EJ Dionne says that when it comes to religion, “liberals and Democrats have a far more complicated task of coalition management” than Republicans do:
[A recent Public Religion Research Institute/Brookings Institution] analysis found that 56 percent of Republicans were religious conservatives and 33 percent were religious moderates. Only 5 percent were religious progressives and just 6 percent were nonreligious. Democrats, by contrast, were all over our analytical map: 28 percent were religious progressives, 13 percent were religious conservatives, 42 percent were religious moderates and 17 percent were nonreligious. Among self-identified political liberals, the proportion of nonreligious [self-identifiers] was even larger: 31 percent of liberals were nonreligious. …
Two things are thus true simultaneously: Nonreligious Americans are a very important part of the liberal constituency, yet the majority of liberals have ties to religion.
Ed Kilgore adds:
Now, the growing number of “non-religious” among young people in this country is a familiar topic. But this survey reinforces the little-understood reality that among the majority of “Millennials” who do have a positive religious identity, religious progressives outnumber religious conservatives significantly (23 percent to 17 percent), while religious moderates weigh in at 38 percent, exactly their percentage among the population as a whole. Interestingly, the median age of religious progressives is 44, while that of religious conservatives is 53.
The Dish 