Can Social Conservatives Woo Blacks To the GOP ?
By Richard Ivory: For decades, social conservatives have relentlessly targeted Black Churches as a way to bring more African-Americans into the Republican Party. Despite many sincere efforts, the numbers of church going African-Americans who vote Republican is smaller now than ever before. While there has been much debate and talk about the Religious Right within the Republican Party, one could equally and strongly argue that African-Americans make up one of the largest socially conservative voting blocs in the Democrat Party. Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life released a detailed study on the religious views of most African-Americans. The research was unique in that the new analysis found blacks to be the most religious group of people in the United States population as a whole. According to the research, when compared to other racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are among the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation with 8
