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Submitted by: Brian Starks; Florida State University; [email protected]
The Religious Divide and Identity Politics
In 2001, Layman wrote, The Great Divide, in which he elaborated a theory of partisan
change that highlighted the increasing importance of religion for American politics at the
turn of the millennium. Building on sociological theories of cultural conflict (Hunter
1991, Wuthnow 1988) and over a decade of research by political scientists studying
religion (e.g. Green and Guth 1991; Jelen 1991; Rothenberg and Newport 1984; Wilcox
1986, 1989; Wilcox, Jelen, and Leege 1993), Layman used NES data along with data on
party elites to argue that the growing political impact of traditionalist–modernist religious
divisions is largely a result of the increasing political salience of cultural and moral
concerns. Put another way, the polarization of the parties with regard to cultural issues
played a key role in creating the current religious divide in mass party politics.
In his research monograph, Layman, while also considering religious tradition
based on denominational typologies, largely focused his attention on measures of
doctrinal orthodoxy (or religious traditionalism) and religious commitment. He found
that these measures were becoming relatively more important for understanding the
religious struggles determining political coalitions, as they more strongly affected the
attitudes towards cultural and moral issues that were becoming central to both party elites
and electoral choice. He argued that “the most visible components of this struggle are the
divisive, highly emotional battles over cultural issues such as abortion, women’s rights,
homosexual rights, and the role of religion in public education.” (2001, p. 3)
A year later, Leege, Wald, Krueger, and Mueller (2002) wrote “The Politics of
Cultural Differences.” They echoed Layman’s major points regarding the importance of
cultural issues for the development of political coalitions and specifically the role of
culture wars over “religious traditionalism” for shifts in political coalitions over the past
decade, but whereas Layman tended to emphasize religious beliefs and behaviors as the
basis for these wars, Leege and colleagues highlighted the importance of group identity,
loyalty, and boundaries in the larger process of cultural politics. Their work suggests that
cultural politics is not just about issues, but is ultimately about groups and identity. In
their focus on groups as a source of competing moral visions and personal identities,
Leege et al.’s discussion clearly resonates with earlier work by sociologists interested in
the religious divide. If cultural campaigning is really about a conflict between “us” and
“them,” then we need to examine not just issues and issue frames, but also perceptions of
who is “us” and who is “them.” I fundamentally agree and use this insight to suggest that
America’s “culture wars” are best understood as a form of “identity politics.” Thus, I
suggest that religious self-identification be considered a key element in the development
of partisan viewpoints and behaviors along religious lines. Furthermore, I believe the
2007-2009 panel study provides a perfect opportunity to assess this theory.
In the past decade, research in sociology has continued to explore religious
divisions, religious identity, and the cognitive maps of ordinary Americans. One
important branch of such work built directly from Wuthnow’s studies of religious
conservatives and liberals and Hunter’s discussion of religious progressives and the
religiously orthodox and also indirectly on survey research by political scientists
interested in self-identified Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. This research was
conducted by Christian Smith (1998) and his colleagues. Their research detailed a
variety of Protestant identities, their self-understandings, beliefs, and roots in particular
religious sub-cultures. They argued that the roots of modern Evangelical identity were to
be found in the neo-evangelical movement of the 1940s and 1950s, as opposed to the
fundamentalist movement of the 1930s, and differences in these identities were important
for understanding the religious vitality of these groups. Smith and his colleagues initially
relied on in-depth interviews and survey questions from their 1996 Religious Identity and
Influence Survey to study their claims, but more recently an item on Protestant religious
self-identification has become a part of the semi-annual General Social Survey.
In a similar vein, I am currently studying Catholic self-identification as a
“traditional,” “moderate,” or “liberal” Catholic. In 2003-2004, I conducted in-depth
interviews with Catholics in three different cities and explored their intra-group
identifications as well as the way they depicted other Catholics of various cultural and
political hues. In my own research, I found, as others have noted previously (Weaver and
Appleby 1995), that Catholics do not like religious identifications such as fundamentalist
or evangelical. Instead, I found the most likely self-designations in response to an openended question were traditional/old-fashioned, middle-of-the-road/moderate, and
liberal/progressive (Starks 2005). As part of the same research project, I began exploring
an item from the General Social Survey which asked Catholics nationwide: “When it
comes to your religious identity, would you say you are a traditional, moderate, or liberal
catholic or do none of these describe you?” This item paralleled the initial forced-choice
survey question developed by Christian Smith to measure Protestant religious identity.
Some previous NES surveys have included an item on religious identification
somewhat similar in theoretical justification to the ones mentioned above. In particular,
the following item, which was developed by the NES out of its 1989 pilot study, can be
found in several NES studies in the 1990s: “Which one of these words best describes
your kind of Christianity, fundamentalist, evangelical, charismatic or pentecostal,
moderate to liberal?” (V900544) I would like to point out two important shortcomings of
this measure and then propose two items that I believe better measure religious selfidentification among Christians. First, I believe that the NES pilot study initially
constructed separate questions for Catholics and Protestants, but these were reduced to a
single question in later surveys. Unfortunately, my own in-depth interviews suggest that
most Catholics are unlikely to subscribe to the conservative Protestant identifications of
fundamentalist, pentecostal or evangelical (c.f. Weaver and Appleby 1995). This limits
the usefulness of the measure for examining Catholics. Providing alternative
identifications that better fit the linguistic repertoires of ordinary Catholics will better
enable measurement of competing Catholic identities. Secondly, the NES measure above
conflates moderate and liberal Protestant identity. I believe this conflation of moderate
and liberal made the earlier NES item less useful for researchers who were more
interested in the traditional/modernist divide rather than simply in differences within
Conservative Protestantism. My two proposed items, below, solve these issues by asking
separate religious identity questions of Catholics and Protestants and by measuring
greater variation in Protestant identity across the traditionalist/modernist divide.
Proposed items for the NES Panel Survey:
Item 1: “When it comes to your religious identity, would you say you are a
fundamentalist, evangelical, mainline, or liberal Protestant or do none of these describe
you?”
Item 2: “When it comes to your religious identity, would you say you are a traditional,
moderate, or liberal catholic or do none of these describe you?”
(see http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/; mnemonics: religid and cathid)
Item 1 (or a variant, which allows for multiple identifications) has a substantial history
and has been used to measure Protestant religious identity by Smith (1998) and others,
and has been linked to a variety of outcomes, including politics (e.g., Regnerus, Sikkink
and Smith 1999). Overcoming one of the deficiencies I noted in the earlier NES item,
Smith’s item recognizes a distinction between mainline and liberal Protestant identity,
and this allows for greater variation in identification along the traditionalist/modernist
divide (which Layman and others have found to be so important). Of course, for those
specifically interested in Conservative Protestants, the GSS measure described above
does not allow for Pentecostal identification, whereas the previous NES measure did.
The GSS has recently recognized this deficiency and added a pentecostal/charismatic
category to its multiple-identification variant of the question above. Depending upon the
desires of political scientists interested in religion, alternative wording for item 2 could be
added which would allow for Pentecostal/Charismatic identification.
Regarding Item 2, I have examined the correlates of Catholic self-identification in
terms of socio-demographic indicators and social attitudes, as well as religious beliefs
and behaviors in the GSS data. First of all, there are important group differences in
religious beliefs and behaviors similar to the traditionalist/modernist divide discussed by
Layman (2001) and others (e.g., Davis and Robinson 1996, 1997, 1999, 2006). Second,
in examining the various Catholic identities’ and their links to economic and cultural
attitudes, I found that differences were largest on cultural issues such as abortion and
homosexuality and largely non-existent with regards to economic and redistributive
attitudes, again similar to Layman. More importantly, though, I found that the various
religious self-identifications had significant independent effects even after controlling for
a wide variety of religious beliefs. I also found significant main effects of religious selfidentification on political views (a conservative-liberal scale). Such results, while
suggestive, provide only limited evidence for claims about identity’s causal impact on
religious, cultural, and political beliefs and behaviors. Because the GSS has not asked
these religious self-identification questions over a substantial period of time and
especially since it does not contain panel data, it is hard to say whether these religious
identities are causally-prior determinants of cultural attitudes and political identity or
simply one-point-in-time self-assessments.
As such, the panel study design of this survey would be ideal for studying the
political consequences of religio-political identities. It would allow researchers to assess
the stability of various religious self-identifications among individuals over time (and
would allow comparisons to other non-religious identities, such as party identification).
It would also allow exploration of whether religious identities are causally-prior
determinants of cultural attitudes, political identity, and vote choice. Theorists (e.g.,
Tajfel and Turner 1977) suggest that because social identity monitors and construes
social stimuli and provides a basis for regulating behavior, identity should be understood
as a cognitive structure that organizes future activities, rather than as merely a “selfassessment” that follow shifts or changes in the underlying attitudes. Thus, identities are
expected to be causal determinants of future behavior. However, it’s likely that not all
identifications serve the purpose of structuring future action. Specifically, we need to
study whether the religious self-identifications suggested here serve this purpose. A
panel study would allow for a direct examination of the time sequencing of associations
and therefore an assessment of whether these identifications are a basis for future actions.
Other key items to which my proposed measures would be related:
As I noted at the outset, research on the traditionalist/modernist divide has
suggested that understanding religion and politics requires recognition of the importance
of differing issue positions with regard to cultural/moral issues (abortion, homosexuality,
gender roles, etc.) So, these measures should strongly relate to my proposed measures.
Issue salience has also been recognized as important for religion’s connection to
party identification and vote choice. Issue salience examines not one’s position on an
issue, but the relative importance of that issue in a hierarchy of competing priorities. For
instance, Brooks (2002) found that high-attending Evangelical Protestants were much
more likely to be concerned with “family decline” than other religious groups. Similarly,
Layman found that mentions of moral/cultural issues as important electoral concerns
were important for determining Republican vote choice (among religious traditionalists).
The proposed measures should correlate with issue salience. Open-ended responses
would be best for examining arguments concerning the effectiveness of political or
campaign appeals to various religio-political groups. Personally, I am especially
interested in seeing how liberal and traditional Catholics prioritize not just cultural issues
but also those related to the war and economic justice. If an open-ended question is not
chosen (e.g., Repass’s current proposal in the online commons), then a closed-ended
question which requires ranking the personal importance of some cultural/moral issues,
economic/social welfare issues, and foreign policy/war issues would be essential.
I would also hope that several measures of religious belief and behaviors could be
a part of the final survey. This would allow for a comparison of the importance of
religious self-identification vis-à-vis other approaches to the religious divide. If there is
not room, however, I would seek at a minimum the inclusion of a religious attendance
variable. Since identities are usually enacted in particular contexts, religious attendance
as an indicator of religious involvement would be especially important to include.
Finally, the politics measures in the GSS are much less comprehensive than the
NES, especially with regard to political behaviors. I am very interested in seeing whether
religious self-identification, after controlling for relevant political factors, still affects
political behaviors directly through reactions to political appeals to identity, or only
indirectly through issue positions, political views, etc. At the very least, I would expect
significant relationships with measures of an individual’s political views (conservativeliberal), party identification (strong republican-strong democrat), and vote choice.
Closing Rationale for adding to the NES Panel Survey:
I believe that the two measures proposed would be a valuable addition to the NES
panel study. The 2004 presidential election provided a vivid display of the way that
political campaigns orient messages to attract different religio-political groups. Overt
and covert appeals were consistently made to traditional Catholics and liberal Catholics
by Bush and Kerry respectively—with Bush emphasizing his pro-life stance and speaking
of a “culture of life” and Kerry emphasizing economic justice issues such as access to
health insurance and the minimum wage. Without good measures of who identifies with
these different groups, however, it is difficult to assess whether such appeals are
successful or not in their targeting of particular groups.
The NES does not currently have an item that successfully differentiates Catholics
into self-distinguished groups based upon religious identification. In addition, while
there was a previous item for differentiating conservative Protestants as evangelical,
pentecostal, or fundamentalist identifiers, the fact that it conflated moderate and liberal
Protestant identity was a deficiency. These critiques may help to explain why Layman
and others have focused their research more on religious beliefs and behaviors, rather
than groups and identities. Of course, political scientists do at times divide Catholics,
Mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, and others into groups of “religious traditionalists”
and “religious modernists.” However, these groups are constructed by researchers using
multiple religion measures and based upon researcher decisions about who fits into a
particular group or not. In comparison to this approach, I believe that the proposed
measures are both more simple and straightforward and better measure the theoretically
relevant distinctions involved in a personal delineation of “us” and “them.” Ideally,
however, both these proposed measures and previous measures of religious beliefs and
behaviors could be included in the panel study for comparison.
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