Joe Biden in 2016: "We led a coup in Ukraine, installed a government, lo...

The Shadow Government: Its Identification and Analysis

THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT: ITS IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS 

by Richard J. Boylan, Ph.D.

This is a summary report on those elements of that clandestine organizational network, (which we shall label the Shadow Government), which serves as a kind of "parallel government" to the official elected and appointed government of this country. It includes those elements known to the author with sufficient certainty that they can be positively identified, and their known or reliably reported functions described. It is distinctly possible that there are other elements, (particularly in the realms of the "Black Budget" and "Special Operations",) which have eluded our study, and are not named here.

Just as with the official government, the Shadow Government has functional branches. However, unlike the official government, the purpose of the none-executive branches of the Shadow Government is simply to distribute various functions, but not to achieve a system of checks and balances, as was supposed to happen constitutionally between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. Government. That is because the Shadow Government is a creature of a powerful elite, who need not fear being dominated by an instrument of their own creation.

In the Shadow Government five branches may be identified. These branches are: the Executive Branch, the Intelligence Branch, the War Department, the Weapons Industry Branch, and the Financial Department.

2025 Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop: Bipartisan Religious Engageme...

C FR the Beginning of the New World Order – Bill Hughes (2002-2003)

Behind the Big News Propaganda and the CFR - Mainstream Media Controls ...

Africans Comprise a Large and Growing Share of Migrants to Europe

Assane Diallo, a migrant who is preparing to travel by boat from Senegal to the Canary Islands, poses for photograph in Dakar, Senegal, on November 28, 2018.Edward McAllister/Reuters

Blog Post by John Campbell

December 14, 2018


The European Commission announced that that migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea number 134,004 as of December 5, 2018, down from 179,536 during the same period in 2017. The year that saw the highest number of arrivals, 1,015,078, was 2015. While Italy experienced the biggest drop, arrivals actually increased in Spain and Greece. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan have remained the largest countries of origin since 2014; since then, almost one million Syrians have sought asylum in the Europe

Sub-Saharan Africans make up an large portion of those living outside their country of origin globally, and remain a significant and growing part of the migrant and refugee flow, especially those arriving in Italy and Spain. In Italy, in numerical order, the largest countries of origin were Tunisia, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. In Spain, it was Guinea, Morocco, Mali, and Ivory Coast. Spain retains two enclaves on the North African coast, Ceuta and Melilla, and many Africans go there to seek refugee asylum, sometimes storming border walls.

The prominence of Nigeria as an origin for migrants and refugees probably owes much to the fact that the country is by far most populous in Africa, comprising roughly one-sixth of the continent’s people. The other African countries of migrant and refugee origin—Eritrea, Sudan, Mali, Ivory Coast—are involved in internal conflict or are just emerging from it. Even though by Western standards migrants and refugees are desperately poor, they still need some money to afford to make it to Europe. The poorest of the poor, such as the internally displaced in northeast Nigeria, lack the resources to even try.

Source

Biden: McConnell Refused To Sign Bipartisan Statement On Russian Interference

January 24, 20183:24 AM ET


SCOTT NEUMANTwitter

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about U.S. relations with the Kremlin at the Council on Foreign Relations, on Tuesday.Alex Brandon/AP

Former Vice President Joe Biden says he and President Obama decided not to speak out publicly on Russian interference during the 2016 campaign after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to sign a bipartisan statement condemning the Kremlin's role.

Speaking on Tuesday at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden said the Obama administration sought a united front to dispel concerns that going public with such accusations would be seen as an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the election.

However, McConnell "wanted no part of having a bipartisan commitment saying, essentially, 'Russia's doing this. Stop,'" he said.

At that point, Biden added, he felt that "the die had been cast" and that "this was all about the political play."

Foreign Affairs Mag Advances Domestic Terrorism To Remove Alternative Media

by Tyler Durden

Oct 8, 2017 10:21 AM


Submitted by Mike Miles, journalist, writer and book author

Foreign Affairs Magazine Advances Domestic Terrorism To Remove Alternative Media

Is Foreign Affairs magazine advancing “domestic terrorism” because it could help remove alternative media, and even jail editors and writers or worse. The recent article is entitled “Should We Treat Domestic Terrorists the Way We Treat ISIS? What Works—and What Doesn't.” It begins as follows:

The mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night has again raised fears about terrorism. There’s much we don’t yet know. The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed the attack, but the FBI claims that there is no international terrorism link. The attacker, Stephen Paddock, was 64 years old and white, fitting a stereotype of a right-wing terrorist more than a jihadist one. And he may just be a crazy nut. But regardless of Paddock’s particular pathology, the situation highlights how the United States treats similar forms of violence differently depending on the nature of the perpetrator. 

Many commentators have already demanded that we make a case for domestic terrorism including such prominent Youtubers as Philip DeFranco. He runs a website of some six million and offers mildly libertarian commentary. But perhaps he doesn’t understand that he may eventually become a victim of what he wants to invoke. There are many such well-meaning people who quite possibly misunderstand what is happening

How about PropOrNot? This outfit lists around websites “friendly” to Russia and in total includes many of the major alternative websites in the country. Those who run the website say they believe these sites provide propaganda for Russia.

A recent reading of PropOrNot seems to reveal that the site may have reduced some of the finger-pointing. It says that it does not “censor.” However it continues to list websites nonetheless. The Washington Post drew information from PropOrNot long ago when it was trying to paint alternative websites as Russian sympathizers.

Three Cheers for Globalism!

An unabashed defense of the Trump administration’s favorite object of ire.


5 HOURS AGO

Max Boot



The defining epithet of the Age of Trump is “globalist.” This is the all-purpose term of abuse that the president and his most fervent supporters hurl at anyone who dissents from their populist agenda. During last year’s campaign, Donald Trump tweeted that the choice was “between Americanism” and Hillary Clinton’s “corrupt globalism.” His former strategist Steve Bannon, who thinks that “the globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,” was said to call economic advisor Gary Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, “Globalist Gary.” An National Security Council aide was fired by national security advisor H.R. McMaster after circulating a memo claiming that Trump is threatened by an unholy coalition of “globalists” along with “‘deep state’s actors,” “bankers,” “Islamists,” and “establishment Republicans.” (It would be fun to imagine a meeting of all these Trump enemies.)

It’s about time that someone spoke up for “globalism,” a term that is only insulting if you don’t ponder the alternatives. Sure, globalism has its downsides. But what, one wonders, is the opposite of globalism? Provincialism? Tribalism? Nationalism? None is appealing.

Provincialism, the dictionary tells us, is “the way of life or mode of thought characteristic of the regions outside the capital city of a country, especially when regarded as unsophisticated or narrow-minded.” That’s a pretty good description of Trump and his followers but presumably not one that they would embrace — no doubt they see this definition as emblematic of the disdain in which they are held by cosmopolitan elites.

Tribalism? That’s what gave us the genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and what is today responsible for the slaughter in Syria and Yemen and the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar. It is even leading to violence in Spain, where the national police cracked heads to stop a Catalan independence referendum. And, as Andrew Sullivan notes in a brilliant essay for New Yorkmagazine, tribalism is poisoning the political climate in America.

The End of the End of History

Re-published from Foreign Policy, the official magazine of the CFR, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN REALTIONS.

ARGUMENT


Donald Trump has restored American politics to its default setting — a fight over identity, morality, and religion.

BY SHADI HAMID

NOVEMBER 15, 2016




For the first time in our history, Americans have elected an “illiberal democrat” as president. That doesn’t mean the United States will become an illiberal democracy — where democratically elected leaders fundamentally erode the rights and freedoms we associate with the classical liberal tradition — anytime soon. But it does mean we could become one.

As a minority and a Muslim, the result of this election is distressing — and perhaps the most frightening event I’ve experienced in my own country. That said, there is something admirable in the idea that democratic outcomes will be respected even when people you hate (or people that hate you) come to power. I’ve studied “existential” elections in the Middle East, where there is simply too much at stake for the losers of elections to accept that the victors have, in fact, won.

A Conversation With John O. Brennan

Council on Foreign Relations 

Streamed live 18 hours ago


John O. Brennan discusses instability and transnational threats to global security.

Speaker:

John O. Brennan, Director, Central Intelligence Agency

On Foreign Policy, Trump's Campaign Hasn't Released Names Of Advisers (Richard Haass of CFR interviewed)

@ 1:00 Min., Richard Haass of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) is interviewed by NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U.S.

 

Updated March 17, 20168:05 AM ET Published March 17, 20165:21 AM ET

 

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Little is known about the foreign policy plans of Donald Trump. Mary Louise Kelly talks to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has met with the Republican front-runner.

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The Role of Religion in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call

February 18, 2016

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters



Speaker:
Robert P. Jones

Chief Executive Officer, Public Religion Research Institute

Presider:
Irina A. Faskianos

Vice President, National Program & Outreach, Council on Foreign Relations

Description


Robert P. Jones, chief executive officer of the Public Religion Research Institute, discusses American religious dynamics in the 2016 presidential nominating process, as part of CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series.

Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Initiative.

Audio

0:00:49
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0:51:18




Transcript


FASKIANOS: Good afternoon from New York, and welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call Series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the national program and outreach at CFR. As a reminder, today’s call is on the record, and the audio will be available on our website, www.CFR.org.

We’re delighted to have Robert Jones with us to talk about the role of religion in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Dr. Jones is the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research at the intersection of religion, values, and public life. Dr. Jones writes an online column for The Atlantic on politics and culture, and appears regularly in the “Faith by the Numbers” segment on Interfaith Voices. He also serves as the co-chair of the national steering committee for the Religion and Politics Section of the American Academy of Religion, and is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Politics and Religion. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, “The End of White Christian America,” and he tweets at @RobertPJones. And he has recently released a report which we circulated in advance from the Public Religion Research Institute.

Robert, thanks very much for being with us today. Given that the presidential primaries began this month, could you talk first about how religious dynamics differ in the primary process versus the general election?

JONES: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. And I’m really happy to be a part of the conversation today.

Well, yeah, I guess the first thing to say is that there have been some really major tectonic shifts in the religious landscape, particularly over the last half of the century but accelerating really in the 1990s. And the—my recent book, “The End of White Christian America”, which is a, you know, book with a very provocative title, but is really a data driven book that really looks at these changes and what their implications are.

So I can say a little bit more about the changes in a minute, but to answer the question directly—you know what, I think that what we see here is that the big—(inaudible)—we see in the—are really players in the general election. And in the upcoming primaries, what we see are still shifts happening on the ground, like in—even places like Iowa, for example, we have seen a drop in the number of people who identify as white and Christian by nine points just between 2007 and today, even in heartland America, in Iowa. We’ve seen a drop of 10 points in white evangelical proportion of the population in South Carolina. They’ve got a primary coming right up. So these things are in play in the early states, but they’re muted a bit because, particularly on kind of one side of the other, because religions have kind of sorted themselves in partisan ways, which we’ll talk about in a minute, those changes aren’t quite felt until we get to the general election.

So just a real quick example, in South Carolina, you know, we’re expected to see—historically, in the—in the primaries, South Carolinians on the GOP side have been upwards of two-thirds white evangelical Protestants. So we’re going to see—even though we see a decline in that number of the population in South Carolina and nationwide, we’re still going to see them playing an absolutely outsized role in the primary this weekend. Also, just the early primaries up through March 8, we will see about two-thirds of the total delegates on the Republican side will come from states that have electorates that are at least 50 percent white evangelical Protestant. So that’s a lot of delegates stacked early in the race. So we have the white evangelicals on the Republican side in particular playing an outsized role.

So, should I take us a minute and just talk about the big picture?

FASKIANOS: That would be great.

JONES: Great. All right. So let me just kind of take a step back from that and just talk about some of the big picture changes that I think people in the public have really felt happening around them, see evidence, but haven’t really, I think, fully wrapped their heads around them. So one point of my—of my book is really to kind of take a step back and to really map this out, and to look at the changes that are really clear, and the data, even though I think most of us kind of feel them in anecdotal ways.

So just a few numbers here—if we think about America—kind of the stereotypes of America anyway—being a kind of a WASP-y nation that is white Anglo-Saxon Protestant kind of cultural center, that is, you know, is certainly the case today and has been dissipating over the last half of the 20th century. Just a few numbers here. 1993 was the last year that the country was a majority white and Protestant. That number is down to 34 percent today. So you think about kind of Bill Clinton’s election in the early ‘90s as a real marker. 2008, even if you put all Protestants together, was the last year the country was a majority Protestant. It’s down to 46 percent today.

The religiously unaffiliated, on the other side, have really jumped—9 percent, again, right around President Clinton’s election in 1993, to 23 percent today. In fact, the religiously unaffiliated are now the largest major quote, unquote “religious group” in the country, actually surpassing Catholics in the last few years to take that place. And even if we kind of look at kind of all white Christians in the country together, today they comprise only 45 percent of the country. So that’s something quite new in the American landscape. And you can see it if you look at the generational divides. So two-thirds of the seniors, for example, identify as white and Christian versus only one-quarter of young adults. If you look at the flipside of that—one flipside is the unaffiliated. Only one in 10 seniors are religiously unaffiliated, but 36 percent of young adults are unaffiliated.

And I think the other things in the mix for the election that are relevant—and I can give some numbers later if we do questions, but I’ll just mention them now—are economic anxieties that are really high. So even though, you know, we’re looking at 4.9 percent unemployment, really good macroeconomic indicators, all the economists are saying, you know, we haven’t been in recession for some time, in our polling, we still find more than seven in 10 Americans saying that they still think that the country is in an economic recession.

We’ve also seen an uptick in cultural anxieties, whether that’s concerns or negative attitudes about Muslims, negative attitudes about immigrants. Those things are all on the rise. And then finally, kind of a—what I would say is there’s a kind of nostalgic mood, particularly among, I think, older white Americans in the country. We have a kind of question that ask about whether things have changed for the better or for the worse since the 1950s. And we basically see there that among white Americans, you know, strong majority saying they’ve mostly changed for the worst. Among nonwhite Americans, strong things—people think that they’ve strongly changed for the better.

And finally, just a word about voting patterns. You know, I don’t expect that we’re going to see any great upsets in voting patterns. If you look back—2004, 2008, 2012—in the religious landscape, the voting patterns have been fairly consistent. And what we have basically seen is white Christian groups, whether it’s evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, or white Catholics basically voting, leaning toward Republican candidates. Nonwhite Christians, the religiously unaffiliated, and non-Christian religious groups—Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, et cetera—and Muslims—leaning toward Democratic candidates. That’s, I think, likely to stay stable, although the proportions may shift a bit.

One last thing I’ll say here that I think is kind of relevant is that if you think about kind of, you know, the reliance on white Christian voters as a kind of metric of kind of where the parties are and how they differ in terms of their competition, if we go back to 1992—again, the kind of early ‘90s, where we see these trends really accelerating—Democratic presidential candidates were receiving a little more than eight in 10—or, sorry—six in 10 reliance on white Christian voters, whereas Republicans were relying on 86 percent white Christian voters.

What’s happened over time is that Republican presidential campaigns have relied on about that same amount. So if you look back at Romney in 2012, his voting coalition was comprised of 80 percent white and Christian voters, whereas Barack Obama’s coalition was comprised of only 37 percent white Christian voters. So basically Democratic presidential candidates have been sort of following the demographic shifts in the country, whereas Republican presidential candidates have been kind of relying really on a shrinking pool of white Christian voters at a pretty high rate.

And is actually one of the real dilemmas, I think, for particularly Republicans going forward is how to broaden this tent and not rely so heavily on one fairly homogeneous group. And for Democrats, I think it really is kind of the opposite problem. How do you hold together such a diverse coalition? You can’t really aim talking points at one particular group because you have such a broad group to appeal to. So I’ll stop there and maybe we can kind of move towards some questions.

FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Let’s open up to the group for questions and comments.

OPERATOR: Thank you. At this time, we will open the floor for questions. (Gives queuing instructions.)

Our first question will come from Jack Moline with Interfaith Alliance.

MOLINE: Hi, thanks. It’s Moline, but that’s close enough. Robby, thanks for being with us today, and thanks to CFR for hosting this call.

So I’m wondering if you have determined whether a candidate’s lack of professed faith works to his or her advantage with any demographic constituency—sort of the inverse of what the people who are professing a very solid faith are experiencing with white Christians?

JONES: Yeah. Well, we have, you know, in some ways two working examples in front of us. I mean—so we have, you know, Bernie Sanders, who’s Jewish, but not particularly religious in his Jewish identity, so that’s an—that makes him different, say, than, you know, Joe Lieberman. On the Democratic side, what we see in our polling is that most Democratic-leaning voters rank kind of either someone who shares their religious beliefs or someone who is themselves religious at slightly lower levels. One kind of, I guess, exception to that is African-Americans, who tend to be very religious and do tend to say they want someone who—are more likely to say someone who has strong religious beliefs is something attractive to them in the mix. But I don’t—it’s not a deal breaker, I think, on that side.

But, you know, what I would say is more interesting this year is that we are seeing—we had hints of this in the Romney campaign, where evangelicals were very reticent about Romney early in the primary process. Evangelical leaders were meeting and trying to kind of rally support behind kind of almost anyone but Romney. Didn’t really work out. And in fact, evangelicals, as Romney became the clear nominee, ultimately rallied behind him and voted at levels that were comparable to their support for McCain, their support for Bush—about eight in 10 evangelicals lined up, voted for Romney. They also turned out at relatively high levels.

But we may see kind of a different script happening here with Donald Trump. I’ll say just a little bit about this, and if we have another question we can kind of come back to it more in depth. But what I would say is that Trump’s appeal to “make America great again”—probably the most important word in that slogan is the word “again” at the end. And again, if I kind of tie this to that question I had about the 1950s—white evangelical Protestant voters score the highest on this thing about whether America’s changed for the better or for the worse since the 1950s. About seven in 10 white evangelicals say it’s changed for the worse. And white evangelicals also tend to be sort of most opposed to some of the kind of deep cultural changes around gay rights, other things. So still over—one of the—there’s only really two major religious groups strongly opposed to same-sex marriage, and that’s Mormons and white evangelical Protestants.

But what Trump’s appeal is, I think, is really an appeal—I’ve been sort of thinking about this. And it might be worth noting that, you know, white evangelical Protestants might not be just thought of as values voters, you know, as they were in kind of all the hype around 2004, but might be thought of as nostalgia voters. And in that front, Trump doesn’t really have to appeal to them on religious grounds. He can really appeal to them on, I mean—just today, there was an interview out with CBN’s David Brody and Trump, where Trump just flatly said: You know, I’m going to give more power to the Christian churches. Like, that’s a goal of mine as a presidential candidate. And he’s speaking straight to people, I think, who feel like the cultural world that they have been accustomed to and the cultural power that they’ve been accustomed to having is slipping away, and I think Trump is speaking directly to those fears.

MOLINE: Thanks.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Michael Jerryson with Youngstown State University.

JERRYSON: Thank you.

This is a very interesting conversation, and I’m appreciating the way—looking at the intersections of race and religion. I had a question about methodology as we move forward, as you noted the decline in the white Christian group. Places like the PRRI, that you head, as well as Pew Research seem to be conducting bilingual telephone interviews, whereas if we’re trying to get a sense of the non-Christian—for example, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu—we need a wide array of language capabilities. It seems that sometimes the hinder the ability to assess fully these changes in demographics.

JONES: Yeah, no, it’s a great question. So you’re right. So we, you know, conduct all the—all the polls that are conducted by PRRI are conducted in English and Spanish, and are conducted on cell phones and on landlines as well. And that’s to ensure the kind of—ensure broad coverage. It is, you know, absolutely not perfect. And you’re correct to kind of, you know—if you were to get, you know—you wanted a random sample of Muslim Americans, you know, you would need to sort of go beyond—you would need Arabic, you would need Farsi, you would need, you know, maybe even a couple of other languages to really get a true random sample. I think what we’re really looking at here is, you know, some of the limitations, really, that have to do with cost—primarily, really. And are we casting the net quite wide enough to get a full account of, sort of, yeah, non-English, non-Spanish speaking—particularly Muslims or Buddhists? You know, I think the answer to that is clearly we’re not, particularly on telephone polls.

And I think we’re looking at a real limitation. So what I would say is that, you know, even these large surveys—and we just released, you know, our American values survey that has more than 80,000 interviews—it’s one of the largest surveys ever conducted here—but it is all in English and Spanish. So what I would say is certainly when you’re looking at public opinion polls that have been conducted by telephone, you know, even the gold standard polls—like our organization, Pew—you really do—you are going to have to look at those numbers. And when you see, you know, 0.7 percent Muslim, you recognize that, well, that’s English and then Spanish-speaking Muslims only, right? It’s certainly a conservative count, if anything.

JERRYSON: Thank you.

JONES: Yep.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. (Gives queuing instructions.)

Our next question will come from Syed Sayeed from Columbia University.

SAYEED: Good afternoon, and thank you very much both to the speaker and to the Council for Foreign Relations for, you know, arranging for this conference call. It’s a very timely discussion that we are all sort of engaged in.

I wanted to sort of, you know, look at this issue as, you know, on the part of people who are raising the, what should I say, the religious, you know, item in these elections. Irrespective of who is doing that, whether Muslims or non-Muslims, whether candidates or parties or groups, it’s major distraction from what the issues at hand we have in the present election.

I wanted to sort of ask the speaker the question, what does he think of the use of religion, or language, or immigration—whatever issues we have, they should be looked at in a broader context of the global setting that we have now, and the role U.S. has to play in the issues that are important in the global, you know, setting. So I just want to sort of leave it there and see what, you know, response do you have. Thank you.

JONES: Sure, so I think can, you know, use that as a jumping-off point to address a couple of things that you raised. I mean, so one is that, you know, if we look attitudes toward American Muslims, for example, or Islam, what we see, the kind of general pattern is that after 9/11, mostly really as the result some very sort of quick and positive work that President Bush did to say that we were not at war with Islam, that—to affirm, you know, the presence of, you know, American Muslims as an important part of American society. Those things he did very consistently in a whole set of speeches right after 9/11. And most Americans didn’t have strong opinions, and so what we saw is kind of a benefit of the doubt period in the—in the data.

And then we’ve seen sort of—sort of more negative attitudes sort of creeping up. And then at around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the country was basically divided on a—on a set of questions about—like one benchmark about whether Islam was at odds with American values and way of life—Americans were basically divided. They were divided generationally, along party lines, along ideological lines that basically kind of divided down the middle. And we’ve seen in the past few years these numbers kick up a bit. So there, our last numbers were 56 percent of Americans agreed that the values of Islam were at odds with American values and way of life. That’s mostly been the results of sort of people who are more conservative moving out of the middle and over onto that side. But again, it divides people by race, by age, and by party.

But I think it’s really indicative of a bigger kind of cultural anxiety, and I think that’s the more important underlying thing. And the reason why we’re hearing about these things from presidential candidates, you know, rather than maybe talking straight up about particular issues, or laws, or a policy position, you know—in particular in the primaries—is because they, you know, they have their own polling and they know that their base is worried about these—about these issues. And so I think we’re hearing a lot about them, but that’s reflective of the fact that there is some kind of anxiety in the—in the culture about changes in the country.

And, you know, kind of again, back to the—to the kind of title of the book, I really do think it is about a real shift. And we’ve kind of reached a tipping point where institutionally, culturally, and even by the numbers, you know, a group that—kind of white Christians in the country have really slipped to being a minority in the country. And that’s kind of a new thing. And I think there’s a sense of kind of vertigo among many particularly conservative white Christians about what that means; what it means for the country; what it means for the future. You combine that with economic anxiety and it’s a pretty volatile—a pretty volatile mix. I think that’s some of what we’re seeing going on, and why we’re seeing presidential candidates trade in some of these—even diatribes along these lines.

SAYEED: If I may follow up, I mean, you mentioned about Bernie Sanders. He made it very clear that he does not align himself with, you know, the kind of rhetoric that’s going on. In fact, he came out very openly against it. And he has a vast majority of people, you know, from within the Democratic Party and the younger generation. So would you see any, you know, underlying logic why the people from, you know, that group are not really as much, you know, sort of anxious and negative about what, you know, other politicians are saying?

JONES: Yeah, I mean one of the things I could say is that, I mean, you’re right—Bernie Sanders has been doing really well among younger voters. And I think that one of the things going on, particularly around these kind of cultural anxieties that have to do with Latinos, or Muslims, or changing kind of demographics in the country, are that the younger generation, you know, has grown up amidst a very—that generation is very diverse, certainly compared to seniors. So they’re much more likely to know someone Muslim, much more likely to know someone Latino, have close friendships—and those all make a real, you know, make real difference in the country on these attitudes.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Patrick Carolan with Franciscan Action Network.

CAROLAN: Thank you. And my question’s going to kind of almost be a follow-up question to the previous question, but a little different topic.

You mentioned about white evangelicals, and particularly some hot-button issues such as gay marriage. And I’ve seen some recent studies—and I apologize, because I can’t tell you exactly where—but that have shown that gay marriage, or opposition to gay marriage is not as strong of an issue with younger evangelicals as it is with older evangelicals. And that may be the same—may have the same answer to that as it had to the previous question about Muslims with the younger generation, but I’m wondering if you’ve seen that in your data, and what does that bode for the future, particularly for the future of the Republican Party, whose whole—you know, is based on these kind of hot-button issues if the younger generation of evangelicals are more supportive of gay marriage?

JONES: Yeah, that’s a great question.

You know, I think it’s worth kind of dialing it back to 2004, you know, where we saw kind of abortion and gay marriage as these wedge issues that were playing very prominently in that campaign. We had a dozen ballot initiatives on the ballot to—that were constitutional amendments or prohibitions on same-sex marriage that all passed in 2004. That wasn’t that long ago. It’s been a real sea change on this issue that’s been led really by younger people. It turns out that everyone in the country, even older Americans, have been shifting their attitudes on this issue, but it’s kind of a wave of younger people really pushing it.

And so you’re right, here, that if you look at—we just released, actually, one of the largest studies on LGBT issues that’s ever been issued on—we had over 42,000 interviews conducted in 2015. So we could actually break out, like, just—we had nearly 8,000 white evangelical Protestants in this study, so we could break them out by age with quite a bit of confidence. And what we found is that if we look at younger white evangelicals under 30, that basically they’re divided on the question. So if you look at seniors, for example, three-quarters of white evangelical seniors oppose same-sex marriage, but only 49 percent of evangelicals under the age of 30 oppose same-sex marriage. So you have a younger generation that’s, you know, divided on the issue, and, you know, a good, you know, nearly 30-points—25-point difference, generation gap, between seniors and younger evangelicals on this issue.

So the other thing to say is that this issue just doesn’t rank that high on younger voter’s kind of priority list. And so I, you know, I think that’s why we’re not seeing actually a lot of it in this election cycle, because, particularly as Republican candidates, you know, want to reach out, they want to reach out not just to older evangelicals, but younger evangelicals. And foregrounding something like this is just not going to—it’s going to fall kind of flat among younger evangelicals.

Having said that, the issue of abortion is still kind of as divisive as ever. And so we’ll—I think we’re—that’s why you’re seeing almost no talk about same-sex marriage and LGBT issues, still some talk around Planned Parenthood and reproductive health and rights, and abortion, because those issues are still, I think, fairly divided along party and ideological lines, even among younger Americans.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Adam Estle with the National Immigration Forum.

ESTLE: Hi, Robert. Thank you so much for all the work that you guys do—it’s really incredible. And really appreciate this American values model.

JONES: Thank you.

ESTLE: I’m noticing there’s a little immigration coming soon, so I’m very excited about that section.

JONES: Yes.

ESTLE: I do have a question about the—about the religious tradition categories and wondering, as you’ve—as you’ve mentioned, our country’s becoming less and less of a white-dominant culture. Is there any way that you guys can have data already, or can start asking about different categories like Hispanic evangelicals, for example, or, you know, breaking down each of the black Protestant or Hispanic Protestant categories a little bit more?

JONES: Yes. You know, what you’re talking about is absolutely true. So yeah, I’ve been talking a lot about kind of the country wrapping their heads around the demographic changes, but social scientists and political scientists are also having to wrap their heads around these changes. It does mean that—you’re absolutely right, that, you know, our traditional categories for sorting people are getting bent, and some of them are getting bent to the breaking point. So we’re going to have to kind of rethink this pretty soon, especially where you have increasing number of people not identifying—just if you were only talking about race, people not identifying just as white, black, you know, Asian, Pacific Islander, but many people identifying as mixed race, right? And that’s a new category to try to figure out what, you know, how does that fit into the landscape and how do you report out on that in a coherent way?

We have been breaking out in our largest surveys for example, Hispanic Protestants as a separate category when we have enough. In our smaller surveys and typical political surveys that you see of a thousand people, there are not enough Hispanic Protestants to break them out with any confidence. But in our larger surveys, like the American Values Atlas, we are breaking them out separately. And what we tend to see generally is that Hispanic Protestants look a lot more like their white Evangelical cousins than they look like Hispanic Catholics. They tend to be—lean Republican, be conservative on social issues, and kind of have worship styles that look like—and kind of, religiously speaking, have worship styles that look more like Evangelical charismatic Protestants.

But we are seeing—in, like, every report we put out now we are differentiating between white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics, because they have just developed over time such a different political profile. You know, so we had Romney winning white Catholics and Obama handily winning Hispanic Catholics, for example, kind of heading two different directions of presidential years. One little side anecdote, though, is on—we were just talking about same-sex marriage. Notably, white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics are both majority support for same-sex marriage. So there’s actually not a divide on that. But if you get into other issues and more—and things that are around vote and party, there are those differences. But you’re absolutely right to flag it. It’s something we’re certainly struggling with and continue to think hard about, about how to—but we already have—we certainly have more religious categories than we had 10 years ago. And that’s just the response of king of dealing with the continued complexity of American life.

And the other piece that we’ll have to deal with soon, I think, and we’re already thinking about, is that we have about one in 10 Americans now saying that they identify with more than one religion, all right? So they don’t just practice one religion. And that’s beyond intermarriage. That’s like individuals themselves saying that they are the follower or practitioner of more than one religion. And so reporting out about that, again, in a coherent way, is also a challenge we’re still working on.

ESTLE: Thank you very much.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Michelle Bentsman with Harvard Divinity School.

BENTSMAN: Hi. Thanks so much for your comments thus far. I’m really interested in this phrase you’re talking about, about the nostalgia voters and Donald Trump. And I’d like to know more about how we understand sort of the cultural-religious distinction. And also, it seems to me that there might be maybe a little bit of cognitive dissonance in thinking about a prior time when the political landscape was far more steeped in religion, and then sort of applying Donald Trump to that image. So I’m wondering if cultural position is taking the place of religion, even for the faithful, and why this seems acceptable for those that are professing faith.

JONES: Yes. I think that’s an interesting way of putting it, that—you know, cultural position taking place over religion or identity politics, because I do think—you know, we’re showing Trump still ahead nationally, even in South Carolina, a state steeply—or, you know, steeped in religion, and particularly in Evangelical religion. He’s still out ahead. He’s ahead among Evangelical voters in South Carolina. Now, how is that the case? And it’s worth saying, right, that there’s all kinds of ways that that should not be the case. You know, he’s talked about, like, two Corinthians, he accidentally put money in the communion plate thinking it was the offering plate. I mean, all kinds of—you know, plenty of gaffes that have been—that would communicate, right, that I’m not one of you.

But at the same time, I think he’s been able to say, OK, maybe I’m not one of you. And he’s not—and that’s the script that, like, Rubio is using and Cruz is using to kind of convince them that they are one of them. It’s more of an identity appeal. I mean, Trump’s appeal is really more of a—it is more of a cultural appeal, or an appeal to their interest—their cultural interests, right, that I get that you feel like you’re on the outs, I get that you feel like your power is slipping away.

I mean, the interview he gave today to Brody that I mentioned earlier today was about as straightforward as I’ve seen, just saying: I will restore power to the Christian churches. Like, that is what I’m going to do as president. He’s made other comments like this in the international scene, saying: I will protect Christians. You know, ISIS is beheading Christians abroad and I’m going to protect Christians in the world. And I think those appeals really are about, you know, an appeal to an America that many Evangelicals feel in some ways is slipping away, in both kind of cultural and religious terms, and even the statistical terms. And I think that’s been a big part of the appeal.

I think we had hints of this with Romney, though. And I think we kind of missed it, frankly, that—you know, Romney also wasn’t about to straightforwardly make the I’m one of you appeal with Evangelicals. But ultimately, he was able to kind of be their candidate, even though he wasn’t able to make the I’m one of you appeal.

FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you very much. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you.

(Gives queuing instructions.)

Our next question will come from Gary MacDonald with Southern Methodist University.

MACDONALD: Yes, hi. Thank you for participating today. I had a question about a news item today. I read a report that the pope had commented on the wall—the border wall between Mexico and Texas, and saying that Donald Trump’s comments indicate that he is not a Christian. Now, I’m not sure if that’s a quote or not, but that’s what the report had said. And I’m wondering what kind of influence a religious leader like the pope, in particular, or religious leaders in general are having on the so-called faithful.

JONES: Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, I think, you know, clearly his—Trump’s concerns would be more about, like, what is the Catholic response to this? I mean, it’s worth nothing that, you know, at least in the short-term thinking, that South Carolina is not a state with a large number of Catholics. Only 6 percent of the state is—identifies as Catholic. So that’s—so there may be some short-term calculus going on here as well. But you know, I think the other thing to say is that—I mean, Trump certainly knows how to be in the media, right? So there’s no bigger way to be in the media than taking on the pope on Twitter.

So, you know, I saw Trump tweeting back, actually, today that—you know, pretty much right back, you know, at him, and said anyone who questions anyone’s faith, that that’s disgraceful, is what he said back at the pope. So you know, there’s basically a Twitter war going on between the pope and Donald Trump. Now, that’s a little surreal to think about in the context of a presidential election, but it certainly lands Trump back on the headlines. And I think that may be part of—you know, part of the strategy here.

But on immigration, it’ll be really interesting to see, you know, what happens. And I mentioned, to kind of tie it back to the bigger thing, this—and maybe the first question we got asked is that, you know, the general election versus the primaries, that it’s very clear that all the Republican candidates are running away from immigration reform, even Rubio was part of this gang of eight bill in the Senate. But in the general election—you know, George W. Bush got 40 percent of the Latino vote. And in the general election, Republicans are going to have to reach out to the Latino community to do well. And I think this is going to be a real, I think, challenge, given where kind of the immigration stances have lined up on the issue.

So yeah, I don’t pretend to know everything that’s going on here, but there may be some short-term calculus where being tough on immigration plays well among a Republican electorate. But having said that, you know, one thing we have been seeing pretty clearly is that Republicans overall are basically divided on comprehensive immigration reform, even one that includes a path to citizenship. We have about half of Republicans actually supporting that policy and then, you know, very strong (minorities ?) of independents and Democrats supporting that policy. So I think that’s something that the Republican candidates are really going to have to contend with, even among their own base, that this is not an issue that, you know, they have overwhelming majorities behind them on.

MACDONALD: Thank you.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Andrew Gerhart with Stanford University.

GERHART: Hi, Dr. Jones. And thank you for your work, and all of you for this call. Can you hear me?

FASKIANOS: Yes, we can.

JONES: Yes.

GERHART: Oh, great. I wanted to ask—I was playing around with your really neat Atlas here, and I saw that you have a climate change button that might come online soon. And I was extremely interested in how this plays out. I guess so it’s a two-part question. What do you expect to be showing in that data? And then I guess when you mention that the unaffiliated have gone from 9 to 23 percent, I’m kind of wondering if you can clarify or nuance a little bit more about how they are and where they’re coming from.

JONES: Yeah. All right, I’ll work backwards. The unaffiliated, yeah, so they basically nearly tripled in size since the early ’90s. And for the most part, you know, they’re coming from younger people. Like I said, 36 percent of Americans under the age of 30 are religiously unaffiliated. That’s more than triple the number of seniors who are religiously unaffiliated. So they’re clearly coming from kind of the younger generations. But the other places they’re coming from, so people coming up and sort of not continuing to be involved in religions as they become young adults. But they’re also coming from other people who are leaving religions.

And there really is—really I’m thinking about the biggest—the group that has lost the most to religious switching are Catholics, in the country, particularly white Catholics. And in fact, if we didn’t have kind of Hispanic replacement through immigration and higher birthrates, the number of Catholics would have plummeted in the last 30 years as well. But the one thing that’s holding them steady is actually a rising number of Hispanic Catholics. But there’s been a kind of attrition of white Catholics contributing. But this has been true. Also white mainline Protestants have seen disaffiliation among that group. Even white Evangelicals really—but only in the last 10 years have we seen a drop in kind of white Evangelical protestants in the country as well.

And there’s a lot of factors here. We actually did a couple surveys where we asked kind of, you know, people, particularly who were raised religious but then left kind of why they left. The biggest reasons people gave were very mundane—like, it just didn’t hold their interest, they felt like they grew out of it, they weren’t, like, hard rejectionist kinds of answers. The only group that we had—we had about a third of people saying that they left over negative teachings about gay and lesbian people. That was kind of the biggest category. But it was still only a third who said that’s why they left. So I think it’s a variety of reasons.

One quick thing to say about who they are, only about a third of them are actually atheist or agnostic, and kind of nontheistic beliefs. The rest of them are kind of a hodgepodge. And I think we’re still trying to kind of wrap our heads around it. But there seem to be two other groups in there: one, a group that is kind of basically secular, who tend not to be that religious, religion is not that important to them but they’re not—also not atheist. They believe in God, but religion itself is just not that important.

And then there’s another group that’s about a third of this group that is actually pretty religious. They tend to be heavily minority, a little bit economically downscale, and they believe in God at high levels. They pray. They look like more traditionally religious people, but they just don’t claim a connection to organized religion. So I think there’s still a lot of work to be done there. That’s about what I can say about what we know. But that group is really bit. As I said, it’s now the biggest, quote, unquote, “religious group” in the country. And I think that’s an area ripe for a lot more research.

On the climate change button, so the last climate change survey we did, in conjunction with the American Academy of Religion, was in 2014. That’s up on our website. The button is—we are hoping to have funded this year, which means it would come online in 2017—about this time of year in 2017. So we haven’t really worked out the questions. There’s like to be two or three benchmark questions. That tends to be how the American Values Atlas is constructed. That kinds of gives us a 50-state map of American attitudes on the particular topic.

So we hope to be collecting data this year and have it out the following year. It takes—it should be said, since we’re collecting such large data sets, you know, there’s more than 40,000 interviews that we’re conducting here, it’s a very long field period to collect that many. We basically collect them basically 1,000 interviews a week for 40 weeks, and then compile the data set. And then we’ll have it available next year.

GERHART: Thank you very much.

JONES: Yep.

FASKIANOS: Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Rachel Shepard, with Sister of Social Service.

SHEPARD: Yes. This is Rachel Shepard.

JONES: Hi.

SHEPARD: Hi. Oh, as I understand it, there’s no religious test for the presidency, that there’s not to be a religious test. This election thing seems to be all about religion. And it’s kind of deflecting from what’s important. Is it higher this year than it was in the last elections?

JONES: Well, it’s interesting. You know, there was a lot of religion—I’m thinking back to Romney—a lot of stuff around, you know, religion, particularly in the primaries. And again, I think this is where it really plays out, and particularly for Republicans who have these early states like Iowa and South Carolina, where there is one religious group in these states—white Evangelical protestants—that are so important. Like, you will not—if you don’t do well with white Evangelical protestants in Iowa and South Carolina and a number of other southern states prior to March 8th, you’re not going to do well in the Republican primary. So I think we always see this kind of early part. We see religion kind of coming out of the woodwork for this early part of the primary season.

I do think because we’ve got Cruz, and Rubio, and Trump at the top of the ticket, and particular Cruz and Rubio, I think are both kind of vying in very kind of overt ways, and kind of like religious identity appeals. So I think we’re seeing maybe a little more of that and a little more straightforward than we saw. But you know, you got to remember, we had Rick Santorum, who was making very similar—even though he was Catholic—making very similar kind of appeals. In the last election we had Mike Huckabee who hung in there much longer than he did this time, who was also an Evangelical pastor himself.

So I’m not sure we’re seeing a little more of it. I think, you know, certainly the kind of more chaotic race, I think, is—and the kind of number of debates has cast more spotlight on it, on this year. And you’re right to say, right, constitutionally speaking we have no religious test for office. But of course, that kind of legal separation of church and state is never really separated religion and politics. And we’ve kind of seen, you know, that Americans have historically—but I think this is changing. Certainly among younger people it is much less true, that they don’t link patriotism and religion the way that past generations did. And so I think we may be seeing a sea change on that.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Paul De Vries with New York Divinity School.

DEVRIES: Hi, Robert Jones. I thank you again for your participation.

JONES: Hey, Paul.

DEVRIES: And thank you, Council on Foreign Relations.

I’m intrigued that we’re continuing to divide white Evangelicals, from black Evangelicals, from Asian-American Evangelicals, Hispanic Evangelicals, when at the same time there is at least some movement toward more multiethnic churches, multiethnic collaboration, church movements. Is there—are there two different winds going here in opposite directions, where there’s also a trend for more unity across these sociological racial divides?

JONES: Yeah, it’s a great question. And you know, I think some of it depends on what lens you’re bringing to it. You know, so if you’re inside a religion department or a seminary, you know, the kind of commonalities and the efforts to bridge racial divides, to kind of bridge the denominational divides, and even the kind of diversification we’re seeing inside of denominations, and even in denominations as historically white as the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, seeing some diversification of African-American and Latino churches, even inside that traditionally white denomination—I mean, all that is true. You know, that’s sort of one lens.

I mean, the other interesting lens—the other lens that I think that tends to get brought at it, not from inside of kind of the religious world but in the political world, and a lot of polling is driven, or most polling is driven, by a kind of political science lens, as a quantitative kind of scientific study of religion. It does take into account kind of political behavior and tendencies. And I think one of the reasons, for example, that African-American Protestants, who are predominantly Evangelical, are separated out from white non-Hispanic Evangelical Protestants, and who are also separated out from Hispanic Protestants.

Although, they—it is interesting, if you ask them questions about their belief about the Bible, their belief about traditional kind of orthodox religious beliefs, you will not see a lot of daylight between these groups. But just as kind of one quick, you know, thing, if you look at the last presidential election, African-American protestants voted 95 percent for President Obama. And white Evangelical protestants voted almost nearly 79 or 80 percent for Romney. So just completely divergent political proclivities, in terms of partisanship, and in terms of a lot of—a whole range of issues—economic issues, social issues—in very different places.

So I think that’s why they get sorted out. But, I mean, there’s nothing magical about that. You’re right to kind of remind us that, OK, there’s a kind of theological family here that makes some sense. But it tends to kind of fall apart when we start talking about politics.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. Next question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from David Brenner with University Presbyterian Church. Sir, your line is open.

BRENNER: Yes. Can you hear me?

OPERATOR: Yes, sir. We can hear you now.

BRENNER: All right. Sorry. Here’s my question: Looking at your—I just googled while you were talking here, your book that’s coming out on Amazon. I saw at the end of the description you say that: Looking ahead, Jones forecasts the ways that white Christian American might adjust to find their place in the new America, and the consequences for all of us if they don’t. And I wondered if you might give us a little foretaste of how you see that going. (Laughter.)

JONES: Yeah. You know, I think it’s going to be fraught. And you know, we’re already seeing, I think, some of that. But I do think, you know, the—I’ll point to a couple things just to make it really concrete. Like, I think that Russell Moore and the Southern Baptist Convention, right, it’s the largest—it’s the largest Protestant denomination in the country. It is deeply rooted in the South, has, you know, a pretty horrific history on race and slavery, was formed out of being a pro-slavery part of the Baptist world.

You know, and that’s the denomination that that, as I said, has been making some inroads, sort of both in internal diversity—had its first African-American president of the denomination just recently—and, you know, I think Russell Moore has been doing a lot to sort of reach out to not only just the black Baptists, but other African-Americans. Wrote I think a pretty important piece that I think would have been unimaginable a few decades ago about the confederate flag, and, in his view, its inconsistency with Christianity—displaying the confederate flag in the South. So I think there’s a lot of things happening there that are new and important.

At the same time, I think white Christians are still struggling pretty hard to wrap their heads around the Black Lives Matter movement—what does that mean, what’s it about? And we still see in the country these huge divides. And one of the things I talk about in the book is just the big social segregation that we still have in the country, that when we measure, for example, the kind of friendship networks of the average white American, it still remains 91 percent white. And so you have more than 9 in 10 of your friendships—you know, of your close friendship circles, where you really sort of form opinions, check your opinions, being that homogeneous, you know, reaching across these divides is going to be—you know, it’s going to be a pretty tricky endeavor.

So I think we’re still in for a lot of bumps in the road, a lot of—I don’t—you know, as someone who’s sort of a social scientist who thinks about, like, taking snapshots of the country and describing what I see and kind of looking back to the past, always a little reticent of looking too far ahead to the future, but I think we’re in—there are some signs for hope. And I think there’s—you know, that sort of this is—there’s no doubt this is a transition, that it’s a big one that we’re currently kind of working our way through as a country.

I think there’s signs of hope that, you know, this is a transition that we will make, and still kind of hold things together. And, you know, I think there’s always some reasons to be, you know, pretty concerned. So I don’t know—that’s a little bit of a vague thing, but I think that’s kind of where I come out at the end of the day.

BRENNER: Great. Thank you.

FASKIANOS: Thank you. I think we have time for one last question.

OPERATOR: Thank you. Our next question will come from Michael Saahir from Nur-Allah Islamic Center.

SAAHIR: Hello?

OPERATOR: Yes, sir. Your line is open.

FASKIANOS: Yeah, go ahead.

SAAHIR: OK. Yes, I wanted to ask a question regarding—the topic is the role of religion, where it’s, of course, in America Christianity is dominant religion. What is the role that other religions may play in the 2016 elections, please?

JONES: I’m sorry, the question was kind of what is—

FASKIANOS: So I think it’s the role—what role religion will play in the elections, just getting back to a wrap up of that, answering that question, Robby, would be great.

JONES: OK, yeah.

SAAHIR: What I wanted to ask was not just the role of Christianity, but the role of other religions as well, like Islam.

JONES: Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, yes.

So you know, it’s—I should say that what we’re looking at in the country today—you know, it’s still, I mean, answering with the kind of shifts and changes that we have in the country—you know, we’re still looking at a country that is, you know, two-thirds Christian, it’s about 5 percent kind of non-Christian religious, and then about a quarter were loosely unaffiliated. So you know, we’re still looking at Christianity playing an outsized role, it’s just that there’s—you know, there is a much more diverse Christianity out there than there has ever been, you know, with a lot of nonwhite Christian groups in the mix, and reaching kind of critical mass.

You know, I think the role of kind of smaller religious groups in the country is certainly growing, but again it’s about 5 percent of the country now that is religiously affiliated but not Christian. And so I think in terms of just absolute numbers it’s less. But I think sort of what we are seeing is places where it’s working its way into the vocabulary of the country. And one thing I would say, is even though I sort of talked about that number of people worried about Islam being incompatible with American values and way of life, that is true. We also found though that, at the same time, about six in 10 Americans say that American Muslims are an important part of the U.S. religious community.

So it’s a very complex picture out there. And I guess the other thing I would say is that we’re seeing it. Presidents kind of think about—so I think George Bush was the first president who talked about churches, synagogues, and mosques. He used that phrase in many speeches that he gave to just describe the kind of religious institutional makeup of the country. President Obama has continued that practice. And President Obama has also added those of no religious faith to a lot of his speeches, kind of giving a nod to the rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans in the country.

So I think we’re seeing kind of in our leaders, you know, some moves from, you know, both sides of the political aisle to kind of acknowledge the diversity. I mean, I think where we’re at is that it’s certainly that can’t be ignored, and that we’re going to see, you know, playing an important symbolic role, even if the kind of absolute votes aren’t going to sort of tip it at the end of the day. But certainly among younger people, you know, it’s playing a more outsized role among younger people too. So I think candidates appealing to younger people have got to remember they’re talking to a much more diverse—religiously, culturally, racially—audience than they—you know, than they might be talking to anyone else.

FASKIANOS: Well, thank you. We have come to the end of our hour. And we really appreciate all your questions and to you, Robert Jones, for this thoughtful analysis that you’ve—and your comments that you’ve shared with us today. And so the amazing work that you’re doing at the Public Religion Research Institute. If you haven’t already looked at it, today they released a report on same-sex marriage, if you want to look at that. And we also sent out an American Values Atlas, which is a really amazing research tool that allows you to look at demographic political and religious attributes of the United States today. So I commend that all to you.

You can also follow Robert Jones on Twitter at @RobertPJones. So I hope you will look there. The Public Religion Research Institute is at @PublicReligion. And the CFR’s religious Twitter at @CFR_Religion, for announcements like upcoming events such as these, and other information about CFR resources that may inform your work. So, Robby, thank you, again, for today. We really appreciate it.

JONES: Thank you. Thanks, everyone.

(END)

Source

,

Christianity in China

CFR Backgrounders






Author: Eleanor Albert,
Online Writer/Editor


Updated: May 7, 2015
Jason Lee/Courtesy Reuters


Christianity in China By Eleanor Albert


Introduction

China has witnessed a religious revival over the past four decades, in particular with the significant increase in Christian believers, accounting for 5 percent of the population, according to Pew Research Center data. The number of Chinese Protestants has grown by an average of 10 percent annually since 1979. By some estimates, China is on track to have the world's largest population of Christians by 2030. Though the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is officially atheist, the rise of Christianity presents Beijing with challenges as well as new options for contributing to services, such as health care and education, to an increasingly demanding public. The government recently launched a series of initiatives to further regulate, and at times restrict, Christian adherents.


What is the history of Christianity in China?

Early waves of Christianity began with the arrival of Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci in China in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. China's first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, traveled to China in 1807 on behalf of the London Missionary Society and translated (PDF) the Bible into Mandarin. In the mid-nineteenth century, Christianity became a mobilizing political force: Hong Xiuquan developed a Christian-influenced ideology to mount the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) against the Qing Dyansty, attracting missionaries and revolutionaries alike. The rebels amassed control over more than one-third of Chinese territory and established a rival political order, known as the heavenly kingdom.” The ensuing civil war killed an estimated twenty million people.

The establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 resulted in wide scale religious repression in mainland China. In keeping with its Marxist roots, the Chinese Communist Party declared itself atheist. Maoist Thought a sinification of Marxism-Leninism that placed the future of the Chinese revolution in the hands of the rural peasants, was the dominant ideology. This was especially true at the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when places of worship were closed and religious practices were banned.

Mao Zedong's death and his successor Deng Xiaoping's subsequent reforms reopened China to the outside world, in turn granting greater freedoms to Chinese citizens. A surge in Christian adherents can be traced from the period beginning in the early 1980s. Today, China's Christian population encompasses (PDF) a range of citizens, from all ages, from the countryside and urban centers, including students and professionals. China is also the world's largest producer of Bibles: By the end of 2014, the Amity Printing Company, a joint venture between the Amity Foundation, a Chinese NGO, and the United Bible Societies, printed more than 140 million bibles in many languages for both domestic and international markets. However, while the government exercises a certain tolerance of religious practices, religious freedom is still constrained and regulated.
What is China's policy on religious practice?


The PRC officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. The activities of state-sanctioned religious organizations are regulated by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), which manages all aspects of religious life including religious leadership appointments, selection of clergy, and interpretation of doctrine. Christianity in China is overseen by three major entities: the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the China Christian Council, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. To register as a state-sanctioned Christian organization, religious leaders must receive training in order to adapt doctrine to Chinese thinking and culture. China does not differentiate among Christian denominations beyond Catholicism and Protestantism.
No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the education system of the state.China's constitution

Spirituality and religious practice have long been embedded in traditional Chinese culture, says Freedom House's senior research analyst for East Asia, Sarah Cook. Article thirty-six of the Chinese constitution protects freedom of religion, however that protection is limited to so-called normal religious activities, explicitly stating that no one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the education system of the state. These provisions provide authorities with flexibility when determining which religious practices are consistent with party policy and which fall outside the state's guidelines. The constitutional provision goes on to specify that religious bodies cannot be subject to foreign control. The Holy See and Beijing do not have formal diplomatic ties, but Pope Francis signaled in August 2014 that he hoped to thaw China-Vatican relations.

Underground house churches exist parallel to state-sanctioned Christian churches. These organizations operate outside of the guidelines of the government, and their regulation by party authorities is largely determined by local leaders. Much like official Christian organizations, their membership is also growing across regions and demographics, according to surveys by independent polling groups. A 2010 Pew Research Center report charted that thirty-five million (PDF) of China's fifty-eight million Protestants belonged to independent house churches. Other Christian organizations estimate a much higher number.


Why has the number of Christians surged?

Social scientists have observed the rise of a spiritual vacuum, following decades of unprecedented economic growth. Modern China has emerged as a wealthier and more educated society with renewed interest in religion. Consequently, experts say that as the CCP's ideology loses public traction, Christian churches, official and unofficial, appear to be filling some of this void. Believers are not only searching for meaning in their own lives but also for the future of their country as China adapts to a rapidly changing economy and society. Protestantism appeals to Chinese traditions of ritual and community,  according to French Jesuit and China scholar Benoit Vermander. Moreover, experts say Chinese Christians are also attracted to the faith's sense of fellowship, comprehensive moral system, organized structure, and solidarity as part of an international movement.

Christians in China are predominantly Protestant, drawn to the religion's emphasis on egalitarianism and spiritual community within the church, says Fenggang Yang of Purdue University's Center on Religion and Chinese Society. The sense of fellowship among Chinese Christians is attractive compared to the hierarchical structures of other religious and social organizations, Yang adds. It is also possible that more Chinese may choose Christianity over other faiths, such as Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, or Falun Gong, because Christianity is more tolerated and is potentially a safer option in China, says Freedom House's Cook.

Christian religious practice resurfaced after the end of the Cultural Revolution and has been gaining ground in Chinese society ever since. The number of Christians in the early 1980s was estimated at about six million. Today, estimates vary widely: The government tallied twenty-nine million Christian adherents, while outside organizations have placed their estimates substantially higher. In 2010 the Pew Research Center calculated a total of sixty-seven million (PDF) Christians in China, approximately 5 percent of the country's population. Other independent estimates suggest somewhere between 100 and 130 million. Purdue's Yang projects that if "modest" growth rates are sustained, China could have as many as 160 million Christians by 2025 and 247 million by 2032. Much of the discrepancy between official government numbers in China and expert estimates can be attributed to Beijing's nonrecognition of Christians engaged in religious activity outside of state-sanctioned religious organizations. A number of social scientists agree that surveys of China's general population underestimate (PDF) the size of the Christian population because some respondents are not willing to admit Christian identity. But the Pew Research Center cautions this makes make it extremely difficult to measure accurate change over time and to identify patterns and make projections about switching into and out of Christian identity.





Experts reference two historical events as drivers of China's religious awakening. Deng Xiaoping's opening and reform policy changes triggered a religious revival in the 1980s, with Christianity first spreading in house churches formed in rural areas. The second major event was the crackdown on democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. This marked a major turning point for urban communities; intellectuals who had hoped to promote Democratic ideals as an alternative to Maoist thought pivoted to religious practiced Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, and eventually Christianity.

On the economic front, Beijing shed traditional Maoist policies and has pursued a market economy. As a result, social structures in rural and urban areas were dissolved. Religion entered the fold as a new form of social organization, mostly through conversion. As China works to strike a balance between what are anticipated to be difficult economic structural reforms and adapting to the changing needs of Chinese citizens, experts say that the Christian revival is likely to continue.
How has the government reacted to the surge in Christians?


Christians have faced growing repression in recent years. China ranked twenty-ninth on the 2015 World Watch List compiled by Open Doors, a U.S.-based Christian non-profit, that tracks the persecution of Christians worldwide, up from thirty-seventh the previous year. Repression campaigns have not been consistent, but they have recently targeted both house and state-sanctioned church be it through the harassment and detention of Christian observants, blocking entry to sites of worship, interrupting gatherings, dismantling crosses, or demolishing churches. In 2014, party officials in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang's city of Wenzhou, known for its large Christian population, ordered the removal of hundreds of crosses and demolition of dozens of churches that allegedly violated construction regulations. In February 2015, Zhejiang party officials announced that the party would enforce a ban on religious belief among party members to prevent the penetration of Western hostile forces. These campaigns raised fears of possible widespread action against Christianity, but they seem to have been isolated cases.

The CCP identifies religious groups as potential threats to national security, social harmony, and core interests. Ye Xiaowen, former director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs, argued in 1996 that religion became a weapon in the hands of dissidents for inciting the masses and creating political disturbances. Though the state's regulation of religious practice tends to be cyclical festival, repression, and back again”religion in China remains inherently political. Purdue University's Yang wrote faith-based organizations are perceived as one of the most serious threats to the Communist party, in his 2012 book Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule. According to Terence Halliday, co-director of the Center for Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation, Christianity now makes up the largest single civil society groupingin China. The party sees that.

A number of party members are concerned that Christianity could be used as a tool to influence China. Today, an increasing number of human rights advocates and lawyers are Christian adherents, stoking party suspicions that Christianity could be a unifying force to challenge its authority. While religious leaders and practitioners may have no intention of undermining the party, the very perception of a threat by party leaders sets the stage for possible confrontation between churches and the state.

Implementation of religious policy is largely left to local party officials. Though some have repressed religious groups (two high-profile cases included crackdowns on Beijing's Shouwang church and Wenzhou's Sanjiang church), elsewhere, leaders have turned a blind eye or been more tolerant, choosing not to interfere in Christian religious activities. A leading priority for local officials is ensuring good party performance, which prizes social stability.

At the top level, Beijing has signaled attempts to inject party influence into Christian ideology. In August 2014, Beijing announced its bid to nationalize Christianity at a conference entitled the Sinicization of Christianity.  According to state media, SARA director Wang Zuoan said that Christan faith should first and foremost be compatible with the country path of socialism and that the construction of Chinese Christian theology should adapt to China's national condition and integrate with Chinese culture. To complement this initiative, Beijing enhanced efforts to bring unregistered churches and their members under the larger umbrella of the state-sanctioned authorities. If successful, the SARA would have greater oversight over the Chinese Christian leaders, activities, and beliefs of adherents. More traditional Chinese beliefs, such as Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism, have also been championed by Beijing to promote a harmonious society. Some experts suggest that this push indicates a move by authorities to buffer (PDF) against the spread of Christianity.

Freedom House's Cook says that with Xi Jinping's concentration of power there may now be a window of opportunity: If the central party leadership decides that Christianity is good for China, there could be broader leniency as officials look to gain favor within the party. But Cook also emphasizes that the persecution of Christians appears to have increased under Xi.


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As epidemic escalates, can U.S. aid for Ebola be deployed quickly enough?

(or a better title would be: 'How to handle Ebola by experts from the CFR and Georgetown University')*

September 16, 2014 at 6:10 PM EDT

How effective will new U.S. aid and military support be in fighting Ebola? Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations and Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown Law School join Judy Woodruff for a deep dive into the plan. Then special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro offers an update from Nigeria, a country that has been relatively successful in controlling the deadly virus.

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TRANSCRIPT

JUDY WOODRUFF: Let’s dive deeper now into the president’s plan to ramp up the response to the Ebola outbreak and to try preventing a humanitarian catastrophe.

It comes amid prior criticism of the administration, along with the WHO and of other countries, for not doing more and for not getting it done faster.

We turn back to two who have been closely watching this and speaking with government officials in recent days.

Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations, she has written widely about Ebola, including the books “Betrayal of Trust” and “The Coming Plague,”and Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University. He’s the director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.

And we welcome you — welcome both of you back to the program.

Laurie Garrett, to you first. What is your assessment of the president’s plan that he outlined today?

LAURIE GARRETT, Council on Foreign Relations: Well, it’s a bold step forward. I’m delighted it’s actually taking place.

But I think everything depends on the haste with which we can mobilize. And I am afraid a lot of people don’t understand that committing troops and saying you’re going to build a hospital are all very good steeps, but it takes weeks to execute these things. And, in the meantime, the epidemic is doubling every 10 to 20 days. We don’t have a lot of time. We’re racing against a clock.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Lawrence Gostin, do you have the same concerns? What’s your assessment?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN, Georgetown Law: I think Laurie is right about timing.

First of all, I am very proud of my country. I mean, we have stepped forward when no one else would or could. But there are major unanswered questions. It’s not just timing, but also command-and-control. There’s chaos on the ground. It’s uncoordinated.

I was very pleased to see the president say that we have a command post, but how are we going to command Chinese or Cuban workers? I do think we need a U.N. Security Council resolution to actually have the kind of international legitimacy that we need.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So going beyond what the U.S…

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Yes, the U.S. can’t do it alone.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me just go further here with what the U.S. is doing. You said you’re proud of your country. What specifically do you think is going to make the most difference here?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Well, I think the most difference will be training health workers, although — and building health facilities in the community, contact tracing. All of those things are very important.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Meaning going back and finding out where…

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Meaning going back, finding out who has been in contact with whom, and quickly isolating them in safe conditions.

One of the big problems, though, is, is that even once we have built these treatment facilities, it’s going to be handed over eventually to the Ministry of Health in Liberia. And they just don’t have the health workers. The doctors and the nurses have been decimated. And so we really do have a huge infrastructure task.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Laurie Garrett, you laid out your concerns, but of what has been announced, how do you see this unfolding and making any difference?

LAURIE GARRETT: Well, first of all, we don’t have any commercial flights landing in the area now. And so just getting doctors on the ground, getting medical supplies, keeping stocks in place of such simple things as latex gloves to protect you from infection have all proven daunting, in the absence of real solidarity from neighboring countries and the willingness to have planes land and commercial flights.

So one huge role for the U.S. military is going to be helping Ghana, which has very kindly and generously agreed to be the air bridge for all supplies and human movement into the area, to extend their runway, build their airport up, have logistic and supply operations in place, and then to have smaller flights go from Ghana into specific targeted areas carrying supplies with them as needed.

But Larry points out a crucial problem with all of this. We don’t have a central command, which means we don’t even have a centralized list of what’s needed. Who needs latex gloves where? Is the situation more dire in this county in Sierra Leone or in this county in Liberia? Where do we need to deploy people first?

We don’t have that kind of operation in place. And our U.S. military is not going to play that role. We will have a central command, but it will be commanding U.S. military personnel, not people from other countries and certainly not the Liberians themselves.

And we also see that the response is not a regional one. We are, unfortunately, dividing our response according to kind of old colonial ties. So the French are focusing on Guinea, which used to be a French colony. The United Kingdom is focused on Sierra Leone, which is settled by the descendants of British slaves who came from the Caribbean, and we’re focused on Liberia, which is settled by former American slaves.

And so there’s this sort of distasteful neocolonial feel to things, and it means that the responses are not unified. They are very divided by country. So you have heard of 165 Cuban responders and 59 Chinese. They’re all going to Sierra Leone, where they will be under we don’t know what kind of command, loosely coordinated by the Sierra Leone government.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Lawrence Gostin, this is sounding like a very complicated effort, which we already knew, but it sounds even more complicated listening to the two of you.

What about the timing of this? How long is it going to take to begin to make a difference, to begin to get to the people who need treatment and are not receiving it?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Well, first of all, we are very late to the game. The fire has nearly burned the house down, and we have arrived. The cavalry has arrived.

It will take a long time, I think, to build the kind of facilities that we want. I mean, the whole idea, for example, that we’re sending 500,000 home kits suggests that we can’t get people into hospitals quick enough to treat them and isolate them, and people who…

JUDY WOODRUFF: These are self-testing kits?

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: These are self-testing kits or self-protecting kits. I’m not sure the community will know what to do with them when they get them.

And so this is a — this is a makeshift response to a huge humanitarian crisis. I don’t think it had to come to this, but now that we’re there, I’m really glad the see the United States military involved.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Laurie Garrett, should we be pleased that this is happening or more worried because it’s not the holistic response that I heard you describing that’s necessary?


“…if we can’t get a response on the ground immediately, effectively, across the region … then we’re talking about something equivalent to the Black Death’s impact on Tuscany and Florence in 1346. “

LAURIE GARRETT: Look, I’m delighted, like Larry, to see my country step up to the plate and play a role. And I’m hoping that we can save lots and lots and lots of lives and bring this epidemic under control.

But I agree completely we’re late to the game. And if you just do the math, based on the statement made today by WHO, a doubling time every 10 to 21 days, and you take the number of actually identified and suspected cases existing now and do your math, you can see that if we can’t get a response on the ground immediately, effectively, across the region, we will be looking at a quarter of a million cases by Thanksgiving, and 400,000 by Christmas if this is not abated and brought under control.

And then we’re talking about something equivalent to the Black Death’s impact on Tuscany and Florence in 1346.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Sobering, sobering any which way you look at it. We appreciate both of you joining us.

Laurie Garrett, Lawrence Gostin, thank you.

LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Thank you.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And one country in West Africa that has had relative success in controlling this virus so far is Nigeria.

While this nation has had 21 confirmed and suspected cases of the Ebola virus, including seven deaths, it has not had an explosive surge and spread since its first victim was reported in late July.

Our special correspondent, Fred de Sam Lazaro, is on assignment in Lagos, and he checked in with us earlier today.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country. It has the largest economy on the continent and its commercial capital, Lagos, has 20 million inhabitants, all of which have raised concerns that an Ebola outbreak would be catastrophic.

But that hasn’t happened, in part due to an early break, and in large part due the a good public health response, experts say. The virus was first brought to Nigeria by a Liberian traveler who fell ill at the airport, and, in a peculiar twist of fate, medical doctors were on strike when he was taken in for health care.

That exposed far fewer health workers to the virus, and health care workers have been especially hard-hit during this epidemic. They have contracted the virus and they have passed it on to their patients. Despite its reputation for chaos and dysfunction, Nigeria has launched a very sophisticated response to Ebola.

Everyone entering the country, including this reporter when we arrived yesterday at the airport, is screened for any symptoms. Those with an elevated fever, for example, are taken in for secondary screening to make sure it’s not related to Ebola.

There’s a call center where people can report suspected cases, and a concerted public awareness campaign that has kept fear from turning into panic. And a sophisticated surveillance system has enabled this country to trace and keep track of all cases and people with whom they came into contact.

All of these cases have been directly traced to that original index case, the Liberian traveler. This is reassuring, but at a time when there’s so much travel and when the virus is running amuck in other parts of West Africa, Nigeria is nowhere near being able to declare victory. A lot of fingers are still crossed tightly here.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And we will have more of Fred’s reporting from Nigeria in the coming days.


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