Liberals Prefer Comfortable Lies Over Truth

A report on religiosity in America, prepared by The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), reveals that religion is fading as an element in our public character. Moreover, when it comes to admitting the truth about personal religiosity, the PRRI’s work shows Liberals prefer comfortable lies to demanding truths.

Sadly but not surprisingly, the study’s numbers weren’t encouraging. PRRI’s study told an interesting tale of how liberals lie about their relationship to religion and religiosity.

During PRRI’s telephone interviews 43% claimed to attend religious ceremonies, with 27% saying religion “is the most important thing in their lives.” However, when the anonymous responses from online surveys were tallied, the numbers dropped dramatically to 30% religious service attendance–and 20% saying religion was the most important thing in their life.

The difference between the two sets of numbers is attributed to people wanting to be seen in the best light when actually talking to another person, even a totally anonymous stranger. This is a normal quirk of human behavior for most people. But it is especially prevalent among liberals.

Part of being a liberal is being comfortable with lies. Whether personal lies or lies told by other liberals, liberals trade in lies all the time; and PRRI’s report supports this charge.

This suggests that although religious affiliation is waning—in the past 20 years, the number of Americans claiming no affiliation has more than doubled to around 22 percent—religion is still seen as a good thing, or at least as socially desirable. If elected officials are any indication of what Americans view as desirable, religious devotion is nearly a requirement. There has never been an openly atheist or agnostic president and only one member of Congress, former Representative Pete Stark, who declared non-believer status while in office. Although Stark, a Democrat from California, entered Congress in 1973, it wasn’t until 2007 that he publicly declared himself a non-believer.

Since then, no current member of Congress has come out as atheist or agnostic, although the number of members who do not claim a specific religious affiliation has risen. In a 2013 Pew poll, 10 members of the current Congress either didn’t choose or didn’t know their religious affiliation, while Representative Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, explicitly chose “unaffiliated.” All eleven members are Democrats.

Michael Wear, the director of faith outreach for President Obama’s reelection campaign, says religion is disproportionately represented in politics because it’s equated with compassion, charity, and fairness. “People want to align themselves with those kinds of ideals. People use religion as a stand-in for a whole number of traits we deem desirable from a secular perspective.”

An important point to be drawn from this survey is that, as in so many other cases, liberals might instinctively recognize what is good in the world, but they are prevented from joining what is good because of the barrier between them and it. That barrier is the inherent truth that comes with good. Liberals prefer lies that sound comforting over truths that sound demanding.