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Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan GOP ticket reflects religious shift
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
By naming devout, conservative Catholic U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan to be his running mate, former governor Mitt Romney, once a Mormon bishop, did more than ensure the USA will have a Catholic vice president in 2013.
He established the first Republican ticket without a Protestant since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln, who belonged to no church, chose Maine Sen. Hannibal Hamlin, a Unitarian as his running mate, says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
Yet today's GOP ticket — two Christians who are neither evangelical nor mainline Protestants — isn't a major marker of social change, University of California history professor David Hollinger says.
For a real sign of the decline of American mainline Protestantism, Hollinger looks to the Protestant-free U.S. Supreme Court: six Catholics and three Jews. The Romney-Ryan ticket is well in line with today's wider, less brand-specific Christian culture, he says.
The number of Americans who identify with a Protestant denomination has been steadily slipping from over 60% in the 1970s to 52% in 2010, says Duke University sociology professor Mark Chaves, who tracks religion statistics in the national General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National Opinion Research Center.
With this comes a shift in assumption about values, says Stephen Prothero, author of The American Bible, examining core civic, political, literary and religious texts of U.S history and society. "We can no longer assume when people speak of American values, they're speaking in terms of Protestants who dominated American religious and public life" since the nation's founding, Prothero says.
Besides the Supreme Court's makeup, he cites today's diversity in Congress, which has Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims.
The Bible isn't every candidate's go-to text any more. Prothero expects Vice President Biden, a Catholic, and Ryan to argue over their different views of Catholic social teachings rather than stand on Gospel quotations.
Some evangelicals claim Ryan as one of their own, says David Brody, chief political correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network and author of a book, The Teavangelicals.
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