Jim Denison is the founder and CEO of the Denison Forum, a nonprofit Christian media organization that comments on current issues through a biblical lens. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.
Iowa held its first-in-the-nation caucuses last night. President Trump won on the Republican side, as expected. However, we still don’t know the winner on the Democratic Party side.
The Iowa Democratic Party said the results were delayed due to “inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results.” They stressed that there was not a “hack or intrusion,” but announced around 2 a.m. that the results would be provided “later today.” Officials are now hand counting the results.
There are two very different ways to see this unusual delay.
One is that Democrats in Iowa are working to provide results in as trustworthy a manner as possible. After the razor-close 2016 race in Iowa between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Mr. Sanders’ allies pushed the Democratic National Committee to require caucus states to track and report the raw numbers of support for each candidate. In Iowa, the new reporting standards slowed the gathering of data to a crawl. Technical issues contributed to the delays.
The other is to view the Democratic Party’s delayed reporting as indicative of its suitability to lead. GOP Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina tweeted: “Folks—this is the party that wants to run your healthcare, control your employment, decide what kind of car you can drive, and more.”
These conflicting perspectives reflect the larger conflicts in our culture.
For example, Bernie Sanders was favored by oddsmakers to win the Iowa caucuses. His campaign is fueled principally by his appeal to millennials. His focus on wealth inequality, universal health care, student loan debt, and climate change resonate with many of them. The fact that he is “quite substantially not religious,” in the words of his brother, is not a detriment to a generation noted for its lack of religious commitment.
Consider that college graduates are less likely than non-graduates to agree that “religion is very important.” They are also less likely to say they “believe in God with absolute certainty” or that they “pray daily.” In fact, 11 percent identify as atheist or agnostic, compared with 4 percent of those with high school education or less.
(Lest these facts suggest that religion is irrational, note that Christians who graduated from college are more likely to attend weekly worship services than those with less education.)
To many of Mr. Sanders’ millennial supporters, his lack of religious commitment mirrors their own. They view his irreligiosity as a positive rather than a negative.
Consider another fact: Democratic professors outnumber Republicans nine to one at America’s highest-ranking colleges and universities.
The ratio varies by discipline: while economics professors who are Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one, professors of anthropology who are Democrats outnumber Republicans forty-two to one.
This pattern is less surprising when we look behind it to note that the college administrators who hire the professors identify as liberal rather than conservative by a ratio of twelve to one.
Source: Christian Headlines
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