GOP ticket signals religious shift
By naming devout, conservative Catholic Paul Ryan to be his running mate, former governor Mitt Romney, once a Mormon bishop, did more than ensure that the U.S. 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 senator Hannibal Hamlin, a Unitarian, as his running mate, said Mark Silk, professor of religion in public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
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 said.
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 said.
