain (in 2000) and Howard Dean (in 2004) relied on donations online.

Next step: activism

The survey indicates that 11 percent of Internet users have become online political activists, defined as users who posted their own commentary to a newsgroup, Web site or blog, or posted or forwarded someone else's commentary, video or audio recordings.
And as broadband access grows and applications become easier to use, those activists are less likely to be older, white men with high incomes -- the traditional source of political movers and shakers -- Rainie said.

But Palfrey said the ``jury is still out'' on whether more people are engaged in civic activism because of the Internet, or whether it is transforming the way people organize.

"It may be too early to tell if that's a full-blown trend,'' he said.

The survey also indicated that for users interested in politics, the Internet is an echo chamber for their own attitudes and positions for many, but not all. In the survey, 64 percent of the activists said they use sites that share their point of view, or have no point of view, and 24 percent said they use sites that challenge their viewpoints.

At the same time, Palfrey said the Internet has the potential to broaden perspectives -- and possibly change minds -- because it is so easy to find diverse points of view, often discovered while searching for something else.

The Pew survey found that Democrats and Republicans rely on the Internet as a source of news about equally, but there's a difference in their preference for other news sources.

Democrats were more likely to cite newspapers and a broad range of broadcast and cable outlets for news. Republicans tended to favor Fox cable TV news and radio

© 2007 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources