If you want to see more conservative political victories, go to church!

Just a few of weeks ago, I commented, to a Facebook friend, in 2016, we had an election where half the people thought they got screwed.

Who knows, maybe there was sufficient fraud that President Trump was cheated out of a victory, but if there was, he hasn’t been able to prove it.

This country will be greatly damaged by a Biden presidency, but that’s what we are going to have. The proper response now is to support conservatives and libertarians for every office, to take back the House of Representatives in 2022, and defeat Joe Biden in 2024. Do whatever you can to resist the Democrats’ policy initiatives. Be sure to support conservatives and libertarians for state and local offices, and do everything you can to replace school boards with conservatives who will not allow the teachers unions to indoctrinate children with leftist babble.

But, most important of all: go to church! The real solidarity of conservatives comes from faith and a clear understanding of God’s laws and morality. Part of the reason that so many Democratic Governors have been able to trample on our freedom of religion is that not that many Americans, even those who claim to be Christian, actually go to church!

Then I came across this, from the Catholic News Agency:

Only frequent church attendees avoided downward mental health trend in 2020

CNA Staff | December 11, 2020 | 12:09 AM MST

Americans who attend religious services weekly are the only demographic group appearing to show improved mental health in 2020, despite the stresses of the coronavirus pandemic and other events, says a new survey.

The survey otherwise shows significant self-reported mental health declines among those previously in excellent health.

In 2019, about 42% of those who reported attending religious services weekly told Gallup that their mental health was excellent. In 2020, 46% said the same, an increase of 4 percentage points. Only 35% of those who attend services nearly weekly or monthly reported excellent mental health, down 12 percentage points from last year. Among those who attend seldom or never, 29% reported excellent mental health, down 13 percentage points.

While coronavirus restrictions have often limited peoples’ ability to attend religious services, the Gallup survey did not ask respondents whether they faced such limits.

There’s more at the original.

I have previously said that Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) executive orders suspending our constitutional rights and closing churches has made going to Mass a political act of defiance as well as a religious one. The evidence has long shown that the stronger one’s Christian faith is, the more probable that someone will be politically conservative and vote Republican. Quite simply, the more strongly Christian someone is, the more likely he is to hold conservative political positions.

And now we see that going to church leads to stronger mental health as well.

It doesn’t work in every case, obviously. Joe Biden is a Mass-every-Sunday (purported) Catholic, yet his fealty to Democratic political positions is stronger than his belief in the Church’s positions on abortion, homosexuality and ‘transgenderism.’ Of course, his mispronunciation of “psalmist,” when there is a reading from the Book of Psalms in every Catholic Mass does make one wonder if he sleeps through Mass most days, but still . . . .

It’s simple: Mr Biden is both a Catholic, nominally anyway, and a Democrat, but, of the two, being a Democrat is far more important to him than being Catholic. However, he is the outlier, not the norm: the more frequently a Christian attends church, Protestant or Catholic, the more likely he is to hold political views in line with his religious ones.

For conservatives, religion not only reinforces our political views, but actually going to church strengthens our commitment to our religious and political positions.

There is, however, something that the left do not realize and political commentators never seem to mention: the more a person attends church, the more he is accepting of other people of different races:

Religious Trump Voters: How Faith Moderates Attitudes about Immigration, Race, and Identity

By Emily Ekins | February 5, 2019

Increasing political polarization and rising conflict over identity, race relations, immigration, and LGBT rights have left two increasingly divided extremes with a seemingly elusive moderate middle. Many have come to view religious institutions, largely because of their opposition to same‐​sex marriage, as a major contributor to this ever‐​increasing divide — a catalyst for increased intergroup societal conflict rather than a possible cure. However, research from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group’s VOTER Surveys (Views of the Electorate Research Survey) finds that religious participation may serve as a moderating function in our politics, particularly among conservatives. These national surveys find that Donald Trump voters who attend church regularly are more likely than nonreligious Trump voters to have warmer feelings toward racial and religious minorities, to be more supportive of immigration and trade, and to be more concerned about poverty. These data are important because they demonstrate that private institutions in civil society can have a positive effect on social conflict and can reduce polarization.

Left-right culture wars over the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual) people — particularly government sanction of same-sex marriages — have likely soured many Democrats’ views of Christians. Indeed, a majority (56 percent) of Democrats report unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. This, in large part, may be a response to the 64 percent of churchgoing Christians who oppose legalized same-sex marriage and the half who have cool feelings toward LGBT people, and to the finding that the more frequently people attend church, the more negative their attitudes are likely to be toward gay men, lesbians, and also feminists. Thus, antagonism toward religious institutions is often grounded in the idea that religion is a source of exclusion and oppression rather than of inclusivity and tolerance. Such views are succinctly articulated by a bumper sticker from the Richard Dawkins Foundation: “There is no war on religion: Only opposition of intolerance, oppression, hatred, and stupidity.”

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services

.It may surprise some readers, however, to learn that religious participation may moderate conservatives’ attitudes on other important culture war issues, particularly matters of race, immigration, and identity. Given that the rise of Donald Trump has increased the salience of these issues, this brief uses the 2016, 2017, and 2018 VOTER Surveys to examine how religious and nonreligious people who voted for Donald Trump think about these important issues.

Conservatives’ views of black people, Hispanics, and Asians improve the more frequently conservatives attend religious services. Specifically, favorable feelings toward black people increase from 48 percent among Trump voters who never attend church to 73 percent among those who attend more than once a week — a 25-point increase. Similarly, favorable feelings toward Hispanics and Asians increase from 63 percent and 60 percent, respectively, among secular Trump voters to 72 percent and 80 percent, respectively, among churchgoing Trump voters.

There is much more at the original; internal references from original omitted in the quote.

This is the part the left do not understand: religious conservatives, such as myself, may oppose the idea of same-sex ‘marriage,’ and classifying the ‘transgendered’ as the sex they claim to be rather than the sex they are biologically, but that does not mean we somehow want them all killed. Rather, it means that we wish them to return to mental health and conservative beliefs and values. The conservative and libertarian part of me informs me that what they wish to do in their private lives is between themselves and God, and none of my business; it also informs me that we can not care about their private lives as long as they do not bring those private lives into the public square. Once they do that, they have opened their private choices to public discussion. [1]I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1

Conservatives and libertarians, like me, may well oppose Affirmative Action and government preferences for any group based on race, religion, sex or ethnicity, but that does not mean that we see racial or ethnic or religious minorities as somehow not truly the children of God or as people against whom we should discriminate.

Christianity discourages discrimination, as every non-biased study has shown. Christianity encourages inclusion, but it encourages an inclusion pushing toward Christian values. Christian values encourage work, and thus encourages non-discrimination in hiring and employment; that does not mean, as Chief Justice John Roberts said, that Christians ought to support the reverse discrimination of Affirmative Action, selecting recipients of collegiate admissions and employment opportunities based on race.

Religion requires respect for God, and respect for God pushes respect for other people. Religion inspires respect for the law, and reduces crime and bad behavior. Christianity, the faith on which this country was founded, requires recognizing sin, but it also requires the forgiveness of sin. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.”

Getting out of bed on Sunday morning, getting dressed and going to church brings us more friends, as we meet other Christians, helps to solidify our faith, and strengthens our commitment to conservative values and conservative politics. Everything about it is a benefit for conservatives.

It doesn’t require that much effort. If you do not already have a parish of which you are a member, find one; you don’t need to leave your computer to do that. Once you have found one, it’s just the effort that very first Sunday, to get up, get dressed, and go. Every subsequent Sunday will be a little bit easier.

Conservatism is not something which we need only to support in politicians; politicians, in the end, depend on the support of the people, and the support of the people is strengthened when we practice what we preach.

References

References
1 I put the term the way that I do because I do not believe that any homosexual relationship, regardless of how the laws of the state view such, as legitimately a marriage.
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