<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654460959655,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654460959655,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017a-8cb2-d416-ad7a-beb7278f0000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_51610030", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1005693"} }); ","_id":"00000181-358e-df81-a381-77bec2f30000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedNational Review’s Nate Hochman wrote an insightful essay in the New York Times this weekend on the evolving tensions between the old religious Right that has called the Republican Party home for decades and a new Right, attracted to the party largely by former President Donald Trump, that is more secular, less educated, and more nationalist than their churchgoing counterparts.
“The right’s new culture war represents the worldview of people the sociologist Donald Warren called ‘Middle American radicals,’ or M.A.Rs,” Hochman wrote. “This demographic, which makes up the heart of Mr. Trump’s electoral base, is composed primarily of non-college-educated middle- and lower-middle-class white people, and it is characterized by a populist hostility to elite pieties that often converges with the old social conservatism.”
This all sounds correct. But then, Hochman continued, “M.A.Rs do not share the same religious moral commitments as their devoutly Christian counterparts, both in their political views and in their lifestyles. As Ross Douthat noted, nonchurchgoing Trump voters are ‘less likely to be married and more likely to be divorced’ than those who regularly attend religious services. No coincidence, then, that a 2021 Gallup poll showed 55 percent of Republicans now support gay marriage — up from just 28 percent in 2011.”
The new Right no doubt is more comfortable with gay marriage than traditional social conservatives. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t believe the institution of marriage is important.
The United States is undergoing a very unfortunate bifurcation of family formation, with wealthier and better-credentialed people getting and staying married more often than they did in the 1970s, while marriage has essentially collapsed among poor and working-class people.
So when Douthat noted that “nonchurchgoing Trump voters are less likely to be married and more likely to be divorced than those who regularly attend religious services,” that is likely just a result of the fact that these nonchurchgoing Trump voters are, as Warren noted, more likely to be lower-middle class and non-college-educated.
But just because a working-class person isn’t married doesn’t mean he or she doesn’t value marriage. Quite the opposite. According to Gallup, it is the poorest and least-educated single people who most want to get married.
There will undoubtedly be some areas where the old Right and the new Right disagree, but reorienting public policy to make it easier for everyone to get and stay married seems like some pretty solid ground for a lasting political coalition.
