It took the United States 224 years to elect a president who isn't white. On top of that, every president has also been a man, and every president has (at least claimed to have) been of some Christian denomination. So now that we've broken through one of these barriers, which of the remaining two is next?
I don't think there's a debate here that we'll see a woman before a non-Christian president. We've seen serious female challengers near the presidency (Hillary Clinton was almost the Democratic nominee in 2008), but I don't think we've seen a remotely serious non-Christian challenger yet. For these purposes, I'm including Mormonism as Christian (they do self-identify as such, even if mainstream Christians don't always agree with the classification). So let's take it as a base assumption that the next barrier to fall will be woman president.
That would make non-Christian the obvious last barrier. However, that's not very interesting. What other groups should we attempt to sort? I propose the following:
1. Latino descent
2. Asian descent
3. Gay
4. Jewish
5. Non-Jewish non-Christian religious
6. Non-religious
I'm breaking out Jewish as a special case of non-Christian because I think general society is far more accepting of them than of other religions. This can be somewhat evidenced by Jewish being the largest non-Christian segment of the Senate (9 of 100). We can, with slightly fuzzy boundaries, classify every other Senator but one as Christian (even the 2 "non-affiliated" have Christian associations). Oh, and there's a Buddhist.
So how do we evaluate what order the above will happen in? Since these are elected officials, we can lean on current demographics in Congress for "acceptability" trends. The more a particular demographic is able to win a given state, the more they have a chance to carry the nation. The only two groups with meaningful minority representation are Jewish and Latino, so they're likely the next two. Since the Latin vote is so much larger (and growing faster) than the Jewish, I suspect Latino would edge out here. Since the representation of the other 4 groups can be described as 'trace' at best, we can't use this same approach to predict the future.
I think Asian is the likely next group simply because Americans don't find them foreign or threatening; they can accept that they have similar goals and motivations.
Of the remaining groups, we have to project when the general population will become comfortable with them as "just like the rest of us". What are the major impediments and trends:
Gay - many states (typically blue ones) are already largely comfortable here. Conversely, many are probably deeply not, most likely on the traditional family values agenda. Hollywood and social media have certainly been championing the cause, Supreme Court rulings have been in their favor and even Christian institutions have started to shift their viewpoints.
Other religion - I don't have a good sense of how Christians relate to other religions. However, my gut feeling is that they prefer others "of faith". Unless they are Muslim.
Non-religious - The loudest complaint I hear from the religious far right is our secular attack against them, how we're losing our morals and killing babies and whatever. Atheists don't believe in anything, it seems? I don't really know.
After waving my hands, I think gay will be the next of the 3. I also think atheist is the most foreign and most challenging to Christians, and thus would be last. It's also interesting to ponder when, realistically, each category might have a chance. I think in another 1-2 generations, being gay will be a non-issue for the vast majority of voters, thus around 2050 there will be a solid chance.
Waving my hands some more, I think it's 50/50 we'll see an openly non-religious president this century.
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