![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
Hout and Fischer have made the repeated, controversial claim that the dramatic rise of “religious nones” in the United States is due to the prominence of the politics of the Christian Right. As the argument goes, the movement’s extreme stands on gay rights and abortion make religion inhospitable to those who take more moderate and liberal positions. We take another look at this proposition with novel data drawing on expert reports and interest group counts that capture the prominence of the movement in each American state from 2000 to 2010. We attach these data to decennial religious census data on the unchurched, as well as estimates of the nones from Cooperative Congressional Election Study data. At stake is whether religion is independent of political influence and whether American religion is sowing its own fate by failing to limit taking extreme stands. Rising none rates are more common in Republican states in this period. Moreover, when the Christian Right comes into more public conflict, such as over same-sex marriage bans, the rate of religious nones climbs.
References
|
Ansberry, Clare . 2016. “Breaking up with Your Church over Politics: The Contentious Election is a Ripe Topic for Sermons but is Sending Some Churchgoers to the Doors.” The Wall Street Journal, December 4. https://www.wsj.com/articles/breaking-up-with-your-church-over-politics-1480866533 (Accessed August 10, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Bailey, Sarah Pulliam . 2016. “The Trump Effect? A Stunning Number of Evangelicals Will Now Accept Politicians’ ‘Immoral’ Acts.” The Washington Post, October 19. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/10/19/the-trump-effect-evangelicals-have-become-much-more-accepting-of-politicians-immoral-acts/ (Accessed August 12, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Baker, Joseph O’Brian, Smith, Buster. 2009. “None Too Simple: Examining Issues of Religious Nonbelief and Nonbelonging in the United States.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48 (4): 719–33. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Bentele, Keith, Sager, Rebecca, Soule, Sarah, Adler, Gary. 2013. “Breaking down the Wall between Church and State: State Adoption of Religious Inclusion Legislation, 1995–2009.” Journal of Church & State 56 (3): 503–33. Google Scholar | |
|
Bolce, Louis, De Maio, Gerald. 2008. “A Prejudice for the Thinking Classes: Media Exposure, Political Sophistication, and the Anti-Christian Fundamentalist.” American Politics Research 36 (2): 155–85. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Bruce, Steve . 1988. The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America 1978-1988. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Burge, Ryan P. 2017. “Do Educated People Abandon Religion? There’s No Evidence in the Data.” https://religioninpublic.blog/2017/07/21/do-educated-people-abandon-religion-theres-no-evidence-in-the-data/ (Accessed August 10, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Burge, Ryan P., Djupe, Paul A. 2015. “Emergent Church Practices in America: Inclusion and Deliberation in American Congregations.” Review of Religious Research 57 (1): 1–23. Google Scholar | |
|
Campbell, Ernest Q., Pettigrew, Thomas F. 1959. Christians in Racial Crisis: A Study of the Little Rock Ministry. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Cigler, Allan J., Joslyn, Mark, Loomis, Burdett A. 2003. “The Kansas Christian Right and the Evolution of Republican Politics.” In The Christian Right in American Politics: Marching to the Millennium, edited by Green, John C., Rozell, Mark J., Wilcox, Clyde, 145–66. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Claassen, Ryan C. 2018. “Understanding the Political Motivations of Evangelical Voters.” In The Evangelical Crackup? The Future of the Evangelical-republican Coalition, edited by Djupe, Paul A., Claassen, Ryan C. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Clark, Tom S., Linzer, Drew A. 2015. “Should I Use Fixed or Random Effects?” Political Science Research and Methods 3 (2): 399–408. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Conger, Kimberly H. 2010a. “A Matter of Context: Christian Right Influence in U.S. State Republican Politics.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 10 (3): 248–69. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Conger, Kimberly H. 2010b. “Party Platforms and Party Coalitions: The Christian Right and State-Level Republicans.” Party Politics 16 (5): 651–68. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Conger, Kimberly H. 2014. “Same Battle, Different War: Religious Movements in American State Politics.” Politics and Religion 7 (2): 395–417. Google Scholar | |
|
Conger, Kimberly H., Djupe, Paul A. 2016. “Culture War Counter-mobilization: Gay Rights and Religious Right Groups in the States.” Interest Groups & Advocacy 5 (3): 278–300. doi:10.1057/s41309-016-0004-7. Google Scholar | |
|
Converse, Phillip E. 1964. “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics.” In Ideology and Discontent, edited by Apter, David E. , 206–61. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Diamond, Sara . 1989. Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right. Boston: South End Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Djupe, Paul A., Conger, Kimberly. 2012. “The Population Ecology of Grassroots Democracy: Christian Right Interest Populations and Citizen Participation in the States.” Political Research Quarterly 65 (4): 927–40. doi:10.1177/1065912911427448. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Djupe, Paul A., Lewis, Andrew R. 2015. “Solidarity and Discord of Pluralism: How the Social Context Affects Interest Group Learning and Belonging.” American Politics Research 43 (3): 394–424. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Djupe, Paul A., Neiheisel, Jacob R., Sokhey, Anand E. 2017. “How fights over Trump have led evangelicals to leave their churches.” The Washington Post, April 11. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/11/yes-many-voters-left-their-congregations-over-trump-so-what-else-is-new/. Google Scholar | |
|
Djupe, Paul A., Neiheisel, Jacob R., Sokhey, Anand E. 2018. “Reconsidering the Role of Politics in Leaving Religion: The Importance of Affiliation.” American Journal of Political Science 62 (1): 161–75. doi:10.1111/ajps.12308. Google Scholar | |
|
Ellison, Christopher G., Sherkat, Darren E. 1995. “The ‘Semi-Involuntary Institution’ Revisited: Regional Variations in Church Participation among Black Americans.” Social Forces 73 (4): 1415–37. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Evans, Michael S. 2016. Seeking Good Debate: Religion, Science, and Conflict in American Public Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Fetner, Tina . 2008. How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Findlay, James F. 1990. “Religion and Politics in the Sixties: The Churches and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The Journal of American History 77 (1): 66–92. Google Scholar | |
|
Friesen, Amanda, Ksiazkiewicz, Aleksander. 2015. “Do Political Attitudes and Religiosity Share a Genetic Path?” Political Behavior 37 (4): 791–818. Google Scholar | |
|
Gaffey, Connor . 2017. “Trump’s White House Has Evangelicals ‘on Speed Dial,’ Says Activist Who Prayed over President.” Newsweek, July 22. http://www.newsweek.com/evangelical-christians-trump-religion-religious-liberty-640310 (Accessed August 10, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Glenn, Norval D. 1987. “The Trend in ‘No Religion’ Respondents to U.S. National Surveys, Late 1950s to Early 1980s.” Public Opinion Quarterly 51 (3): 293–314. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Grammich, Clifford, Hadaway, Kirk, Houseal, Richard, Jones, Dale E., Krindatch, Alexei, Stanley, Richie, Taylor, Richard H. 2012. 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study. Kansas City, MO: Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. Google Scholar | |
|
Green, John C., Guth, James L. 1988. “The Christian Right in the Republican Party: The Case of Pat Robertson’s Supporters.” Journal of Politics 50 (1): 150–65. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Guth, James L. 1996. “The Politics of the Christian Right.” In Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front, edited by Green, John C., Guth, James L., Smidt, Corwin E., Kellstedt, Lyman A., 7–29. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Hadden, Jeffrey K. 1969. The Gathering Storm in the Churches: The Widening Gap between Clergy and Laity. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Google Scholar | |
|
Hawley, George . 2016. “Is the Religious Right to Blame for Christianity’s Decline?” The American Conservative, June 5. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-the-religious-right-to-blame-for-christianitys-decline/ (Accessed January 16, 2018). Google Scholar | |
|
Hoge, Dean R., Johnson, Benton, Luidens, Donald A. 1994. Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Hout, Michael, Fischer, Claude S. 2002. “No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations.” American Sociological Review 67 (2): 165–90. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Hout, Michael, Fischer, Claude S. 2014. “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012.” Sociological Science 1:423–47. Google Scholar | |
|
Hume, Ellen . 1996. “The New Paradigm for News.” In The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: The Media and Politics, edited by Jamieson, Kathleen , 141–53. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | |
|
Kerr, Peter A. 2003. “The Framing of Fundamentalist Christians in Network Television News, 1980-2000.” Journal of Media and Religion 2:203–35. Google Scholar | |
|
Kerr, Peter A., Moy, Patricia. 2002. “Newspaper coverage of fundamentalist Christians, 1980-2000.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79:54–79. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Klemp, Nathaniel J. 2010. “The Christian Right: Engaged Citizens or Theocratic Crusaders?” Politics and Religion 3 (1): 1–27. Google Scholar | |
|
Layman, Geoffrey, Brockway, Mark. 2018. “Evangelical Activists in the GOP: Still the Life of the Party?” In The Evangelical Crackup? The Future of the Evangelical-republican Coalition, edited by Djupe, Paul A., Claassen, Ryan C. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Levendusky, Matthew S. 2009. The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Lowery, David, Gray, Virginia, Wolak, Jennifer, Godwin, Erik, Kilburn, Whitt. 2005. “Reconsidering the Counter-Mobilization Hypothesis: Health Policy Lobbying in the American States.” Political Behavior 27 (2): 99–132. Google Scholar | |
|
Margolis, Michele F. 2018. From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Merritt, Jonathan . 2016. “Trump Reveals the End of the Religious Right’s Prominence.” The Atlantic, February 27. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-demise-of-conservative-christian-political-prominence/471093/ (Accessed January 16, 2018). Google Scholar | |
|
Miceli, Melinda S. 2005. “Morality Politics vs. Identity Politics: Framing Processes and Competition among Christian Right and Gay Social Movement Organizations.” Sociological Forum 20 (4): 589–612. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Moen, Matthew W. 1992. The Transformation of the Christian Right. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Neiheisel, Jacob R., Djupe, Paul A. 2017. “Censor Morum? The 17th Amendment, Religious Diversity, and Ideological Extremism in the Senate.” Political Research Quarterly 70 (1): 55–67. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
|
Nelson, Hart M., Kanagy, Conrad L. 1993. “Churched and Unchurched Black Americans.” In Church and Denominational Growth: What Does (And Does Not) Cause Growth or Decline, edited by Roozen, David A., Hadaway, C. Kirk, 311–23. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Nelson, Hart M., Nelson, Anne Kusener. 1975. Black Church in the Sixties. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Google Scholar | |
|
Oldfield, Duane M. 1996. The Right and the Righteous: The Christian Right Confronts the Republican Party. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Patrikios, Stratos . 2008. “American Republican Religion? Disentangling the Causal Link between Religion and Politics in the US.” Political Behavior 30:367–89. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Patrikios, Stratos . 2013. “Self-Stereotyping as ‘Evangelical Republican’: An Empirical Test.” Politics and Religion 6:800–22. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Pinn, Anthony B., Krattenmaker, Tom. 2016. “Christian America Is in Decline—Here’s Why it Impacts Everyone.” Washington Monthly, December 23. http://washingtonmonthly.com/2016/12/23/christian-america-is-in-decline-heres-why-it-impacts-everyone (Accessed September 4, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
PRRI . 2016. “Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—And Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back.” https://www.prri.org/research/prri-rns-poll-nones-atheist-leaving-religion/ (Accessed August 10, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
PRRI . 2017. “No Major Religious Group Supports Religiously Based Service Refusals of Gays and Lesbians.” https://www.prri.org/press-release/no-major-religious-group-supports-religiously-based-service-refusals-gays-lesbians/ (Accessed August 14, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Putnam, Robert D., Campbell, David E. 2010. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: Simon & Schuster. Google Scholar | |
|
Quinley, Harold E. 1974b. The Prophetic Clergy: Social Activism among Protestant Ministers. New York: John Wiley. Google Scholar | |
|
Reed, W. Robert, Ye, Hachun. 2011. “Which Panel Data Estimator Should I Use?” Applied Economics 43 (8): 985–1000. Google Scholar | |
|
Rozell, Mark J. 2011. “The Christian Right and Contemporary Politics: A Movement at the Crossroads.” In Crisis of Conservatism? The Republican Party, the Conservative Movement, and American Politics after Bush, edited by Aberbach, Joel D., Peele, Gillian, 114–28. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Rozell, Mark J., Wilcox, Clyde. 1996. Second Coming: The New Christian Right in Virginia Politics. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Rozell, Mark J., Wilcox, Clyde, eds. 2018. God at the Grassroots 2016: The Christian Right in American Elections. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Google Scholar | |
|
Schattschneider, E. E. 1942. Party Government: American Government in Action. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. Google Scholar | |
|
Schattschneider, E. E. 1960. The Semi-sovereign People. New York: Wadsworth. Google Scholar | |
|
Schmidt, Samantha, Wang, Amy B. 2017. “Jerry Falwell Jr. keeps defending Trump as Liberty University grads return diplomas.” The Washington Post, August 21. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp////liberty-university-graduates-return-diplomas-because-of-support-for-trump-by-jerry-falwell-jr/20170821 (Accessed 22, 2017). Google Scholar | |
|
Shaw, Greg M. 2003. “The Polls—Trends: Abortion.” Public Opinion Quarterly 67:407–29. Google Scholar | |
|
Shields, Jon A. 2009. The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Skocpol, Theda, Williamson, Vanessa. 2013. The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Soper, J. Christopher, Fetzer, Joel. 2000. “The Christian Right and the Republican Party in California: Necessarily Yoked.” In Prayers in the Precincts: The Christian Right in the Elections 1998, edited by Green, John C., Rozell, Mark J., Wilcox, Clyde, 93–114. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Stark, Rodney, Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1994. “A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the ‘Secularization’ of Europe.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 33 (3): 230–52. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Taylor, Shelley, Thompson, Suzanne. 1982. “Stalking the Elusive Vividness Effect.” Psychological Review 89:155–81. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Thiessen, Joel, Wilkins-Laflamme, Sarah. 2017. “Becoming a Religious None: Irreligious Socialization and Disaffiliation.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56 (1): 64–82. Google Scholar | |
|
Uecker, Jeremy E., Regnerus, Mark D., Vaaler, Margaret L. 2007. “Losing My Religion: The Social Sources of Religious Decline in Early Adulthood.” Social Forces 85 (4): 1667–92. Google Scholar | ISI | |
|
Vargas, Nicholas . 2012. “Retrospective Accounts of Religious Disaffiliation in the United States: Stressors, Skepticism, and Political Factors.” Sociology of Religion 73 (2): 200–23. Google Scholar | |
|
Voas, David, Chaves, Mark. 2016. “Is the United States a Counterexample to the Secularization Thesis?” American Journal of Sociology 121 (5): 1517–56. Google Scholar | |
|
Wilcox, Clyde . 1992. God’s Warriors: The Christian Right in Twentieth-century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Wilcox, Clyde, Larson, Carin. 2006. Onward Christian Soldiers? The Religious Right in American Politics. 3rd ed. Boulder: Westview Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Wilcox, Clyde, Rozell, Mark J., Green, John C. 2003. “The Meaning of the March: A Direction for Future Research.” In The Christian Right in American Politics: Marching to the Millennium, edited by Green, John C., Rozell, Mark J., Wilcox, Clyde, 277–80. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Wuthnow, Robert . 1999. “Mobilizing Civic Engagement: The Changing Impact of Religious Involvement.” In Civic Engagement in American Democracy, edited by Skocpol, Theda, Fiorina, Morris P., 331–63. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Google Scholar | |
|
Zwier, Robert . 1982. Born-again Politics: The New Christian Right in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Books. Google Scholar |
