Reply #131: I don't deny that there are a lot of fundamentalist churches, but you don't

[Lydia Leftcoast]

have to be a fundamentalist to make bad voting decisions.

The economic interests for which the megachurches are a smoke screen coincide with the typical inclinations of outer suburban voters: a desire to disassociate from the city and the poor and racially diverse people who live there (so it's OK to cut programs for the vulnerable), an obsession with protecting property values (so you don't want anything, such as transit, that might bring poor people into the community), a fanatical devotion to their cars (so drill, baby, drill), an actual preference for cookie-cutter chain stores (don't want to have or do anything that isn't popular with their neighbors), and a large emphasis on athletics and social status (to be a REAL American, not one of them pointy-headed intellectuals). The megachurches may encourage their people to vote Republican (they also inflate their membership figures, because they never remove people from the rolls, even if they're no longer attending), but unaffiliated suburbanites may vote the same way without any such influence.

Wasn't there a post on DU a few months ago about how some of the megachurches were worried about losing young people?

Take the case of Oregon, the state with the highest percentage of self-identified atheists in the country. Just recently, they passed an anti-gay marriage law, and yet their Republican Party is largely libertarian-leaning. (There actually is a substantial Libertarian Party in the state.) This leads to a bizarre political climate in which voters approve assisted suicide and decriminalization of marijuana but until recently, they acted as if it was OK to cut public schools, state parks, and regulatory agencies to the bare bone, if only they could avoid raising taxes.

So the situation is more complex than your characterization.