And the reality is that Americans do not want extremist fundamentalists running their lives, and do not want extremist fundamentalist policy outcomes. Americans do not want the Affordable Care Act repealed. Two-thirds of Americans, including a plurality of Republicans, want Roe v Wade to remain in place. Two-thirds of Americans support marriage equality for adults of all sexual orientations. Americans are also increasingly secular and skeptical of attempts by fundamentalists to pry into their personal lives or overturn progressive policy:
The United States is heading down the same path of religious rejection as Europe. Less than a third of Americans say they attend church weekly, and a record low percentage of people say they have confidence in organized religion. The two largest Christian denominations, Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics, have seen their membership sink to multidecade lows. Meanwhile, the nonreligious have seen surging numbers. For the first time, they’re in a tie for first among religious demographics.
The withering of Christianity is especially apparent among the young. Millennials were dubbed “the least Christian generation in American history,” until the next generation, the up-and-coming Generation Z, took that title from them. According to the polling firm Barna Research, as little as 4 percent of teenagers hold what they define as a “biblical” worldview. The conservative commentator Peter Wehner quotes a friend who laments: “We’re losing an entire generation. They’re just gone. It’s one of the worst things to happen to the church.”
There is nothing anti-Catholic about this. Americans are simply rejecting fundamentalist extremism of all varieties, both religious and non-religious, judicial and ethical. They want science, decency and empathy to drive policy. And they don’t want radical conservatives to constrain the next two generations of policy on healthcare, climate change, and even the shape of American democracy itself–much less turn the clock back on rights and benefits they already enjoy.
washingtonmonthly.com/2020/09/27/opposition-to-barrett-is-not-anti-catholic-it-is-anti-extremist-and-anti-fundamentalist/