VALUES VOTERS IN AMERICA: THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL POLITICS IN THE SOUTH

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1 VALUES VOTERS IN AMERICA: THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL POLITICS IN THE SOUTH A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communication, Culture and Technology By Cameron Cecil McAlpine, M.A., B.A. Washington, DC April 31, 2006

2 VALUES VOTERS IN AMERICA: THE FUTURE OF EVANGELICAL POLITICS IN THE SOUTH Cameron Cecil McAlpine, M.A., B.A. Thesis Advisor: Dr. Diana Owen ABSTRACT The South was once a bastion of support for the Democratic Party. Through the New Deal and the Civil Rights movements that support was dramatically eroded. Today, the Dixiecrats have been replaced by a new breed of conservative Republicans who are able to capitalize on the South s Evangelical voters. My thesis will examine how Evangelicals in the South make their voter decisions. This will include the various opinions leaders they consult as well as various media channels. My data was collected by surveying Southern Evangelicals in four different congressional districts in Southern Virginia and North Carolina. My findings are contextualized where possible with national survey data. The findings reported in this thesis have offered substantial support to my hypotheses. First, I asserted that pastors, national religious figures and religious media sources would be the most predominant amongst Southern Evangelicals. The influence of pastors, national religious figures, and, I would add, fellow Christians generally, were found to be the most influential. The only group that it could be said ii

3 is more influential were the candidates themselves. Religious media and interest groups did assert themselves as frequently consulted. Southern Evangelicals are clearly utilizing a wide range of media channels. Furthermore, I found that the frequent consultation of secular media has had a diversifying influence on vote choice. What is most interesting, though, is that the ideological influence of religious media and the conservative FOX News does diminish the likelihood of users to have voted for another party s candidates for political office federally. The second component of my hypothesis asserted that the strength of pastors, religious media and figures would cause Southern Evangelicals to remain strongly Republican in the near future at least. This hypothesis is entirely supported. Values Voters are not simply partisan robots, however. My study has shown that it is the personal views of Evangelicals that dictate their vote choice, which are then in turn confirmed by national religious figures. iii

4 THIS THESIS IS DEDICATED TO: DR. DIANA OWEN AND DR. JAMES LENGLE, FOR YOUR BRILLAINT GUIDANCE AND YOUR HIGH STANDARDS, JESSICA ROOTS, FOR HAVING THE COURAGE TO LET ME CHASE MY DREAMS, AND FAYE AND KEVIN MCALPINE, FOR THE CEASELESS LOVE AND SUPPORT WITHOUT WHICH I AM NOTHING. NIL DESPERANDUM iv

5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1. Chapter 2. Chapter 3. Introduction...1 Literature Review and Theoretical Framework...10 Methodology...34 Chapter 4. Findings...43 Chapter 5. Implications and Conclusion:...78 Bibligraphy...90 Appendix A: The Survey...97 Appendix B: Statistical Summary of Responses v

6 Chapter 1. Introduction The South was once a bastion of support for the Democratic Party. Through the New Deal and the Civil Rights movements that support was dramatically eroded. Today, the Dixiecrats have been replaced by a new breed of conservative Republicans who are able to capitalize on the South s Evangelical voters. My thesis will examine how Evangelicals in the South make their voter decisions. I am particularly interested in how prominently religious beliefs, personalities and media figure into their vote reasoning. I will then attempt to discover if there are any circumstances under which these Southern Evangelicals would support a Democratic candidate. I hypothesize that there are currently no circumstances under which Southern Evangelical voters could support Democratic electoral candidates en masse. An Interst Tweaked: My interest in this subject matter began immediately following the 2004 Election. Cable News Networks were rife with the prognostications of pundits that attributed George W. Bush s reelection to the high turnout of Southern Evangelicals. Soon the Democrats announced that they had in fact met their mobilization and registration goals. The Republicans simply did better. This heightened my interest in the political culture of the South and of Evangelical Protestants in particular. It was not until I looked deeper into the literature on the topic that I realized how complex that culture is. I read of nationally recognized figures grossly overestimating their 1

7 congregations and their ability to rally them to the polls. I discovered the intricacies of a story laden with the complicating factors like race, money and sex. I began to wonder what the most significant causes behind the increasing political activism of Southern Evangelical leaders and congregations are. Most importantly, though, I began to wonder how loyal Evangelical voters will be to the Republican Party in the future and if there are any circumstances under which the Democrats could even the playing field. George Lakoff implied in his DVD, How Democrats and Progressives Can Win, that the Republicans electoral successes of late are primarily the result of greater media savvy. The argument goes that Republicans know how to frame the debate and in a culture saturated by political news that knowledge is powerful. Commensurately, if the Democrat could simply get better at using values frames they would be able to increase their share of the vote. For example, Lakoff argues that the Democrats campaign in terms of large and intangible government programs and legislation. They also oppose Republican ideals in the same way. Lakoff suggested that the Democrats, instead of talking about the Kyoto Accords, talk about the Republican Forest initiative as the Leave no tree behind Act. If Democrats and Progressives could use these types of frames and tactics, they would realize more encouraging electoral results. 1 I would like to give voters more credit than that. To do that we must deepen our understanding of the vote choice mechanisms that average, everyday American values 1 George Lakoff, How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions from George Lakoff, DVD, Copyright 2004 Educate the Base, LLC, 2

8 voters employ. I began by looking at the survey data of the PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life from PEW s data and methodology are extremely strong and I knew that their survey would give me a clear picture of the interplay of religion and politics today. What I was not prepared for was the strength of my findings when I began comparing the political choices of Evangelicals to other Americans. My study showed that Evangelicals are much more likely to support the discussion of political issues in church. They are much more likely that other Americans to use their religious beliefs to inform their vote choices. They are much more ideologically polarized. These findings led me to the motivation for this project. If Evangelicals, and Christians generally, are legitimately conservative Republicans then the framing debate is simply the wrong debate at the wrong time. What I hope to come out of this project is a deeper understanding of Evangelicals political choices. I want to understand how and why they make vote choices they do. I want to bring a more robust reading of the various literatures to bear on the topic in order to more fully understand the surfiet of issues impacting those decisions. To accomplish these goals I have to ask the right questions. Generally speaking to understand a person s vote choice you must first understand their rationale. That led me to ask: who and what influences the vote choice of Southern Evangelicals? Answering this question will help mitigate the competing literatures that say that Evangelical voting is much more complex than simply voting the New Christian Right agenda. I hypothesize that the ideological influences of local pastors, prominent Evangelical religious figures and the right wing media (i.e. The 700 3

9 Club, The Christian Television Network, various radio programs) are the most predominant for Evangelical Christians. Then I will raise the question: which are the most important factors in those decisions? I expect to find that the strength of the influences just mentioned will cause Southern Evangelical voters to remain strongly republican in the near future. The Southern Evangelicals and the New Christian Right: This is a relatively new field in Political Science and Political Communication research as the prominence of Southern Evangelical voters has only become evident in the last several election cycles. Such voters were first propelled to national prominence in the 1980s when Evangelical leaders began a trend away from a traditional distance from political activism. Pat Robertson s presidential bid, Jerry Falwell s foundation Moral Majority and the congressional critics at Christian Voice all signaled the entrance of Southern Evangelical values and activism into the blood sport of Washington. Such leaders crusaded to put the Bible first in national politics and policy making. We must understand that Evangelical leaders should not all be lumped together and termed extremist or fundamentalists. This is because many of them are neither extreme nor fundamentalist. As one Baptist preacher said in a sermon I witnessed: We re not fundamentalist, fundamentalists are no fun, all damned and a little bit mental. What he meant by that is that true Baptists, true Evangelicals are not angry at or embittered by mainstream America. Quite to the contrary, in fact, true 4

10 Evangelicals feel only love towards fellow citizens of earth. But they are concerned that the leaders in Washington have moved to far away from the teachings of the Bible. Evangelicals believe that the bible is the explicit word of God. To go against that word is to sin against God. That means that national prohibitions on the free exercise of religion, whether legal or cultural are to be fought against. The sanctity of life should not be questioned by Abortion rights or by pro-euthanasia laws. A marriage is between one man and one woman. Not because they hate or are loathsome of homosexuals, but because God created man and woman as a concordant pair in His own image. An important issue to discuss at this point is the nature of the term Evangelical and the selection process of the churches. What distinguishes Evangelicals from other Christians are four important characteristics. First, Evangelicals are conservative Protestants. Second, resulting from that conservatism an Evangelical believes very deeply that the Bible is the word of God and must be interpreted literally. Third, true Evangelicals have had a born again experience which has become central to their faith. Finally, Evangelicals work diligently to bring others into their religious communities. To give me the best chances of finding Evangelicals, all the churches I approached are members of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the most conservative Protestant sects in the nation. Academics were among the early skeptics when it came to demonstrating the breadth of support for such individuals and coalitions. Over time, the New Christian Right s bite began to equal its bark. The surprisingly robust victory of George W. Bush 5

11 over challenger John Kerry seemed to many in the media to be attributable to high turnout amongst Southern Evangelicals. 2 That is when this branch of political science and political communication research became timely and important. Many in academia and in the media began to realize that our collective understanding of Evangelical votership remained in its infancy. There began a deluge of popular accounts and postulations about the power of the religious right, the power brokering of the new Republican coalition and the bleak future of the Democratic Party. One of the most renowned, Thomas Frank s What s the Matter with Kansas? is an example of that type of work. This difficulty with works like Frank s is that they are little more than stories. They have not subjected their premises to the rigor of academic standards. Realities are assumed. Assumptions are presented as fact. George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at Berkley and a prominent anti-bush progressive, has also written on this topic of the viability of the progressive Democrats in the current electoral climate. Surprisingly, Dr. Lakoff s work falls into many of the pitfalls that the popular writers does. For instance, he makes assertions about the ideological makeup of religious America that go unsupported in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I believe that these issues are the result of a field still in its nascence. This has forced me to bring together a literature review from several different fields. They include: votership in America Studies, histories of the 2 Debra Rosenberg And Karen Breslau, Culture Wars: Winning the Values Vote, Newsweek, [Online: Sunday, February 05, 2006], 6

12 two major political parties, works on the role of religion in policy making and votership, party reform and realignment, and works on the role of evangelism in political action. Plan of Study: With a firm grasp of the literature in hand I will move on to discuss the findings of my original survey research. I am most interested in the voter decisions of Southern Evangelicals over the past several election cycles and whether there are any signs of those decisions diversifying. My study began by identifying four congressional districts in Virginia and North Carolina. The districts I chose were the Virginia 9 th, a seat held by Democrat Rick Boucher. The Virginia 5 th is held by Republican Virgil Goode. In South Carolina, the Republican 5 th represented by Virginia Foxx and the Democratic 13 th, which is Brad Miller s district, were chosen. These districts were chosen because they are along the shared border, are mostly rural and offer one Democratic and one Republican district per state. I believe this will give a legitimate basis of comparison. I then found Evangelical churches in each of those four districts in which to conduct my survey. The survey itself, which is included in the appendices, asked the church goers about their voting behavior, where they get their political views and how important their religious views are in shaping those political views and actions. My hope was to get 50 completed surveys from each of the four districts. I believed this would give me an adequate sample to complete my study. 7

13 In the final stage of my study I will compare the findings of my original survey to the 2005 edition of the PEW Forum on Religion and Public Life national survey in a hope to corroborate and strengthen my finding. I have already developed a model for this final stage in a previous statistical project using the 2003 PEW Data. Once the 2004 data set is available I will be able to update my model. I believe this to be an extremely important step as it will give context to the study. In the subsequent chapters of this thesis I will delve for fully into the concepts and issues I have introduced here. In the next chapter I will review the pertinent academic literature. The literature I have chosen to include in that chapter was carefully selected from a much wider array of texts and fields. I believe the arguments and publications I have chosen to include are indicative of the fields they exemplify. The topics I focus most heavily on are: the identify of the Southern Evangelical in the context of this thesis, the movements of the Evangelical sphere into political activism, the institutions of the New Christian Right, the early missteps and longer-term successes of those institutions, and, a discussion of the current state-of-affairs in Christian politics. Throughout that chapter I endeavor to elucidate the theoretical motivation and underpinnings of my thesis. I spell out my motivations and the arguments that drive my interest in the topic. After a review of the literature comes the outline of my own methodology. This includes a more detailed explanation of how I chose the churches I surveyed, how I 8

14 developed the survey itself, and how I went about my analysis both of the original survey data and the Pew data. 9

15 Chapter 2. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework Introduction: The goal of this chapter is to evaluate some of the major themes in the scholarly literatures that orbit this thesis. I will spend time discussing the nature of Evangelicalism the south, the conditions that led to the formation of the New Christian Right, the institutions of that movement, its political successes and failures, and, finally, the new literature that provided the impetus for this project. I will also attempt to demonstrate that the religious right should not be considered one monolithic organization. My reading and experience talking to southern Evangelical Pastors and congregants shows a wide range of beliefs and ideologies. The Southern Evangelical: One of the most critical concepts to discuss in this project is the character of southern Evangelicalism. Many have written over the years in an attempt to articulate and obfuscate that character. The goal of this discussion is to cut through the rhetoric and supposition in an effort to better understand what an average southern Evangelical believes and feels. The first thing that must be understood about southern Evangelicals is that they are a broad and diverse group. Their congregations can be as diverse ideologically and politically as those of any other religion. Southern Evangelicals are liberals. Conservatives are Evangelicals. Both parties are represented in the Evangelical community. The cohesiveness of the Evangelical community is born of the shared 10

16 beliefs of its members. It is also a function of a broad feeling of otherness within the community. Many Evangelicals see their community a separate and distinct from American life generally. 3 This sense of otherness comes from both a feeling that the American population generally is suspect of their piety and belief that religion is, for the most part, a personal and private experience to be shared only with ones family and fellow Christians. More specifically, southern Evangelicals fall into the broader category of conservative Protestants. According to Paul Lopatto s study, the conservative Protestant holds markedly different beliefs than liberal Protestants. Catholics were also included in his study for context. Lopatto compared the three groups based on three criteria: interpretation of the Bible, the born again experience, and the effort to convert others to their religious sect. Conservative Protestants, including southern Evangelicals, scored the highest in all criteria. 72% believe the Bible can be interpreted literally, compared to 35% each of liberal Protestants and Catholics. 61% of conservative Protestants reported having had a born again experience. Only 28% of liberal Protestants and 14% of Catholics reported such an experience. Conservative Protestants also had the highest propensity to work to convert others to their religious beliefs at 69%. 44% of liberal Protestants and 31% of Catholics reported the same 3 Robert Wuthnow, Beyond Quiet Influence? Possibilities for the Protestant Mainline, The Quiet Hand of God: Faith Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, Ed. By Robert Wuthnow and John H. Evans, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), pg

17 behavior. 4 Lopatto argued that of these characteristics the born again experience is the most integral to the Evangelical experience. He also believes that the born again experience combined with conversion work replace the importance that other sects, especially Catholics, place on good works. 5 In speaking with various members of the Evangelical clergy both of the conservative and liberal varieties have agreed with this assessment of Evangelical Christianity. For the most part, liberal Protestants sects include Congregationalists, Methodists and Episcopalians. Conservative Protestants, the Evangelical side, include Lutherans and Baptists. Again it is important to remember that no assumptions should be made about the political ideologies of members of these various sects. Socio-economically speaking, southern Evangelicals lean towards the lower end of the general demographic trends of the south. Southern Evangelicals are less affluent than Catholics and liberal Protestants. Evangelicals tend to be less educated than other sects. Evangelicals traverse all age groups. Some of this disparity can be explained by the fact that conservative Protestants are spread evenly across the north and south. The vast majority of liberal Protestants and Catholics reside in the more affluent northern regions. 6 Later there will be a discussion of the changing nature of these demographics and its impact on Evangelicals propensity to vote. 4 Paul Lopatto, Religion and the Presidential Election, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1985), pg Lopatto, pg Lopatto, pg

18 Politically speaking, Evangelicals have been becoming more and more likely to support interventions into political realms over the past few decades. The purpose of these interventions would be to indoctrinate their conservative religious views into national policy making. 7 Generally speaking, Evangelicals have always had a greater propensity to be affiliated with the Whig and later Republican Party. This stems from the long standing tradition in the Democratic Party of being friendly to immigrants. That friendliness led waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants to join the Democrats throughout the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. This dynamic of religion in America also explains the more even distribution of conservative Protestants across the country as Catholic and Jewish population still tend to congregate in the north. 8 As of 2000, Evangelicals were 50% more likely to identify as Republican than other Americans. 9 It is important to remember that political activism amongst the conservative Protestant sects is a relatively new phenomenon. Until at least the late 1970s even the most fundamentalist evangelicals viewed national politics as a realm beyond their own and chose to remain removed from it. 10 Electorally speaking, white evangelical Protestants make up 20% of the electorate. These voters used to be ardent Democrats, as were the vast majority of 7 Lopatto, pg Lopatto, pgs. 4 and 5, and Ira Katznelson, Reversing Southern Republicanism, The New Majority: Toward a Popular Progressive Politics, ed. Stanley B. Greenberg and Theda Skocpol, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pg W. Bradford Wilcox and John P. Bartkowski, The Conservative Protestant Family: Traditional Rhetoric, Progressive Practice, in What s God got to do with the American Experiment?, eds. E.J. Dionne Jr. and John J. Diiulio Jr., (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), pg Katznelson, pg

19 southern, low income Americans. Since 1968, however, the Republicans have won a plurality of southern voters. 11 First to go were the southern Dixiecrats. The loss of the south began after 1937 when it became clear that F.D.R. intended to pack the courts with faithful New Dealers who were very progressive on social issues like civil rights. 12 The disintegration of the New Deal Coalition continued through the Republican domination of the Presidency in the 1950s and even into the 1960s. As Everett Carl Ladd discussed the unraveling of the coalition has been happening in earnest since 1960 as a result of major social upheaval in the country. This led to the beginnings of realignment in the 1960s. White southerners defected and joined the Republican Party en masse. 13 Today, southern Evangelicals vote with their consciences and not their union cards. James Reichley points to administration of Jimmy Carter as the last straw for many evangelicals in the south. Tired of being asked to vote Democrat and having their values betrayed in Washington, Evangelicals began a long ideological journey that led them reliably into the Republican camp. 14 In terms of their views on political issues Evangelicals are quite distinct from the Protestant mainline. The vast majority of all protestants, 88%, believe that religious groups have a positive effect on the country. 48% of evangelicals, compared to 33% of 11 Pat Dunham, Electoral Behavior in the United States, (Princeton, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1991), pgs. 79 and Richard S. Kirkendall, The United States, : Years of Change and Crisis, (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1974), pgs. 93 to 103 & Arthur Sanders, Victory: How a Progressive Democratic Party Can Win and Govern, (New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1992), pg Dunham, pgs. 79 and A. James Reichley, The Life of the Parties: A History of American Political Parties, (New York: The Free Press, 1992), pg

20 mainline Protestants, wish to see their denomination doing more in Washington to influence public policy. That number rises to 58% on a state level. The Majority of Evangelicals, unlike the Protestant mainline want to see more of their religious leaders appearing on television and running for office. The most interesting finding of this study by Robert Wuthnow, is that Evangelicals surveyed hoped to see more influence from both mainline and Evangelical protestants in the shaping of public opinion on social issue at abut the same rate. Many more, mainline Protestants however, wanted to see their own influence increase but were not as open to the idea of Evangelicals having an impact on the social policy discourse. 15 This is evidence of Earl and Merle Black s conclusion that 70% of white southerners see the religious rights as extreme. Whether or not that belief is founded on evidence it is a predominant belief in American generally and in the south as well. 16 This study will attempt to elucidate that belief. The Rising Tide of Evangelical Political Activism: After the Republican s lose of the White House in 1992, some blamed the Christian Right for dropping the ball. Ralph Reid of the Christian Coalition countered: Blaming the Evangelicals for [Bush s] defeat is like the sinking of the Titanic on a 15 Wuthnow, pg Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans, (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), pg

21 waiter who dropped some dishes. 17 In reality, by the mid-1990s the evangelicals would be condemned as a new source of passionate support within the GOP. Such assertions were a longtime in the making and we often overestimated at early stages in the politicization of the southern Evangelicals. Traditionally, Evangelicals saw a disconnect between their religious world and the world of national politics. Overtime, however, as Evangelical churches grew and become more organized, a national leadership cast began to congeal. Within that cast was a small but committed band of leader who wanted to see the Evangelical sect more active in political issues. Interest groups were formed to offer a strategic framework to the movement s political activism. At the local level, Evangelical pastors followed the national trend. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s they were less likely than more liberal preachers to engage in political discussions with their parishioners. Over time, however, they became as likely to discuss politically charge issues in their churches as were liberal protestant preachers. The difference was in the issues that discussed. Where liberal preachers focused on issues of peace and justice Evangelical pastors chose to highlight a pro-family slate of issues. What began the shift towards a political activism on the part of Evangelicals was a perceived meddling in the family by an increasingly unethical government John Calvin Batchelor, Ain t You Glad you Joined the Republicans? A Short History of the GOP, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), pg Kenneth D. Wald, Religion and Politics in the United States, (Washington: CQ Press, 1992), pgs. 241 and

22 The events and personalities of Evangelical political activism will be discussed in the next sections. First, though, it is important to understand the ideological and economic issues surrounding Evangelical politics more fully. As discussed earlier, southerners began flooding the Republican Party in the 1960s. Electoral results support the assertions that Evangelicals were on the vanguard of that movement. With the exception of Lyndon Johnston in 1964, conservative Protestants gave the Republican candidate for President at least 50% of their two-party vote. Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford each received 50% of that vote in A closer reading of Evangelical votership indicates that such voters may have been looking to both parties for the Presidential candidate that best represented their values. Commensurately, the 1976 Democratic Candidate Jimmy Carter, a self professed born again Christian, faired much better with Evangelicals voters. It is also unsurprising that Evangelicals supported Richard Nixon in Paul Lopatto argues in his book Religion and the Presidential Election that conservative Protestants will only support Democrats who are Protestants themselves. Their deep rooted distrust of the Catholic Clergy is insurmountable. 20 Explaining why Evangelicals left their political apathy behind is not an easy task. Kenneth Wald has been the most methodical in endeavoring to explain the phenomenon by using a rudimentary social networks model. Wald argues that the new 19 Lopatto, pg Lopatto, pgs. 64 and 65 17

23 activism of Evangelicals is based on three facets of religious activism: social influences, institutional factors and values. Social influences include the increased socio-economic success in the south generally. This includes a higher level of educational achievement. This also means that many of the younger members of the congregations are increasingly mainstream in their political beliefs. That increased socio-economic levels also give the Evangelical sect access to more skillful organizational skills and even government officials. Furthermore, the more affluent a social group the more likely they are to identify with traditional Republican economic policies. Wald was right to point out, though, that explaining the increased civic activism of Evangelicals on socio-economic arguments alone is troublesome to many academics. 21 Socio-economic status is the best predictor of votership. The wealthier the voter the more likely they are to cast their ballot. 22 In fact, SES outweighs all other factors in determining a person s propensity to vote. Increases in SES indicators can actually offset decreases in other area such as high residential mobility and depressed voter efficacy. 23 Among the SES indicators education is the most accurate predictor of votership. The more educated the voter the more likely they are to vote. 24 Put in other ways, college educated people are more likely to vote than the high school educated. 21 Wald, pgs. 238 to Michael J. Avey, The Demobilization of American Voters: A Comprehensive Theory of Voter Turnout, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), pg Teixeira, pgs. 84 to Avey, pg. 6 and Raymond Wolfinger and Steven Rosenstone, Who Votes?, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pgs. 17 and 19 18

24 White collar workers are more likely than the working class to vote. The rich out-vote the poor. We also know that race has an impact. Whites vote more than Blacks and Hispanics for instance. 25 Farmers are the contradiction to these rules. 26 Wolfinger and Rosenstone make sense of these SES distinctions quite well. The poor, they argue, have neither the time, nor the energy to vote. They also have a depressed sense of duty and feel they have a lower stake in the outcomes of elections than the rich do. Furthermore, good jobs often tend to increase a voters political savvy. It is also easier to vote in higher SES neighborhoods. 27 This is troublesome to some academics because it indicates that increased Evangelical voting may have more to do with modernization in the south than it does with the New Christian Right movement. 28 Few people, I think, wonder what issues are important to Evangelical Christians. The average Evangelicals political values go hand-in-hand with the national trend of pro-traditional family that brought Evangelicals into the political sphere. White, Evangelical Christian voters want their traditional views of the family protected nationally. They oppose abortion rights. They oppose the increasing rights granted to homosexuals, politically and culturally. They do not believe that pornography should be protected speech. They believe in school prayer and two-parent families. 29 Like I said there is nothing surprising here. Robert Booth Fowler, an early writer on the topic, 25 Dunham, pgs. 52 and Avey pg Who Votes?, pgs. 20 to Wald, pg Arthur Sanders, Victory: How a Progressive Democratic Party Can Win and Govern, (New York: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1992), pg

25 argued that conservative Protestants are not bringing anything new to the public policy debate. What is significant is that more and more they are competing with more liberal Christian sects for their share of the policy outputs. 30 I believe this assertion remains correct. Taking Shape - The Institutions of the New Christian Right: Were it not for the institutions of the New Christian Right this thesis project and other studies of evangelical politics would never have been necessary. It was the institutions of the Christian Right that gave the movement cohesion and a national face and voice. The success of those institutions was never certain, however. In fact, many Evangelicals were initially turned off by their efforts to politicize the church. 31 Several pastors I have spoken to in the course of my study have articulated that many still hold these views. Some have even chosen to take their churches out of the Southern Baptist Convention and support religious interest groups in Washington that seek to regain a clearer separation of church and state. The most notable of these groups is the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. The Joint Committee was founded in 1945 when four Baptist conventions voted to maintain an office in Washington D.C. to work to advance their traditional support for the separation of Church and State. It grew to 30 Robert Booth Fowler, Religion and Politics in American, (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1985), pg E.J. Dionne Jr. The Third Stage: New Frontiers of Religious Liberty, in What s God got to do with the American Experiment?, eds. E.J. Dionne Jr. and John J. Diiulio Jr., (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2000), pg

26 include as many as eight conventions including the Northern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A. and the Southern Baptist Convention. The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs remains loyal to the traditional views of the Baptist churches. These include opposition to school prayer and a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. Because of these traditional views, the powerful Southern Baptist Convention withdrew its support and funding of the Committee in This fight over the Baptist Joint Committee of Public Affairs is indicative of a broader conflict within the Evangelical community. The conflict centers on the work and institutions of the New Christian Right. Many feel that the ever more conservative policy positions of the New Christian Right are too extreme. The political acumen of those more conservative groups, however, has propelled them to the forefront of the debate. I turn now to an elucidation of their nature and goals. The power and influence of the most renowned institutions of the New Religious Right has grown over the past couple of decades. Some of the earliest institutions were not well received. The Christian Voice, for instance, hit a nerve with its newsletter critiquing the records of elected officials on religious issues. Christian Voice is a fine example of a group that may have had a deleterious effect on the New Religious Right in the 1980s. After being founded in 1978 in California to support a referendum that would have banned openly homosexual teachers from classrooms it 32 Paul J Weber and W. Landis Jones, U.S. Religious Interest Groups: Institutional Profiles, (Westport, CT: Greenwood press, 1994), pgs. 32 and 33 21

27 quickly developed a large national footprint on many issues. School prayer became its most critical issue. In 1980, however, it began drawing criticism from within the religious right for publishing a list of incumbents it wanted to see defeated. By 1986 the newsletter had become a standard in election years and was being sent to the group s 17 million name mailing list. Christian Voice has born the brunt of its criticism from the often bizarre nature of its report card scores. For instance, Congressman Paul Simon of Illinois earned a score of zero in spite of being an active Christian, having authored a book on Christian marriage and started an anti-hungry group called Bread for the World. 33 One of the most notorious institutions of the New Christian Right was Reverend Jerry Falwell s Moral Majority. By far one of the most outspoken groups in the movement, Moral Majority was founded in 1956 as a coordinating unit of all of Falwell s various organizations in Washington. Falwell s mission now includes a large Baptist Church, Liberty Baptist College, a Bible institute, correspondence courses, a summer camp, a private school system and a home for alcoholics. In a sense, the organizations that Falwell heads are a microcosm for the entire New Religious Right. Falwell s organization includes operations aimed at educating and mobilizing Christians, legislative research, lobbying, Political Action Committees, and voter registration drives Fowler, pgs. 205 to 208 and Weber and Jones, pgs. 54 and Fowler, pgs. 206 to

28 Interestingly, Falwell s organizations are also a microcosm for the movements broader difficulties. Many have argued that the influence of the New Christian Right was overestimated in the 1980s. The National Election Studies have presented evidence that Moral Majority and other Christian groups had no real impact on the elections of Ronald Reagan. Academics have even reported that Falwell himself grossly overestimated the membership of his Moral Majority when he claimed that 3 million had signed on. The actual figure was close to 500,000. Quickly, the Moral Majority banner became a liability to Falwell. In 1980, 68% of the electorate was hostile to Moral Majority and only 7% supported it. In Washington Moral Majority struggled to gain access to powerbrokers. 35 Bowing to pressures from within and without, Moral Majority folded in 1989 to make way for Pat Robertson s Christian Coalition. After his failure to gain the Republican nomination for President in 1988, Pat Robertson institutionalized his campaign by founding the Christian Coalition. The greatest resource of the campaign was a mailing list including some 1.8 million names and addresses. By 1992, the Christian Coalition had parled that list into a membership of 375,000 with 859 local chapters in all fifty states. The Christian Coalition then turned its attention to local politics in order to build upon in grassroots base of support. Christian Coalition s mission statement is further evidence of the break with traditional evangelical values. Christian Coalition was founded for the express purpose of giving 35 Fowler, pg. 212 and Wald, pg

29 Christians a voice in their government again. 36 As I have discussed already, the New Christian Right and its organizations were the first foray for conservative Protestants into actual policy making. It is also worth noting that the Christian Coalition s $12 million annual budget has included donations from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. 37 A discussion of the institutions of the New Christian Right would not be complete without a discussion of clergy. I must preface this discussion with a concern about the nature of the literature generally. Many academics have based their studies of conservative Protestant clergy on survey research. That is certainly a fine way to gauge sentiments within a population. Unfortunately, the surveys do not seem to have identified the diversity of opinion within the clergy or, more accurately, some members of the clergy s distance and disdain for the tactics and politics of the New Christian Right. Demographically speaking, the Southern Baptist Convention clergy is what you might expect. 99% are men. 93% are white. Evangelical clergy beat the national divorce rate with room to spare. 87% are married and have not been divorced. 76% are college grads and many have done post-graduate work. Theologically speaking, 98% believe Jesus Christ will return one day and that the devil exists. 99% believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin mother. 97% are certain that the only path to salvation is 36 Weber and Jones, pg Jones and Weber, pgs. 48 and 49 24

30 through a belief in Jesus Christ. On political matters the numbers are not always as strong. 66% take a stand on political issues while preaching. 56% support political candidates publicly, though not while preaching. 55% have contributed to a political candidate, party or political action committee. 81% self identify as Republicans or Republican leaners. 86% voted for George W. Bush. 59% urged their congregants to register and vote. 38 Overestimations and Long-term Growth: In his 1985 work, Robert Booth Fowler argued that in the late 1970s and early 1980s conservative Protestants began to realize that the political realm was not necessarily distinct from their religious realm. To the contrary in fact, many conservative Protestants, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, grew to understand that the political realm was indeed a tool to further their ministries and secure the future of their values. Though this project focuses on the national level, the Christian right does not limit its political activities to Washington. To the contrary, do to its broad institutional and popular base of support the Christian Right is remarkably nimble and reactive at the state and local levels as well. As I have pointed out already, though, the work of the New Christian Right did take several years to trickle down to the parishioner level. In fact, that process is still ongoing today. In 1985, though, many 38 James L. Guth, Southern Baptist Convention, in Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium, ed. Corwin E. Smidt, (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), pgs. 107 to

31 found that the movement remained a tremendously hierarchical and top heavy one. Fowler reports for instance that in % of conservative Protestants would ignore their pastors urges to vote for a specific candidate. This is of course a hold over from their traditional distrust of other sect s clergy backed candidates. Even at the highest levels of the evangelical hierarchy skepticism about the mixing of church and state remained. 39 This skepticism of the true nature of support amongst the rack and file of conservative Protestants remained throughout the 1980s. Academics Clyde Wilcox, Xandra Kayden and Eddie Mahe Jr. all supported this argument. Kayden and Mahe, writing in 1985 as well, argued that the control that the leaders of the Christian Right claimed to have over their ideological brethren was unlikely. 40 In 1989, Clyde Wilcox discussed in greater detail the unachieved goals of the New Christian Right. Wilcox articulated that the goal of Jerry Falwell and his colleagues was to shift opinion within the conservative Protestant community away from the traditional belief that politics was dirty and get it to believe that taking an active role in politics was rather a God given responsibility. There is a statistically significant disjunct, however, between the movement s claims of success and actual replicable data. There are many reasons to support the argument that evangelicals in the south remained outside the political sphere early on. Essentially, the movement was fighting an uphill battle. Not only were 39 Fowler, pgs. 202 to Xandra Kayden and Eddie Mahe Jr., The Party Goes On: The Persistence of the Two-Party System in the United States, (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1985), pgs. 198 and

32 conservative Protestants generally apposed to political activism based on their churches traditional position, but many members of those churches were also in socioeconomic brackets that predisposed them to a lack of political activism. Namely lower levels of income and education. Overtime, however, the New Christian Right began to show signs that it could deliver on its promises. In 1980, Evangelicals, spurred on by both their urgings of their sect s leadership and their disappointment in the Jimmy Carter administration, voted at a level significantly higher than the rest of the population. In 1984, however, the evidence suggests a return to the status quo. Wilcox concluded that evangelicals and conservative Protestants generally are becoming more and more involved in the political realm. He would not assert, however, that the New Christian Right is to be blamed or credited for that transition. In order to gain respect and to move from the fringe of the GOP to its core the Religious Right would have to prove it could deliver votes to Republican candidates. Throughout the 1980s, though, that proof remained lacking. Some of the most compelling evidence to support this conclusion was a feeling thermometer like study that showed that even religious Republicans felt closer to mainstream Republicans and institutions like Jack Kemp and the National Rifle Association than they did to Pat Robertson and Moral Majority, led by Jerry Falwell Clyde Wilcox, The New Christian Right and the Mobilization of Evangelicals, in Religion and Political Behavior in the United States, ed. Ted G. Jelen, (New York: Praeger, 1989), pgs 139 to 148, and 235 to

33 The 1980s were not without victories, however. The presidential bids of Ronald Reagan appear to have benefited especially form support from the Christian Right. In 1980 southern Evangelicals parted ways with Jimmy Carter, one of their own, to support Reagan overwhelmingly. Evangelicals accounted for 11% of Reagan s votes compared to 6% of Carter s. Battling Mondale in the 1984 election Reagan held on to his 11% and the Democrat s lost 3% of theirs. 42 When George Bush Sr. faced off against Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 the Republic s support from Evangelicals doubled to 22% of their vote. What is interesting is that 12% of Dukakis votes came from Evangelicals as well. 43 I believe that this is evidence of the more general trend of southern Evangelicals beginning to vote for socio-economic reasons rather than because of the urging of the Religious Right. The changes in support from Carter to Reagan to Bush indicate a lack of ideological cohesiveness. Those changes also support the broader conclusion that the 1980s did not house the first great successes of the Christian Right. The 1990s, however, would prove to be a pivotal decade for the New Religious Right. The strong growth in clout of the Religious Right in the 1990s began with the founding of the Christian Coalition in Building on the 1.8 million person mailing list accumulated during Pat Robertson s 1988 Presidential bid, Christian Coalition 42 Reichley, pgs. 361, 375 and Reichley, pgs. 411 and

34 became and strong and resourceful voice for Evangelicals at all levels of government. 44 Credit for more accountable successes in the 1990s are also spread to Moral Majority and the Southern Baptist Convention for helping to make the conservative Protestant churches more politically active. The 1990s also saw the rise of a better organized and more prolific rightwing media. 45 The 1990s also afforded academics a greater willingness to credit local pastors and congregations with success helping to politicize Evangelicals. Geoffrey Layman, writing in 2001, discussed how Evangelicals had become more willing to listen and react to the political messages of their pastors. More significantly, though, he found that because their churches were the primary social space for many Evangelicals they were more likely to be mobilized if a large enough contingent of their congregation was overtly political. Layman, using techniques indicative of social network analysis, posited that as more and more congregants became political the likelihood of reaching a broader tipping point, which would lead to the general indoctrination of Evangelicals into the Republican, had arrived or was nearing. At the very least, the permeation of congregations by conservative Republican at least helped to foster an anti-democratic sentiment across the Evangelical south. 46 Luckily for the Republican Party this increase politicization of the Evangelical south coincided with the socio-economic improvements that were given credit for increased turnout in the 1980s. The successes of the 1990s were the result of the coming together 44 Weber and Jones, pgs. 48 and 49 and Geoffrey Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), pg Katznelson, pg Layman, pg. 235 and