Many Mansions
By Ed Kilgore
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However much people insist on a monolithic portrait of religion and politics in America, the truth is that our religious landscape is as varied and complicated as the country itself. People of faith are as deeply divided on the moral and cultural issues that tend to spill over into politics as they have ever been on issues of theology or worship.
According to the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, the basic religious demography of the country is this: 82 percent of Americans are Christians, 4 percent are of non-Christian faiths, and 11 percent are nonbelievers or religiously unaffiliated.
Among Christians, 23 percent define themselves as white evangelical Protestants; 19 percent as white mainline Protestants; 9 percent as black Protestants; 23 percent as Roman Catholics; and 6 percent as other Christians, including Eastern Orthodox and Mormons.
But all these neat categories contain many subgroups with different views. Protestants, for example, are split into many denominations. American Catholics are almost equally riven between traditionalists and liberals, and the Church hierarchy itself, teaching a distinctive blend of cultural conservatism and social activism, is difficult to pigeonhole. Moreover, throughout American Christianity -- Protestant and Catholic; black, white, and Hispanic -- there is a rapidly growing Pentecostal, or "Acharismatic," movement that tends to be culturally conservative but politically unpredictable.
The voting behavior of different religious groups does not always comport with the common view that political ideology follows religious ideology along a left-right spectrum. For instance, not all evangelicals are Republicans, nor are all Unitarians raving liberal Democrats.
According to a University of Akron analysis of the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush did (as one might expect) spectacularly well among white evangelical Protestants, carrying 76 percent of that vote. But he also won 61 percent of the vote of white mainline Protestants -- members of denominations with notably liberal views on many cultural and political issues. In fact, the biggest split among white Protestants was not between the evangelical and mainline wings, but between those who attend church at least once a week and those who don't. Bush won only 55 percent of "less observant" white evangelicals but won 66 percent of "more observant" white mainliners.
The same pattern held true with white Roman Catholics in 2000: "More observant" Catholics went for Bush by a 57-43 margin, while the "less observant" went for Gore 59-41.
Aside from frequency of church attendance, ethnicity can also trump religious "conservatism" or "liberalism" in voting behavior. Even though (according to the Pew survey) two-thirds of African-American Protestants are evangelicals, Gore won 96 percent of this group's vote. Hispanic Protestants are most often found among the most conservative denominations, yet they went for Gore by a 2-1 ratio (a bigger margin than Clinton won in 1996). Hispanic Catholics went for Gore 76-24.
All these crosscurrents suggest that efforts by either party to appeal to voters on the basis of their religious views are fraught with peril. Indeed, the Pew survey has one key finding that suggests the best approach for the parties with respect to people of faith is to capture the political "center." Pew asked Christian respondents to classify themselves from both an ideological and a partisan point of view among eight groups from left to right, and among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. The percentage identifying themselves with a centrist ideology ranges from a low of 37 percent among white evangelical Protestants to a high of 65 percent among black evangelical Protestants. Fifty-four percent of white Catholics, 51 percent of black mainline Protestants, and 47 percent of white mainline Protestants also opt for a centrist category.
In other words, the party that captures the "vital center" of politics is also the best positioned with respect to most categories of religious Americans.
The political team surrounding George W. Bush seems to understand that point pretty clearly. The president's supposed ideology of "compassionate conservatism" is perfectly designed to appeal to people who want to combine conservative values with a strong commitment to social justice. Indeed, there's abundant evidence that the "compassionate conservative" message is especially aimed at appealing to white Catholic voters, who still lean Democratic.
Aside from Alan Wolfe's advice that Democrats should avoid identifying themselves with anti-religious secularism, the remarkable diversity of the American faithful suggests a New Democratic message that can compete with "compassionate conservatism" in appealing to the mainstream values and progressive, generous impulses so common across the religious spectrum.
Ed Kilgore is policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council.