Religion and Political Behavior
JefJeff Manza and Nathan Wright
In the history of social science research on group-based political alignments, religious
cleavages have often been shown to be a more powerful predictor of individual voting
behavior than class location (e.g., Rose and Urwin 1969; Converse 1974; Lijphart 1979;
Dogan 1995; Brooks and Manza 1997). Yet it has received significantly less attention
than studies analyzing class politics, and even when acknowledging the existence of
religious-based political divides, scholars have often assumed that some other, non religious antecedent factor lays behind it. As Demerath and Williams (1990: 434) put it,
“While students of voting do cite religious affiliation as a significant variable, they often
tend to interpret its effects less in terms of theology and ecclesiastical influence than
in terms of ethnic, class, and regional factors lurking beneath the symbolic surface.”
Since the late 1970s, however, dramatic religious mobilizations around the world –
including a fundamentalist Islamic revolution in Iran, the visibly active role of the
Catholic Church in the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1980–1, growing publicity
about “liberation theology” movements in Latin America, and, in the United States
the rise of politically active conservative Christian organizations such as the Moral
Majority – have made it more difficult for scholars to ignore the ways in which religion shapes political action and behavior. And indeed, over the past fifteen years there
has been considerable growth in research on (and scholarly controversies about) the
association between religious group memberships, doctrinal beliefs and practices, and
voting behavior.
This chapter dissects what we have learned from this scholarship about how religion and political behavior are linked. We should note two limitations of our analysis at
the outset. First, we consider only one type of political action – voting – and not other
types of religious influence on political life, such as participation in social movements,
political lobbying, or the impact of religion on public opinion. Second, our analytical
focus is limited to the postindustrial democracies of Western Europe and North America,
with special attention to the (arguably “exceptional”) American case. Lack of space
There is, unfortunately, no systematic overview of the growing literature on religion and politicprecludes a broader consideration of religious impacts on voting behavior in the newer
democracies in Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. This should not be taken to
mean that the impact in those latter countries is modest. Quite the contrary: The spread
of democratization processes around the world (e.g., Markoff 1996) has frequently been
influenced by social movements rooted in churches (not least the civil rights movement
in the United States; see Morris 1984; more generally, see Smith 1996a); and in a
number of countries a government with direct or strong indirect ties to fundamentalist (or quasi-fundamentalist) religious organizations is in, or has recently been, in
office (the list of such countries would include Iran, Turkey, India, and Algeria). These
issues are explored more fully elsewhere (Arjomand 1993; Marty and Appleby 1993).
This chapter is in three parts. We begin with a discussion of the diverse ways in
which religion may influence political behavior, and how these differences may manifest themselves in different polities. Part two examines, in some detail, the U.S. case,
where the most extensive social science research literature has developed, and it provides the case that can most easily be related to all of the analytical elements introduced
in part one of the chapter. Part three surveys the comparative evidence from Western
Europe, including the factors that strengthen or weaken the religious cleavage across
different national contexts.
HOW DOES RELIGION INFLUENCE VOTING BEHAVIOR?
Religion as a Social Cleavage: A General Model
Any enduring and significant social cleavage, whether based on class, race/ethnicity,
linguistic preference, region, gender, or religion, will find varying degrees of expression
in political conflicts at four distinct levels: (a) social structure; (b) group identity; (c) political organizations and party systems; and (d) public policy outcomes (cf. Coleman
1956; Bartolini and Mair 1990; Manza and Brooks 1999: Chapter 2).
“Social” cleavages are always grounded in the social structure of a given society. In
the case of religion, there is of course wide variation in the types of religious divisions
found in different countries. In some countries, a single denomination (the Catholic
Church in Italy, Ireland, or Belgium, the Anglican Church in Britain, the Lutheran
Church in Sweden, and so forth) has the allegiance of most citizens who claim a religious identity. Here the social basis for a cleavage lies in the division between devout or
practicing adherents versus secular or nominally affiliated church members. In other
countries, however, there is much greater competition between denominations or religious traditions with large memberships (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, the United
States). Religion can, in such societies, provide a basis for social stratification and inequality, in which members of a “dominant” denomination have privileged access to
valued positions (e.g., in the long dominance of “WASP” denominations in the United
States).
The existence of group divisions at the level of social structure may not matter much
for political life unless these are mobilized in some fashion. Actors have to perceive
these divisions as meaningful and unequal (Ebersole 1960; Koch 1995). Religious group
identities reflect the degree to which religious differences, whether between competing
religious denominations or, alternatively, between citizens with and without religious
identities, come to be the basis for group consciousness. Here, the question is to whatal behavior. This chapter aims to fill that gap. See Wald (1996) and Leege (1993) for overviews
of the research on the American case; a good textbook treatment, again for the United States,
can be found in Corbett and Corbett (1999).
precludes a broader consideration of religious impacts on voting behavior in the newer
democracies in Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. This should not be taken to
mean that the impact in those latter countries is modest. Quite the contrary: The spread
of democratization processes around the world (e.g., Markoff 1996) has frequently been
influenced by social movements rooted in churches (not least the civil rights movement
in the United States; see Morris 1984; more generally, see Smith 1996a); and in a
number of countries a government with direct or strong indirect ties to fundamentalist (or quasi-fundamentalist) religious organizations is in, or has recently been, in
office (the list of such countries would include Iran, Turkey, India, and Algeria). These
issues are explored more fully elsewhere (Arjomand 1993; Marty and Appleby 1993).
This chapter is in three parts. We begin with a discussion of the diverse ways in
which religion may influence political behavior, and how these differences may manifest themselves in different polities. Part two examines, in some detail, the U.S. case,
where the most extensive social science research literature has developed, and it provides the case that can most easily be related to all of the analytical elements introduced
in part one of the chapter. Part three surveys the comparative evidence from Western
Europe, including the factors that strengthen or weaken the religious cleavage across
different national contexts.
HOWprecludes a broader consideration of religious impacts on voting behavior in the newer
democracies in Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. This should not be taken to
mean that the impact in those latter countries is modest. Quite the contrary: The spread
of democratization processes around the world (e.g., Markoff 1996) has frequently been
influenced by social movements rooted in churches (not least the civil rights movement
in the United States; see Morris 1984; more generally, see Smith 1996a); and in a
number of countries a government with direct or strong indirect ties to fundamentalist (or quasi-fundamentalist) religious organizations is in, or has recently been, in
office (the list of such countries would include Iran, Turkey, India, and Algeria). These
issues are explored more fully elsewhere (Arjomand 1993; Marty and Appleby 1993).
This chapter is in three parts. We begin with a discussion of the diverse ways in
which religion may influence political behavior, and how these differences may manifest themselves in different polities. Part two examines, in some detail, the U.S. case,
where the most extensive social science research literature has developed, and it provides the case that can most easily be related to all of the analytical elements introduced
in part one of the chapter. Part three surveys the comparative evidence from Western
Europe, including the factors that strengthen or weaken the religious cleavage across
different national contexts.
HOW DOES RELIGION INFLUENCE VOTING BEHAVIOR?
Religion as a Social Cleavage: A General Model
Any enduring and significant social cleavage, whether based on class, race/ethnicity,
linguistic preference, region, gender, or religion, will find varying degrees of expression
in political conflicts at four distinct levels: (a) social structure; (b) group identity; (c) political organizations and party systems; and (d) public policy outcomes (cf. Coleman
1956; Bartolini and Mair 1990; Manza and Brooks 1999: Chapter 2).
“Social” cleavages are always grounded in the social structure of a given society. In
the case of religion, there is of course wide variation in the types of religious divisions
found in different countries. In some countries, a single denomination (the Catholic
Church in Italy, Ireland, or Belgium, the Anglican Church in Britain, the Lutheran
Church in Sweden, and so forth) has the allegiance of most citizens who claim a religious identity. Here the social basis for a cleavage lies in the division between devout or
practicing adherents versus secular or nominally affiliated church members. In other
countries, however, there is much greater competition between denominations or religious traditions with large memberships (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, the United
States). Religion can, in such societies, provide a basis for social stratification and inequality, in which members of a “dominant” denomination have privileged access to
valued positions (e.g., in the long dominance of “WASP” denominations in the United
States).
The existence of group divisions at the level of social structure may not matter much
for political life unless these are mobilized in some fashion. Actors have to perceive
these divisions as meaningful and unequal (Ebersole 1960; Koch 1995). Religious group
identities reflect the degree to which religious differences, whether between competing
religious denominations or, alternatively, between citizens with and without religious
identities, come to be the basis for group consciousness. Here, the question is to what
DOES RELIGION INFLUENCE VOTING BEHAVIOR?
Religion as a Social Cleavage: A General Model
Any enduring and significant social cleavage, whether based on class, race/ethnicity,
linguistic preference, region, gender, or religion, will find varying degrees of expression
in political conflicts at four distinct levels: (a) social structure; (b) group identity; (c) political organizations and party systems; and (d) public policy outcomes (cf. Coleman
1956; Bartolini and Mair 1990; Manza and Brooks 1999: Chapter 2).
“Social” cleavages are always grounded in the social structure of a given society. In
the case of religion, there is of course wide variation in the types of religious divisions
found in different countries. In some countries, a single denomination (the Catholic
Church in Italy, Ireland, or Belgium, the Anglican Church in Britain, the Lutheran
Church in Sweden, and so forth) has the allegiance of most citizens who claim a religious identity. Here the social basis for a cleavage lies in the division between devout or
practicing adherents versus secular or nominally affiliated church members. In other
countries, however, there is much greater competition between denominations or religious traditions with large memberships (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, the United
States). Religion can, in such societies, provide a basis for social stratification and inequality, in which members of a “dominant” denomination have privileged access to
valued positions (e.g., in the long dominance of “WASP” denominations in the United
States).
The existence of group divisions at the level of social structure may not matter much
for political life unless these are mobilized in some fashion. Actors have to perceive
these divisions as meaningful and unequal (Ebersole 1960; Koch 1995). Religious group
identities reflect the degree to which religious differences, whether between competing
religious denominations or, alternatively, between citizens with and without religious
identities, come to be the basis for group consciousness. Here, the question is to what degree do adherents identify with a particular religious tradition, and perceive it to be
in conflict with other traditions.
The mechanisms that strengthen or erode religious group conflict have been well
charted. Religious movements can activate new or dormant identities and make salient
group-based conflicts. High levels of religious homogamy and religious mobility are
particularly important for sustaining a sense of group identity (particularly in societies with competitive religious markets), and the decline of either can be expected
to produce declining religious conflict in general (Wuthnow 1988: Chapter 5; Kalmijn
1991). Similarly, moves toward ecumenicism and away from explicit denominational
competition may reduce group-based identities, although ideological differences between religious liberals and conservatives may be enhanced as a result (Wuthnow 1988:
Chapter 12; Wuthnow 1993; Lipset and Raab 1995).
It is through the organizational form of party systems that religious divides in social structure and group identity take on electoral significance. In most early democracies, one or more major parties emerged with the explicit or tacit backing of powerful
churches. These parties often came to be called Christian Democratic parties (usually
in countries with strong Protestant or mixed Protestant/Catholic traditions, but also in
Catholic Italy), while Catholic parties appeared under a variety of names (the Catholic
People’s Party in Austria and the Netherlands, the Popular Republican Movement in
France, and so forth).2 These religious parties initially sought to mobilize voters on the
basis of religious identity, although over time the more successful parties (most notably,
the Christian Democratic parties of West Germany and Italy) became “catchall” parties
of the right or center-right, with ambitions of appealing to an electoral majority. In
other countries, however, the modern party system was secularized – and direct links
between parties and churches were cut – but even in some of these countries adherents of particular religious traditions sometimes lined up consistently with one party
(with electoral campaigns making more or less explicit attempts to mobilize voters on
religious grounds).3 In the United States, the allegiance of Catholics and Jews with the
Democratic Party, and evangelical Protestants with the Republican Party, exemplify this
pattern.
Finally, the policy outputs of states provide a crucial feedback mechanism that
reinforces the relevance of religious divisions for political life. The historical origins of
religious parties can often be traced to “state-church” conflicts in which the growing
power of secular states on societies posed a direct threat to church power. More recently,
conflicts over public policies, particularly on issues such as education, gender equality,
or reproductive rights, have the potential to divide voters on the basis of religious
orientation. Such policy conflicts, when they emerge, provide a feedback mechanism
by activating latent religious divisions at the group and organizational level.
Types of Religious Cleavages
There are four distinct religious cleavages that have been shown to be associated with
voting behavior: (a) church attendance; (b) doctrinal beliefs; (c) denominational groups;
and (d) local/contextual aspects of congregational memberships. The first and most
basic of these cleavages is between voters who attend religious services and consider
religion important in their lives, from those who are not engaged in religion. The most
straightforward measure of engagement is attendance at religious services. Church attendance may be important for political preferences for several reasons: (a) it provides
reinforcement of religious beliefs and ethical precepts; (b) it may reinforce group identities, especially in ethnically- or linguistically rooted churches; and (c) it connects religious beliefs to the larger world, including politics. This “religiosity” cleavage has
been shown to be especially powerful in many countries in Western Europe (Heath
et al. 1993), but it has long been understood as significant in the United States as well
(e.g., Wright 2001).
The second, and most commonplace, way in which the religious cleavage shows
is to examine differences between denominational families, at least in those countries
where at least two or more denominations claim the allegiance of substantial proportions of the population. In North America and Western Europe, these divisions are
often cast as Protestant versus Catholic, although in some countries divisions among
Protestants or with other major religious denominations (notably Jews) may also hold
some significance.
A third religious cleavage concerns the impact of religious beliefs held by individuals, as opposed to denominational memberships or identities. Probably the most
salient division here is between religious traditionalists, who believe in the literal truth
of the Bible, and religious modernizers, who adopt a context-bound interpretation of
the teachings of the Bible (Hunter 1983; Smith 1998; but cf. Wright 2001). Traditionalists – once politically engaged – may seek to apply narrowly defined biblical concepts to
solve social problems, while modernizers adopt more flexible, context-bound interpretations of the Bible. Divisions based on the content of religious beliefs, including those
within religious denominations, have frequently been said to be rising in importance
relative to traditional lines of denominational influence.
Finally, a number of analysts have examined the “contextual effects” of local religious communities or individual churches. Individual church leaders provide sources
of information and opinions to lay members that may sometimes be at odds with national denominational positions. Local congregations sometimes engage in political
projects that draw in members into various forms of political action and experience
(e.g., Wuthnow and Evans 2001). Churches can frequently be settings in which friendship networks form, especially in conservative churches, leading to distinct subcultures
(Smith 1998). Such networks provide a basis for political discussion and reinforcement
of individual beliefs. For all of these reasons, local congregations may have distinct
impacts on political behavior (Wald, Owen, and Hill 1988; Gilbert 1993).
The Dynamics of Secularization
At the center of many scholarly debates about religious influences on political behavior
has been the question of secularization. Although a number of distinct social processes
are often subsumed under the secularization label, the basic assumptions underlying
the model of secularization are that one of three processes has occurred (or is occurring)
over time: (a) a decline in the importance of religion in the lives of individuals; (b) a
decline in the social and political influence of religious organizations; or (c) a decline in engagement in political life by religious organizations (what is sometimes referred to
as the “privatization” thesis).4 These secularization processes imply different things for
political behavior. The first suggests individual-level change: As education levels and
general societal affluence increase, voters may become less reliant on simple religious
heuristics to govern all aspects of their lives, including how they vote (e.g., Dalton 1988,
1990; Inglehart 1990; Dogan 1995). The second and third suggests organizational-level
change: As church attendance declines or religious organizations lose members (in
absolute or relative terms), the capacity of churches to influence elections and the shape
of political debates can be expected to decline (e.g., Wallis and Bruce 1992). Similarly, if
churches become less involved in worldly affairs, their capacity to influence the voting
behavior of members will likely decline.
The secularization thesis has been widely debated (see, for example, Chapters 5, 8,
and 9, this volume), and we cannot take up all of its implications in relation to political behavior here. Evidence of declining levels of religious voting would be consistent
with a secularization thesis. Yet correlation is not causation, and we cannot assume
that declining religious voting is necessarily the result of the declining religious commitments of individuals, the declining aggregate strength of religious beliefs, or the
declining influence of religious organizations, in the absence of other information. For
example, changes in party systems (such as the merging of religious and nonreligious
parties into new officially secular parties), or the changing shape of national or local
issue agendas (such as the declining salience of a particular issue) can sometimes have
dramatic and independent impacts on the levels of religious voting independent of
secularization processes (Van Kersbergen 1999).
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES:
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM?
Viewed from a comparative perspective, the United States has long appeared exceptional in the degree and level of religiosity found among its citizens (Greeley 1991;
Tiryakian 1993). Foreign observers – including most famously de Tocqueville and
Weber – have long reported evidence of unusually high levels of religiosity in defi-
ance of Enlightenment theories of religious decline. Post–World War II survey data
appear to confirm that, when contrasted with other comparable developed capitalist
democracies, religiosity among U.S. citizens appears unusually high. Americans routinely claim higher levels of church membership and attendance at religious services,
are more likely to believe in God, and to claim that religion is of considerable importance in their lives, than citizens in other postindustrial capitalist democracies (Wald1996: Chapter 1). They are much more likely to hold fundamentalist beliefs, such as
God performing miracles (a belief held by 80 percent of Americans) (Lipset 1996: 61).
The evidence also suggests little or no decline in religious affiliation or belief in the post–
World War II period, and overall, higher levels of religious participation in the twentieth
than in the nineteenth century (cf. Finke and Stark 1992; Lipset 1996: 62). American political leaders of both major parties now routinely declare their devotion to God.The typical European pattern of religious organization – in which a state-sanctioned
religious body dominated the religious landscape – failed to materialize in the United
States. The absence of a state church has resulted in the flourishing of an unprecedented range of denominations and sects since the beginning of the Republic. The
remarkable history of denominational growth and schisms has long interested sociologists of religion (e.g., Liebman, Sutton, and Wuthnow 1988). Alongside periodic
moves toward ecumenicism (particularly among the largest and most well-established
denominational bodies) has been a long-term process of denominational change that
has continually expanded the options for religious practice available to most Americans
(Finke and Stark 1992).
Historical Evidence of Electoral Impacts
Religion has long been understood to be an important source of political division in
the United States.5 The “new political history” that developed in the 1960s and 1970s
established quantitative evidence of the growth and persistence of religious cleavages
in shaping voter alignments throughout the nineteenth century (e.g., Benson 1961;
Jensen 1971; Kleppner 1979; Swierenga 1990). “Ethnoreligious” cleavages, as they came
to be known in this literature, reflected the intersection of denominational memberships and ethnicity in shaping political behavior. Controversies over the disestablishment of official state churches provided the earliest source of religious political division,
beginning virtually at the founding of the Republic (Murrin 1990). Supporters of state
churches, especially the Congregationalists, were generally aligned with the Federalist Party, while members of lower status churches challenging the hegemony of the
traditional churches were more likely to line up with the Jeffersonian DemocraticRepublicans. The antebellum period (1828–60) is generally conceded to have been
loosely characterized by the alignment of voters from “liturgical” or “ritualist” religious traditions with the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and his heirs, and voters
from pietist and evangelical denominations with first the Whig Party and later the
Republican Party (Jensen 1971: 62–73; Kleppner 1979; Howe 1990; Swierenga 1990:
151–5).
In the post–Civil War period, party competition in the North and Midwestern sections of the country for white votes appears to have been even more decisively structured by ethnic and religious divides (Kleppner [1979: 196] even goes so far as to describe
late-nineteenth-century parties as “political churches.”) Up until 1896, the Republican
Party received very strong support from Episcopalians, Congregationalists, New School
Presbyterians, and Methodists; while the Democrats drew support most heavily from
Catholics, and less broadly from Lutherans and Unitarians (Swierenga 1990: 157). In
the “system of 1896,” Republican domination of the North and Midwest involved
strong support from nearly all Protestant denominations, while with rare exceptions
the Democrats were limited to the votes of Catholics and the relatively small unionized
working class. The post-Reconstruction South, of course, was a very different matter; the Democratic monopoly through World War II made religious differences of little
consequence in that region.
With the coming of the New Deal, many analysts assumed that the sharp ethnoreligious cleavages in the North would decline in strength as class factors appeared to be
increasingly important. But it appears instead that the increase in class divisions during
the New Deal largely developed alongside, not in place of, traditional religious cleavages. Roosevelt generally performed better among all electoral groups than Democratic
candidate Al Smith did in 1928, leaving mostly unchanged relative levels of support
from most key religious groups (except for Jews; e.g., Gamm 1986: 45–74). The core
of the Democratic coalition continued to be defined by working class Catholic and
Jewish voters in the North and Midwest (and white voters of all religions in the oneparty South). The greatly weakened Republican coalitions of the 1930s and 1940s, by
contrast, continued to receive disproportionate support from Northern white mainline
Protestants (Sundquist 1983: Chapter 10; Reichley 1985: 225–9).
The early post–World War II period was one of unusual religious stability but, by the
late 1960s and early 1970s, important changes were taking place in nearly every major
religious denomination. The mainline Protestant denominations had been experiencing a relative membership decline (in which they were losing religious market share)
for many decades, and beginning in the late 1960s this decline accelerated. Long associated with the political and economic status quo, these denominations were deeply
influenced by the great moral crusades of the period: The Civil Rights Movement (CRM)
and the demand for racial justice, protests against the war in Vietnam, and the women’s
movement. A growing split between liberal Protestant clergy supporting the CRM and
other 1960s’ movements and a more conservative laity appeared to generate intradenomination (or intrachurch) tensions (see the studies collected in Wuthnow and Evans
[2001] for a broad overview of political tensions within mainline Protestant churches).
The evangelical Protestant churches also reacted sharply – but very differently – to the
social and cultural movements of the period. Resisting most of the trends of the period,
many leaders of evangelical churches became involved in organizing or promoting new
Christian Right movements and discourses which sought to defend “traditional values”
(Bruce 1988; Himmelstein 1983; Smith 1998). Among Catholics, internal reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s produced profound transformations within the Church, as have rapidly changing social practices among Catholics
(and all Americans) which fundamentally challenge Church teachings on issues such
as sex, abortion, and other social issues (Greeley 1985: 55ff). In addition to the changes
within the major religious traditions, there also appeared during this period numerous new religious movements of dizzying variety (Wuthnow 1988), large unaffiliated
evangelical churches (e.g., Shibley 1996) as well as the rapid growth of more established
religious groups outside the mainstream (such as the Mormon Church).
Empirical Research on Recent Trends in Religious Voting
The availability of survey data that go beyond the crude (and largely uninformative)
Protestant versus Catholic divide has largely constrained systematic scholarly investigations of religious influence on voting behavior in the United States to the period
after 1960 (Manza and Brooks 1999: 102–03). However, this is precisely the period
in which the most rapid changes have been hypothesized to have occurred, and not surprisingly a number of empirical questions about these changes have vexed analysts. Four questions have been central in recent debates: (a) What has been the impact of the political mobilization of evangelical Protestant groups since the 1970s?
(b) Have Catholic voters become less Democratic, and if so, why? (c) To what extent
has a political realignment toward the center occurred among mainline Protestants,
and why? (d) How have doctrinal divisions, especially between religious liberals and
conservatives and often within denominations, produced changing patterns of political
alignment?
Rise of a New Christian Right? Perhaps the most widely debated thesis about religion
and politics in both the mass media and among political analysts in recent decades concerns the possibility of a political realignment among conservative Protestant voters.
The sudden emergence of the new Christian Right (CR) in the late 1970s as an organizational force in U.S. politics, and the visible role of some early CR groups such as
the Moral Majority in the 1980 elections seemed to herald a new type of political con-
flict in which conservative religious values were becoming increasingly important in
the political system. The confluence of Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election (and even larger
victory in 1984), the 1980 recapture of the Senate by the Republicans for the first time
in nearly thirty years, and the intense media attention given to early CR leaders such
as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others led many observers to draw the conclusion
that these events were closely related.
In the relatively brief period since 1980, however, the varying fortunes of the CR
at the national level have cast doubt about these hypotheses. The initial social science
search for a mass base to the CR in the 1980s unearthed both very modest support for
groups such as the Moral Majority and little evidence that the CR mobilized a significant
group of voters (see Manza and Brooks [1999: 95–6] for references). Indeed, by the late
1980s, many informed observers were emphasizing the sharp decline of the CR, at least
as a force in national politics (e.g., Bruce 1988; Jelen 1991: 135–55).
In the 1990s, the cycle of debates over the CR came full circle around yet again. The
rapid growth of the Christian Coalition, a multidenominational organization that grew
out of Pat Robertson’s failed 1988 presidential bid helped to revive scholarly interest in
and respect for the political power of the CR. The Coalition has emphasized state and
local politics, working up to the national level by gaining influence with the state-level
Republican Party (Rozell and Wilcox 1995). In 1995, the organization claimed some
1.6 million members organized in sixteen hundred chapters across the country. These
chapters were said to have distributed some thirty-five million voter guides in the 1994
midterm elections alone (Wald 1996: 233; cf. Regnerus et al. 1999). With the renewed
prominence of the CR in politics, a new spate of studies appeared, many advancing
arguments or evidence of a recent shift of evangelical voters toward the Republican
Party (e.g., Green et al. 1995; Wilcox 1996; Kellstedt et al. 1994: 308). However, the
recent organizational decline of the Christian Coalition has again prompted a retreat
from scholarly and popular attention to the CR and pessimism about its electoral impact
(see, e.g., Green, Guth, and Wilcox 1998; Kohut et al. 2000). Analyses of the CR have generally focused on the national level. But the impact
of conservative Christian groups may be less visible but have more impact at local or
state level. Independent of the trajectory of certain of the more visible national organizations, the CR has remained consistently strong in terms of subcultural institutional
infrastructure over the past couple of decades at least. This extensive institutional infrastructure exists as a powerful force for political activism on certain social issues and
around local and state elections (Smith 1998). For example, the impact of the CR on
mobilizing voters appears to be more significant at the subnational level (Green et al.
1996: 103–16). In these low-turnout elections, the mobilization of even a few hundred
additional voters can have a significant impact.
Whither Catholics? The possibility that Catholic voters are shifting away from alignment with the Democratic Party toward a more centrist position is a second issue debated among analysts of religion and U.S. politics. Most social scientists who have
studied this question have reported evidence of Catholic dealignment from the Democratic Party (e.g., Reichley 1985: 224–5, 299–300; Petrocik 1987; Kellstedt and Noll
1990; Kenski and Lockwood 1991). Abramson, Aldrich, and Rohde (1998: 156) even characterize the shift among Catholic voters as “precipitous.”
Two explanations for the hypothesized shift among Catholic voters have been postulated. The most common explanation has been that it is driven by economic interests:
Catholics have become progressively more affluent over time, gaining and even surpassing Protestants on a number of measures of socioeconomic attainment (cf. Greeley
1989: Chapter 7), and are hypothesized as swinging to the right as a consequence. The
second explanation hypothesizes that Catholic voters were disproportionately resistant
to the increasingly liberal social issue agenda of the Democratic Party since the 1960s.
However, the thesis that Catholic voters have in fact shifted away from the
Democrats is somewhat controversial. Greeley (1985, 1989, 1999) has argued that a
more careful investigation of the data shows that a lot of the trends emphasized by proponents of the Catholic dealignment thesis are highly exaggerated because they take
the 1960s (an unquestioned high point of Catholic support for the Democratic Party,
driven in part by the candidacy of Catholic John Kennedy in 1960) as their point of
departure. In this view, Catholics were never as closely tied to the Democratic Party
as the dealignment imagery implied, and thus have not shifted nearly as much as has
been hypothesized. Our own work (Manza and Brooks 1997, 1999) has reached similar
conclusions.
Whither Mainline Protestants? “Mainline” or “liberal” Protestant denominations, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists (after 1957, the United Church of Christ),
and Presbyterians, have long been overrepresented among the American political elite
and in business, academe, and the military establishment (e.g., Davidson 1994). Reflecting their social and cultural power in American society, the “Protestant establishment,”
as E. Digby Baltzell (1964) famously characterized them, has thus long been viewed by
many social scientists as a solidly Republican constituency in the postwar period. In recent years, however, the stability of the political alignments of mainline Protestants
has been questioned. Several analysts have found evidence of a shift of this group away
from the Republican Party and toward the political center (e.g., Lopatto 1985; Kellstedt
et al. 1994; Manza and Brooks 1997, 2001).
A variety of ways of accounting for these trends has been advanced in the literature
on the mainline denominations. One account emphasizes rising levels of social issue
liberalism among these groups. The receptivity of many mainline Protestant religious
leaders and local congregations to politically liberal messages on such issues, beginning
in the 1960s with the Vietnam War and on issues of racial and gender inequality and
sexual freedom, suggests one possible explanation for the relative shift away from the
Republican Party (cf. Wuthnow and Evans 2001). Second, some analysts have emphasized changes in the demography of the mainline Protestant groups, in which more
conservative church members are defecting – or not joining in the first place – in favor
of stricter denominations. Left behind is a group of adherents in the mainline churches
that is more in tune with the messages of the clergy (e.g., Finke and Stark 1992:
Chapter 5). Finally, the relative loss of economic and political power to non-Protestant
groups suggests a third possible source for the movement of liberal Protestants away
from the Republican Party. A number of scholars have emphasized the relative gains
of other religious groups, as we have seen above, that have reduced the power of the
established Protestant denominations.
Toward “Culture Wars”? A number of analysts have argued that a religiously rooted
set of cultural conflicts have emerged, with religious conservatives of all denominations
lined up on one side and religious liberals and seculars on the other (e.g., Wuthnow
1988, 1989, 1993; Hunter 1991; DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996; Layman 1997).
Some highly visible conflicts over issues with clear religious content – abortion, school
prayer, the teaching of evolutionary biology, public support for controversial works of
art, rising divorce rates and the alleged breakdown of “traditional” family values, gay
and lesbian rights, and others – have indeed generated considerable public controversy
since the 1960s, and appear to have become increasingly important in shaping voters’
political alignments (Brooks 2000). Central to the “culture wars” thesis are two arguments. First, there has been a breakdown of traditional denominational alignments, as
intradenominational conflict has grown. Second, these conflicts are not only an “elite”
phenomenon, but polarization is increasingly reflected in the political consciousness
of the mass public. The growing proportion of Americans with no religious identity –
doubling from 7 to 15 percent in the 1990s, according to data from the General Social
Survey (Hout and Fischer 2002) – also suggests the possibility of increased political
divisions between those with versus those without religious identity.
Systematic empirical tests of the culture wars hypothesis have produced decidedly
mixed results. Layman (1997) found evidence using the National Election Study that the
political impact of doctrinal conservatism has had an increasing effect in that narrow
period on partisanship and vote choice, net of other religious, sociodemographic, and
political variables. Whether such findings would hold over a longer historical period
is unclear. Bolce and De Maio (1999) find that antipathy toward fundamentalists is
very high, even among otherwise tolerant segments of the electorate. Brooks (2000)
demonstrated that social issues have become increasingly salient in presidential voting,
and that general societal-wide liberalization on these issues has significantly benefitted the Democratic Party. In other work, Brooks (1999) shows that family values have
become an increasingly important social problem, but that it is primarily religious
conservatives who express concern about it.
Other analysts have explicitly challenged the model. DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson
(1996) examined changes in public attitudes toward a wide array of social issues and
found little support for the view that any significant polarization has occurred since
the 1970s. Davis and Robinson (1996) found that the gap between religious conservatives and liberals is much smaller than often thought, limited to a handful of social
issues, and on economic issues religious conservatives are actually somewhat more
supportive of governmental action to secure greater equality than religious liberals.
New Evidence Using Relative Measures of Religious Cleavages
The recent investigations of the first author, in collaboration with Clem Brooks, explicitly sought to reconsider these five issues, as well as to develop some overall estimates of
the changing impact of religious groups on U.S. party coalitions (Manza and Brooks
1997, 1999, 2001). We briefly summarize this line of research here. Three advances
over earlier research on religion and politics defined the methodological contributions
of our research. First, analyses of the relationship between social groups and political behavior that fail to employ statistical models that allow for distinctions between
trends influencing all groups from those influencing only some groups neglect important information. Second, research on the social group foundations of political behavior
should include analyses of (a) group size and (b) group turnout, alongside group voting
patterns. The size of groups and their turnout rates will shape the impact of group-based
alignments on major party electoral coalitions, a crucial way in which the interaction
between religious groups (who seek influence) and political parties (who seek votes)
takes place (see Manza and Brooks [1999: Chapter 7] for further discussion). Finally,
research on religious cleavages and political behavior in the United States should employ adequate measures of the cleavage itself. Although considerably less common than
twenty years ago, some analysts of religion and politics have persisted in failing to take
into account the divisions among Protestants as well as between Protestants, Catholics,
Jews, and others.
Employing models embodying these principles, our investigations of the changing
contours of religion and political behavior in the United States suggested a number of
conclusions, some of which are consistent with the thrust of previous findings, and
others that challenge the conventional wisdom:
The religious cleavage as a whole has declined very modestly since 1960. The decline
is due solely to the shift toward the center of one group – liberal Protestants – and
thus does not reflect any societal-wide trend toward dealignment. Liberal Protestants have moved from being the most Republican religious group in the 1960s, to an essentially centrist position by the 1990s. This transformation has overwhelmingly been driven by their increased liberalism on social issues. Conservative Protestants have not realigned toward the Republican Party, in large measure because they have always been Republican partisans in the period (since1960) for which we have adequate measures. Much of the confusion about the political preferences of conservative Protestants reflects a one-time shift toward the Democratic Party in 1976 (and to a lesser extent in 1980) in response to the
candidacy of the born-again Christian, Jimmy Carter. Catholic voters have not undergone any significant realignment since the 1950s.
The elevated levels of Democratic voting in 1960 and 1964 are not to be found in the
1950s and should properly be understood as reflecting the unusual political context
of those elections. While analysts of Catholic dealignment were right to suggest that
Catholics were becoming more economically conservative, their Republican shift
on economic questions has essentially been offset by increasingly moderate views
on social issues. Significant changes in the impact of the religious cleavage on the Democratic and Republican parties has occurred. Because of their shrinking size and decreasing loyalty to the Republican Party, mainline Protestants have provided a drastically reduced share of Republican votes in recent elections (declining from 30 percent of
all Republican voters in 1960 to just 12 percent in 1992). Conservative Protestants
have increased their share of votes within the Republican Party primarily because of
the reduction in votes from mainline sources, not because of changing partisanship
or increased overall size in the electorate. Voters without any religious preference
have grown in both parties from very low percentages to about 7 percent of Republican voters and 14 percent of Democratic voters.
To be sure, these findings hardly settle these issues, and debates can be expected to
continue in the future (of particular controversy are findings about the lack of a clear
shift among conservative Protestants: see, e.g., Kohut et al. 2000; Layman 2001; we
respond to these and other challenges in Brooks and Manza 2002). Furthermore, our
investigations – along with those of most other analysts of religion and politics – have
primarily focused on presidential elections; it may be that in Congressional elections,
or in state and local elections, the impact of religious identities on political behavior
will have different effects (cf. Layman 2001). These questions deserve further attention.
And of course, future changes in the religious marketplace (a perpetual feature of U.S.
religion) and the issue of ideological controversies dividing large religious groups ensure
a dynamic environment in which new analyses of old questions will be called for.
A Note on Religion and African-American Voters
To this point, our discussion of religion and politics in the United States has focused
almost entirely on the impact of religious identities on white voters. The reason for this
is fairly straightforward: The strong alliance of black voters with the Republican Party
before the New Deal, and the Democratic Party afterward (an alignment that strengthened significantly in the 1960s and the passage of civil and voting rights legislation) has
not been significantly shaped by religious differences among blacks in the same way
as among whites. For example, recent surveys find that even African Americans who
support a socially conservative agenda are still much more likely to vote Democratic
(Wilcox 1992).
Black churches tend to be more embedded in political life than their white counterparts. In national surveys, African Americans consistently report that religion is more
important in their daily lives than white respondents, as well as reporting more praying,
higher levels of attendance at religious services, and higher rates of church membership. Church services more often feature political addresses from public officials, and civic
political meetings more often feature prayers, hymns, call-and-response-style oratories,
and even the passing of offering plates for political contributions, than would be found
in comparable white churches and communities (cf. Harris 1999; Pattillo-McCoy 1998;
see also McRoberts, Chapter 28, this volume). And African-American religious theology and practice is often characterized by being distinctively concerned with collective
political issues. African-American churches are dominated by the key themes of oppression and deliverance, expressed as collective properties that require collective efforts to
provide increased opportunities (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990). The powerful and central
institutional presence of African-American churches allowed them to be central players in the mobilization of political protests in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s
and 1960s (Morris 1984). Many African-American churches have made and continue
to make explicit efforts to register voters and mobilize them to vote for Democratic
candidates (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Harris 1994, 1999; Calhoun-Brown 1996).
Given such evidence, however, only small impacts of religion have been found
among African-American voters. There is some very modest evidence that religious involvement promotes political participation among African Americans (cf. Harris 1994,
1999). Data from the 1984 Black Election Study indicate that although church attendance is not a strong predictor of voting rates, going to a “political church” strongly
influenced the likelihood of voting in a positive direction (Calhoun-Brown 1996). Finally, some analysts have found that both voter turnout and interest in politics are
lowest among African Americans with no religious affiliation (Kellstedt et al. 1994).
In short, the existing evidence suggests that the political impact of black churches is
strongest in arenas other than voting behavior – for example, on local, community, or
neighborhood politics (see McRoberts, Chapter 28, this volume), recruitment to social
movements, or as a direct voice through lobbying or other political activities.
RELIGION AND POLITICS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE:
WESTERN EUROPE
Two peculiarities of the American electoral system and religious landscape potentially
make the relationship between religion and political behavior unique: the electoral system and the high degree of pluralism in the religious marketplace. The electoral system,
in which legislative candidates compete in single-member districts and in which two
political parties have been invariably dominant at the national level for over 130 years,
has precluded the emergence of religious parties. In other democratic countries, religious parties have not been so hobbled, and in many cases they have thrived alongside
secular parties of the right and left. In the United States, no such party ever developed.
The second important difference is that the high level of religious pluralism in the
United States opens the possibility of multiple lines of religious cleavage in comparison to polities with one or two main denominational groupings. In this section, we
highlight some of these differences from the American model by considering some
features of West European party systems.
The comparison between Western Europe and the United States is additionally informative because of the historical origins of the religious cleavage, and significant variation in the religious landscape across Europe. Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) landmark
theoretical overview of the sources of social cleavages in democratic societies outlined a complex set of historical processes triggered by two revolutions, a “national” revolution
and an “industrial” revolution. The resulting social divisions produced by these twin
revolutions were viewed as having produced stable patterns of group-based political
conflict, expressed through modern party systems. The most important of these cleavages included those based on class divisions (triggered by the industrial revolution),
religion, ethnicity, and language (triggered by the national revolution). The precise articulation and relative magnitude of each of these cleavages varied from country to
country, often depending on the sequencing of party formation and democratization
(cf. Mann 1993). In some countries, a religious cleavage came to be embedded in the
party system, through the formation of political parties with strong ties to dominant
religious institutions.
The European religious landscape also varies. Three distinct patterns of religious
identity can be found in Western Europe: Countries that are mostly Catholic (e.g.,
Italy, Ireland, France, Austria, Belgium, Spain); countries that are mostly Protestant (in
particular the Scandinavian countries, but also Britain); and countries with more equal
proportions of Protestants and Catholics (Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland). The
magnitude and form of the religious cleavages found in different countries can be
expected to vary depending on the structure of the religious field (cf. Dalton 1988,
1990). For example, analysts generally find that Catholic countries, religiously divided
countries, or countries without a state church, have higher levels of religious division
in voting behavior than countries with a state-sanctioned church which claims the
allegiance of most citizens.7 But important exceptions also have been noted: Levels of
religious voting in Britain have sometimes been said to be as large as those of class
divisions (cf. Miller and Raab 1977; Rogowski 1981), and among the Scandinavian
countries (with state churches) religious-based political divisions also can be found
(Stephens 1979).
Finally, and again in contrast to the United States, arguments about the importance
of secularization processes in the European context have long and repeatedly been asserted. Economic prosperity and rising levels of educational attainment have long been
viewed as factors eroding religious cues for voting behavior (see, e.g., Baker, Dalton, and
Hildebrandt [1975] on West Germany; Sundberg and Berglund [1984] on the Scandinavian countries; Eisenga, Felling, and Lammers [1994] on the Netherlands; and the
various country-specific studies in Franklin, Mackie, and Valen [1992]). Other analysts
have argued that the decline in church attendance across many European countries is
weakening the salience of religion for voters (see, e.g., Books [1980] on Italy and West
Germany; Mendras [1991] on France; and comparatively on a number of countries,
Dogan [1995]).Macro Factors: The Fate of Religious Parties
Most significant religious parties in European polities are located on the center-right
of the political spectrum, and are usually known as Christian Democratic parties (for
overviews, see Berger 1982; Hanley 1994; Lane and Erson 1994; Gallagher, Laver, and Mair 1995: Chapter 8). The largest of these parties are Catholic in origin, such as those
in Italy, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. (The Italian Christian Democratic Party has recently collapsed because of scandal, but governed, or was part of the
governing coalition, for most of the postwar period.) The German Christian Democratic Party, which has governed the Federal Republic (West) Germany between World
War II and the late 1960s, and again from 1983 until 1998, has been a “biconfessional”
party with roots in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. The Christian Democratic
Appeal in the Netherlands is another biconfessional party (formed in a merger in the late
1970s between the Catholic People’s Party and two smaller Protestant parties). Purely
Protestant parties are mostly limited to Scandinavia, where Christian Democratic parties with ties to Protestant churches emerged in the 1950s and 1960s to contest elections
in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (albeit with relatively little success). The only major
country in Western Europe without a significant religious party is Britain, and Ireland is
a complicated case.8 In France, a Catholic party in the Fourth Republic (1946–58), the
Popular Republican Movement, evolved into the two major conservative parties of the
Fifth Republic, the Gaullist, and (to a lesser extent) the Union for French Democracy
blocs. Although the direct connection to major religious bodies has largely been broken, there is continuing evidence of a strong association between church attendance
and/or religiosity and support for one of the major conservative parties (Heath et al.
1993; Lewis-Beck 1998).
The electoral performance of these parties has traditionally been strong, although
declining in most countries in recent years. In those countries where a religious party
has been the dominant party on the center-right of the political spectrum, such as
in Germany, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, vote shares
averaged over 30 percent, and in Germany over 45 percent, from the 1950s through
the early 1990s (see Gallagher et al. 1995: 194). In all of these countries, secular parties
of the right (or sometimes the center, such as in Germany) compete for votes and
often become governing coalition partners. The rise of new right-wing parties, and
declining rates of church attendance across most European countries (discussed later),
have combined to put considerable pressure on religious parties (van Kersbergen 1999).
In such an environment, to remain electorally competitive, many of the religious parties
have tended to become more secular in their appeals over time, a pattern not unlike
that of social democratic parties in these same countries (Przeworski and Sprague 1986).
Nonetheless, the persistence and continuing strengths of religious parties across Europe
(and their distinctive impact on policy outputs) suggest an important difference with
the American model.
Individual-Level Factors: Religion and the Alignment of Voters
and Parties in Western Europe
The persistence of religious parties in Europe suggests an avenue for political expression of religiosity that is more explicitly connected to the party system than in the
United States. At the same time, there is a much wider consensus that secularization
processes at the individual level that are weak or nonexistent in the United States have
proceeded much farther in Europe (Dobbelaere and Jagodzinski 1995; Jagodzinski and
Dobbelaere 1995; Berger 1999). Yet secularization need not imply declining levels of
religious voting: New cleavages, such as those between secular and religious voters, may
replace older Catholic/Protestant divides; and voters with religious identities may be
more likely to act on the basis of those identities even if there are fewer of them. The
robustness of the religious cleavage, in those countries where one exists, has frequently
been proclaimed (as we noted earlier). So what has been the impact of these factors for
individual voting behavior?
The existing literature suggests two paradoxical findings. First, where a religious
cleavage has been embedded in the political system, religious identities continue to
exert a significant impact on individual voting behavior; at the same time, there has
been a general (but not universal) weakening of the religion-vote association in Europe.
The most carefully studied case by far is the Netherlands, and we consider some of the
evidence from that country first. Dutch society has long been characterized by what
have come to be known as “pillars,” reflecting stable, lasting, and loyal connections
between religion and voting. The four pillars consisted of Catholics, Protestants, and
nonconfessionals divided into Labour and Liberal constituents. Each pillar developed
its own political organization, with the Catholic and Protestant parties consisting of
their followers regardless of their social class, the Liberal party consisting of middle- and
upper-class nonconfessionals, and the Labour party consisting of working- and lower middle-class nonconfessionals (Eisenga et al. 1994). Party loyalty was fierce among all
four pillars, particularly among Catholics and Calvinists. From 1922 to the 1960s, Dutch
Catholics were considered among the most loyal voting bloc in the world, consistently
giving more than 85 percent of their votes to the Catholic party. By 1973, however,
Catholics were giving less than half (48 percent) of their votes to the Catholic party, and
shortly thereafter the Catholic party merged with the two largest Protestant parties to
form the Christian Democratic CDA. This new combined party’s first electoral showing
in 1977 was a mere 31.9 percent of the overall popular vote in the Netherlands, less than
what the Catholic party alone had received in 1963, and it has declined further since
then (Eisenga et al. 1994). The breakdown of pillarization has largely been attributed
to the forces of modernization and secularization, and these forces are widely believed
to have completely eroded what was once the strongest religious voting cleavage in the
world (Eisenga et al. 1994; Andeweg 1982; Becker and Vink 1994; Irwin and Dittrich
1984; Miller and Stouthard 1975). The emerging party system has been characterized a
number of different ways: As a new left-right political ideological continuum (van der
Eijk and Niemoller 1987), as reflecting a postmaterialist cleavage (van Deth and Geurtx
1989), or along new political party lines united by ideological views rather than class
and religious makeup (Middendorp 1991).
Yet changes in class structures and secularization processes do not necessarily produce a decline in the actual religious (or class) cleavages. Studies that have focused explicitly on the stability of the religious cleavage have usually found that while attendance at religious services has declined, among those who remain churched levels
of religious voting remain stable. Visser (1993) showed with panel data that religious
affiliation had a stabilizing impact on individual vote choice in elections in the 1980s.
Scheepers et al. (1994) examined the Dutch elections of 1990–1 and found that religion and class still explained a significant amount of the variation in voting. More
specifically, religious participation inclined one to vote for a confessional party and
decreased the likelihood of voting for a nonreligious party; nonreligious working-class
persons were inclined to vote for Labour; and nonreligious middle- or upper-class persons were inclined to vote Liberal. Thus, they conclude the pillar system may have
been weakened, but was nowhere near complete dealignment by the time of the early
1990s.
The case of France exhibits some similarities, but also some important differences,
with the Dutch case. There is evidence of a persistent relationship between religious
service attendance and conservative voting, and this stable cleavage persists despite
the fact that there is a growing diversity of political, theological, and social value positions articulated within the Catholic church (e.g., Donegani 1982), and despite the fact
that far less than 90 percent of the French who are baptised Catholics are consistently
attending religious services and many more of the nonattendees are now showing
preferences for left parties. Similarly, Lewis-Beck (1998) has characterized France as
a “stalled electorate” because both the religious cleavage and class cleavage have ramained roughly the same throughout elections in 1968, 1981, 1988, and 1995, with
religiosity remaining the most important predictor of vote choice.
Religious Change and Support for Right-Wing Parties
Finally, we note that a number of analysts have argued that the declining connection
between two traditional bases of voter alignments – class and religion – and individual
political behavior has opened the door for the resurgence of far-right-wing parties and
activism (for overviews, see Ignazi 1997; Karapin 1998). Wust (1993) argues that the rise
of the new radical right parties in Germany in the early 1990s is directly attributable
to the dealignment of Catholic voters from the Christian Democratic Party (and its
Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union). As more and more voters became
disconnected from the Catholic Church, and when the Church became disconnected
from the CDW and CSU, the older patterns of alignment began to dissipate. Veugelers
(2000) makes a similar argument for support of the French National Front party (FN) in
France in the late 1990s, arguing (like Wust) that support for the FN can be accounted
for solely by the dealignment of Catholics with traditional right-wing parties. These
issues are likely to generate much further research and scholarly interest in the near
future.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has considered the impact of religion on voting behavior in the United
States and Western Europe. Religion emerged, alongside class and ethnicity, as central political cleavages at the founding of the modern party system and democratic institutions. The classical secularization model produced a picture of declining religious
influences on the vote, but the evidence we have considered in this chapter suggests
only modest declines in the association between religion and partisan preference and
vote choice. In the United States, most of the change since the 1950s has occurred
among mainline Protestants; other major denominational families remain more or less
in the same political alignment as before, with the usual election-specific fluctuations
(most notably that prompted by born-again Democrat Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaigns of 1976 and 1980). In Europe, secularization has proceeded further, and there
has been declining support for religious parties in many countries and, in some countries an overall weakening of the religion/vote association. But even here, the amount
of change has frequently been overstated or misunderstood. Religious identities and
involvements persist in shaping the way voters make political choices, and we expect
that this will continue to be the case in the new century
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