One of the great unknowns in terms of the future electorate is the effect the Democrats’ increasingly radical anti-faith stance will have on its voting coalition.   

Black and Hispanic Democrats tend to be far more religious than the white Democrats who are driving the party’s agenda.  Will this alliance hold as the party increasingly kowtows to vocal anti-Christian Marxists?  Will these voters start to defect as Democrats intensify their open war on people of faith?

These questions arose this week when the sad story emerged that Chick-fil-A would no longer support three mainstream Christian-based charities; the Salvation Army, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, all under the auspices that they are anti-LGBTQ. 

Despite Franklin Graham’s well-meaning defense of the company, not only did the company’s leadership cave but they made a public announcement clearly aimed at appeasing liberals. 

Like the Salvation Army, Chick-fil-A never expected to find itself on the frontline in Democrats open war against Christianity.  But, they were there nonetheless, and surrendering ground against these enemies was a mistake.  The only way liberals will back off the attacks against Chick-fil-A is if the company heartily endorses and celebrates the full LGBTQ agenda.  In other words, they expect either the destruction or total surrender of their religious foes.    

They elevated their attacks far beyond the usual slanderous name calling, which is really what put Chick-fil-A on the defensive.  The fast food chain was under assault in every Democratic-controlled area and institution in the country. Democratic mayors in many key cities, to include Boston, Chicago, San Antonio, Buffalo, and San Jose worked to either prevent the restaurant from opening in the city or at its airport, or planned to drive it out.  No doubt, Democrat governors would be the next to take up the fight.  That they were all trigged by a chicken restaurant shows the powerful counter-cultural force its very existence conveyed. 

People who took pride in patronizing an organization that reflected their values will be a little less excited to do so.      

Democrats can no longer hide their contempt and hatred towards those who “cling to religion” and believe that the Bible is God’s word and means what it says.  That’s really the rub.  Liberals hate the Bible and they know if they can force people to compromise on Biblical teaching, Christianity will lose its effectiveness as a countercultural force.

The LGBTQ movement is best understood as a liberal weapon, and it is an effective one.  It has become the spearhead in the attack against Christianity and it will increasingly be used in an attempt to achieve the goal of driving meaningful Christian thought from the public square. 

Democrats mumble the occasional platitude and claim to be Christian since they still need to hoodwink a sizable portion of their voting base, but it is far more important to pay attention to their actions.  The vile Equality Act being pushed openly by Democrat politicians is meant as a frontal attack on Christianity and to open the door for unending lawfare against Christians.  It will almost assuredly be rushed into law the minute Democrats control government. 

Consider the nondiscriminatory nature of the organizations under attack.  The Salvation Army does not discriminate against anyone based on sexual orientation and may indeed be the top provider of poverty relief to the whole alphabet of people. These organizations bear no hatred towards people based upon their lifestyles.  They simply believe in Biblical Christianity.  Because of that, they are unwilling to celebrate something the Bible teaches is sinful.  And they are despised for it.  These are the modern equivalent of the thoughtcrimes in George Orwell’s 1984. 

Any public person, group, company or church that identifies as Christian will be forced to take a stand on the question of whether or not they celebrate the LGBTQ lifestyle regardless of whether they want to or not, even if they barely care about the issue.  That’s the plan.  Because the Bible presents a clear position that is counter to the prevailing culture, it is an easy avenue of attack.  The hate on this issue is one-sided.  Christian theology teaches to love the sinner while hating the sin.  Anti-Christian leftists practice hating the Christian while celebrating the sin.  Christian unwillingness to celebrate the sin is the offense that cannot be overlooked. 

A front-page article in USA Today noted that the Methodist church is about to split over this issue.  Naturally, the article was sympathetic towards the LGBTQ movement and disparaging of Bible-believing Christians. But, churches that reject Biblical teaching have nothing left to stand on, for if some verses are untrue, then all of them can be cast into the fire.  Churches that make these compromises become just another reflection of the dominant culture, salt that has lost its saltiness, which is indeed the point of the attacks.    

Democratic hatred of Christians extends well beyond the LGBTQ movement.  That’s just their most effective weapon for attacking those they hate.  What most drives their hatred is that Bible-believing Christians stand for the unborn. 

It is this element of Judeo-Christian faith that inspired Diane Feinstein’s “the Dogma lives loudly within you” comment to Judge Amy Coney Barrett, as if she was infected by some horrible disease, unfit to serve on the bench. 

As the left has grown more secular and fiercer in its attacks on people of faith, the number of people identifying as Christians in America is rapidly trending downwards.  Currently, 65% of American adults identify as Christians.  But, that is down from 85% in 1990 and 82% in 2001. Church membership among Democrats dropped precipitously, from 71% to 48% over the course of a couple decades.   

When I lived in Europe in the mid-1990s, the biggest surprise to me was that meaningful Christianity had all but disappeared.  Beautiful chapels gave silent testament to the continent’s heritage, but no longer held any meaning to the people.  The rise of big-government socialism led to the collapse of faith and left the continent vulnerable to the reemergence of a muscular Islamic faith. 

We are treading a similar path, even if it took a little longer to get there.  As Christianity is maligned and attacked by the full power and fury of America’s cultural institutions, more people will fall away, especially on the left.  More will make the kind of compromises to the culture that Chick-fil-A made this week. 

The Democrat war on faith will become ever more apparent and aggressive.  Bible-believing white Christians are now largely gone from the Democrat party. Democrats believe that changing demographics will soon deliver electoral dominance.  But, when forced to choose between faith and an increasingly Marxist anti-religious party platform, some black, Hispanic, and Jewish Americans will likely walk away from the Democrats, and that could be a political game-changer that nobody is yet seeing.      

Fletch Daniels can be found on twitter @fletchdaniels.