Black Christians and Black ‘Nones’ Show Little Ideological Divide

(ANALYSIS) There are a number of narratives that have emerged from the 2020 election season, many of which will take years to fully unpack. One of the most important actually began to take root in December 2017 when Alabama held a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions who became Attorney General in the Trump administration. Alabama, one of the most conservative states in the nation, elected a Democrat (Doug Jones) to a statewide office for the first time in 25 years.  

The reason for the victory was quickly attributed to the African-American community who turned out in large numbers for the Democrats. This same thread has run through coverage of the 2020 presidential election, when Joe Biden bested Donald Trump in Georgia. Observers noted that the deep history of civil rights activism in the state energized the African-American base to repudiate the Trump presidency. That bore out again on Jan. 5, 2021 when the Democrats won both Senate run-off elections in the state, defeating two Republican incumbents.

Read: How Data Explains Extreme Support For Trump 

Reverend Raphael Warnock’s win has garnered the most headlines. The pastor of one of America’s most historic churches - Ebeneezer Baptist, Warnock’s sermons featured prominently in the campaign. One of the results of this coverage is that it pulled back the curtain a bit on the Black church experience for many White Americans who have never had a lot of exposure to other religious traditions.

Yet, despite the fact that a lot of the chatter about the Black vote has centered on people of faith - the Black community is not a religious monolith. While the largest share of African-Americans identify as Christian (63.5%), nearly a quarter indicate that they have no religious affiliation (22.1%), and another 15% identify as part of another faith group (Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.)

While these religious differences generate huge political divides among the White community, is the same true for Black Americans? The data indicates that race generates a unifying identity for Black Americans much more so than it does for White America, and religious differences at the ballot box are often small or non-existent when comparing Black Americans of different faith traditions.

In terms of political partisan and ideology - the differences between Black Christians, Black Nones and those of other faith traditions is relatively small. However, it’s worth pointing out that Black Christians are clearly the most likely to identify with the Democratic Party. Nearly 50% identify as “strong Democrats” compared to just 30% of secular Black Americans.

However, when the lens focuses on ideology and not partisanship, the differences between the three groups nearly vanishes. About four in ten secular African-Americans take on the “liberal” moniker - which is about five points lower than Black Christians. It’s necessary to point out here that Black Nones are the least likely to say that they are Democrats and the most likely to say that they are liberals.

Thus, it’s readily apparent that Black Americans, regardless of their religious affiliation, tend to vote for Democrats on Election Day, but which kind of Democrats do they prefer? The 2020 Democratic primary provides an excellent prism because of the size of the field and ideological diversity represented by some of the front-running candidates.

The story is a choice between the two candidates who emerged from the pack soon after the first few states cast their votes. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders earned the lion’s share of the votes from the Black community. However, there is a religious divide to be seen here. Joe Biden was clearly the favorite of Black people of faith (both Christian and non-Christian traditions). These two groups gave Biden 55-60% of their votes, while Sanders only earned 18-20%.

On the other hand, Black Nones were much more evenly divided. While Biden was still the favorite, he won only a plurality of votes and not a majority (41%). Sanders did much better among this group - garnering nearly a third of Black voters who identified as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular.  

Do these differences emerge on specific policies? Four major areas were examined: abortion, taxation, immigration and guns. The differences are much smaller than would be expected.

Abortion is clearly an area where if religion were going to make a difference it would show up in this data. There does seem to be a small religious effect here. For instance, secular African-Americans are more supportive of abortion access than the rest of the African-American community. But the differences are not large (usually less than ten percentage points).

On issues of taxation there are no discernible differences to be found. It’s clear from this that African-Americans are unified in their views on fiscal matters and strongly support raising taxes on the wealthy and lowering them on those of more modest means.

In terms of immigration, there’s also little variation. Family separation is deeply unpopular, but Black respondents seem divided on other issues related to immigration. However, these divisions don’t seem to turn on religious concerns.

Finally, on guns there is strong support for banning assault rifles, creating a government registry of gun owners and requiring universal background checks for gun purchases. Support for banning all guns is notably low (around 30% in favor). Again, religion plays only a minor role here, with secular African-Americans being slightly less supportive of gun control than the other groups.

This seems to be a case where race matters much more than religion. Looking through the lens of partisanship, ideology, primary vote choice and policy positions, it’s clear that Black Americans are strongly unified on the left side of the political spectrum. However, it would be inaccurate to describe them as liberals. A majority of them reject that label and their policy positions bear that out. They take moderate stances on issues like immigration and gun control. But as Reverend Warnock, John Ossoff, Doug Jones and Joe Biden can attest, when they turn out, they can make all the difference for Democrats on Election Day.

Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on Twitter at @ryanburge.