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 87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another. The analysis also finds that nearly eight-in-ten African-Americans (79%) say religion is very important in their lives compared with 56% among all U.S. adults.

The study also states that six-in-ten African-Americans (61%) say Houses of Worship should express their views on social and political matters, while only 36% of African-Americans say churches should avoid these topics. On this question of expression, African-Americans closely resemble White Evangelical Protestants, among whom 59% say churches should express their views while 38% say churches should keep out of social and political matters.

The study finds, additionally, that half of all African-Americans feel that there have been too few expressions of faith by political leaders while an additional 24% say there has been the right amount of religious expression by political leaders. Only 23% of African-Americans say there has been too much religious talk from politicians.

Overall, 49% of African-Americans are in favor of keeping abortion legal in most or all cases, while 44% of African-Americans want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases.

Four-in-ten African-Americans (41%) overall, think that homosexuality should be accepted by society, while 46% of African-Americans say that homosexuality should be discouraged. According to other Pew Research Center surveys, conducted during the summer of 2008, nearly two-thirds of African-Americans (64%) say they oppose allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, which is a significantly higher level of opposition than among Whites (51%).

 If the numbers are correct, African-Americans should be running into the arms of Republicans and, especially, socially conservative ones. The same data, nevertheless, shows that despite African-American’s deep social conservative beliefs, the community does not as a whole “vote exclusively” on such issues.

Proof of this is in the same data which demonstrates that despite their conservative, social view, by far African-Americans (76%) self describe themselves as Democrats. The same study found that on an average, only about 10% of African-Americans self describe themselves as being Republicans. Across all religious groups, at least two-thirds of African-Americans express support for the Democratic Party.

My own personal view of the data is that while African- Americans agree with social conservative politicians on many issues, it is concerning the issue of race, social justice and economics that these two groups part company.

With regards race, many blacks who lived in the South remembered that many of the leaders of the Moral Majority had deep connections to the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC’s racist history and its deep connections to the GOP in the 80′s had a great impact on black church members. The SBC’s silence during the Jim Crow Era and during the era of Desegregation was not to be forgotten.

This divide in the south between black churches and white churches is still visible today. It was not surprising, therefore, that when the Religious Right began to grow in political dominance in The Republican Party on a wave of pro- family values that many blacks saw this as the height of hypocrisy and irony given the following:

Where were these ministers who were so outraged over the issue of abortion when little Black Boys were being lynched and denied the right to vote?

Where were these same religious leaders and politicians when their Black and socially conservative brothers were suffering?

Historically, social conservatives have talked about “teaching folks how to fish” but have very little to show for it. In fact, most of the non-profit empowerment groups in minority and urban areas lean toward the left. Social conservative groups will continue to fail in reaching black churches as long as urban folks and minorities worry about getting a job and putting food on their tables.

Views about tax cuts  make little sense to a woman who does not pay taxes due to her low -income status. The only way tax cuts will ever make genuine sense to a woman like her is if she owns something or is employed. When the cupboards are bare, and the baby needs milk technical debates about stem cell research or gay marriage will rarely be a priority.

In California, the only way social conservatives could get Blacks out to vote against Proposition 8 was by getting them to come out in large enough numbers to vote for Barrack Obama. What this dichotomy demonstrates is that many minorities agree with social conservatives on many social issues, yet not to the degree that minorities prioritize economic and social justice issues. It does not mean that minorities and social conservatives do not agree; they simply do not agree on what the priorities should be. And as long as these two communities see their “moral issues” as being more important than the other, the two shall never meet.

Richard Ivory is the Publisher and Founder, of Hip-HopRepublican.com, a blog that delves into urban issues from centrist perspective. Mr. Ivory is a political consultant who has worked on over a dozen political campaigns around the country. He has worked for both the Republican National Committee and was the College outreach director for Republican Youth Majority. He is presently the founder of The John Langston Forum and is the College outreach director for Republicans for Black Empowerment.