Review of: American Grace & the Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics
The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics. Ed. by Corwin Smidt, Lyman Kellstedt, & James L. Guth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. By Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010)
Reviews by Joseph Yi (Hanyang University)
The Christmas list of any student of American politics should now include two more books, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics (2009) and American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (2010). They both attest to the historical and continuing influence of American religion (mainly Christian and especially Protestant).
Edited by noted Christian scholars Corwin Smidt, Lyman Kellstedt and James L. Guth, Religion and American Politics (RAP) underlines that religion is a central (albeit historically understudied) factor in all fields of American politics. The twenty chapters of the edited volume collectively offer a thorough, concise review of American politics, from the historical Founding to Political Socialization to Public Policy. RAP enlists noted scholars in each subject area to: (a) assess the "state of the art" within that area, including the role of religion; (b) review important findings, insights, and theoretical advances; (c) outline the current debates that engage scholarly attention; and, (d) raise some important, but currently understudied, questions.
In Chapter one, the editors introduce the three dimensions of religiosity (i.e., belonging, behaving, and believing), which encompass three theories of religion and politics. Ethnoreligious theory stresses “belonging,” i.e., affiliation with a particular religious denomination. Restructuralism or culture war highlights “belief,” i.e., the degree of belief orthodoxy, i.e., whether one is “modernist” or “traditionalist.” A third school of thought stresses levels of religious “behavior,” such as frequency of church attendance.
Individually or collectively, the three B’s explain individual political attitudes and behavior. For black Protestants and (white) Jews, and to a lesser extent Latino Catholics, ethno-religious affiliation is sufficient to explain their dominant Democratic partisanship. For white Protestants and Catholics, however, ethnoreligious affiliation (Belonging) interacts with Belief and Behavior: religious traditionalism and frequent church attendance are both correlated with GOP partisanship, and church attendance is also correlated with voter turnout (see Chapter 12).
Building on Steensland et al (2000), the RAP editors assign individual denominations into broad, racially influenced “religious traditions.” Most white Protestants are assigned to either the evangelical and mainline traditions, while Black and Latino Protestants (and Catholics) are placed into separate ethno-racial categories (i.e., Black Protestant, Latino Protestant, Latino Catholic) (p.12).
The much-publicized American Grace, based on a two-step, comprehensive interview survey of more than 3,000 Americans (Faith Matters 2006, 2007), addresses some unresolved questions and issues in RAP. In Chapter 7, J. Matthew Wilson discusses the recent literature (e.g. Brooks 2006; Smidt et al 2008) that conservative Protestants are significantly “more generous in their charitable giving than people of other religious persuasions” (p. 197). Putnam and Campbell, however, find that religious conservatism (i.e., “Belief”) has modest correlation with charitable giving; the major variable is “behavior,” such as church attendance. “The primary predictor of generosity is the strength of one’s religious commitment, regardless of one’s religious tradition” (American Grace, p. 453).
A continuing area of dispute is the association between religiosity and political tolerance. Supporting the conventional wisdom, Putnam and Campbell report that religious people are less tolerant of views that clash with their own, even with the standard controls (e.g. gender, education, income, race, region and age). In contrast, in RAP, Chapter 15, Marie Eisenstein reports that when using rigorous measurements of religiosity and tolerance, the relationship between the two is not negative. “In fact, religious commitment had a direct and positive impact on political tolerance, whereas doctrinal orthodoxy has a statistically insignificant influence (Eisenstein 2006b, p.338)” (RAP, p. 442). Unfortunately, Putnam and Campbell neither cite nor address this counterintuitive finding.
The major theme of American Grace is that of contentious polarization and tolerant pluralism. The religious earthquake of "the long Sixties” eroded religious commitment, especially among Catholics and mainline Protestants, and encouraged sexual liberation, esp. premarital sex. This earthquake caused two aftershocks. The first, much-publicized, was the “growth in conservative religion, especially evangelicalism, and an even more pronounced cultural presence for evangelicals, most noticeably in the political arena.” The authors assert that this evangelical revival emerged in the 1970s and began to recede by the early 1990s— sparked more by personal moral concerns rather than hot-button political issues: “Abortion and same-sex marriage are the glue holding the coalition of the religious together.”
The second, less-publicized, aftershock from the Long Sixties, and a reaction to the first, is the growing number of young people who have come to disavow religion. “The politicization of religion has triggered a negative reaction among some, mostly young, Americans… they perceive it as an extension of partisan politics with which they do not agree.” America is still a relatively religious country, but one with a growing “swath” of secularism, with approximately 15% of their respondents reporting no religious affiliation whatsoever. More young Americans came to view religion as "judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical, and too political," overly focused on rules rather than spirituality. "The Richter rating of this second aftershock is greater than that of the first aftershock and rivals that of the powerful original quake of the Sixties.” The second aftershock exacerbated the so-called God gap: the slightly shrinking evangelical camp became all the more identified with Republican conservatism, and the new “nones” (no religious affiliation) increased the identification of Democrats with secularism.
Paradoxically, the pattern of religious polarization, which is so prominent among elites, coexists with another, more grassroots pattern of religious pluralism and tolerance. This is rooted in the highly fluid nature of America religion. “Religions compete, adapt, and evolve as individual Americans freely move from one congregation to another, and even from one religion to another.” One third to one-half of all marriages are interfaith. Roughly one-third of Americans have changed religious affiliation during their lifetime. When it comes to religious identity and affiliation, brand loyalty in terms of denominational identity is weak and traffic moves freely in and out of specific groups and communities. The consequent churn may cause people to realign into specific, like-minded clusters—but not necessarily bunkers—of coreligionists.
Putnam and Campbell cite the Aunt Susan principle: we all have an Aunt Susan in our lives: “the sort of person who epitomizes what it means to be a saint, but whose religious background is different from our own.” This highlights the catalytic role of social capital, famously popularized by Putnam's Bowling Alone. Bonding forms of social capital, especially among white evangelicals, black Protestants and Jews, may enhance religious and political differentiation. But Americans have enough bridging capital, or “a web of interlocking personal relationships among people of many different faiths” (p. 550), to moderate such polarization. Reflecting this easy tolerance, majorities of all faith traditions, including 54 percent of evangelical Protestants, agree that “people not of my faith, including non-Christians, can go to heaven” (p. 537). In addition, a growing percentage of all believers, esp. the younger generation, favor equal rights for gays and lesbians.
Despite the treatment of religious affiliation as dynamic and fluid, that of race remains somewhat static. Mostly religion scholars, including the authors of American Grace and Religion and American Politics, classify religious, esp. Protestant, respondents into racially and ethnically separate categories, such as Black Protestant, Latino Protestant, and white Evangelical. This strategy assumes that: 1) the vast majority of Americans attend church with little or no racial diversity; and 2) the exceptions generally exhibit political attitudes and behavior like those who attend racially exclusive churches.
Yi (2009) discusses three counter-claims. First, a significant, and growing, percentage of Americans attend congregations that are at least moderately (75 percent or less of the members are same race or ethnicity) or highly diverse (50 percent or less). Second, both moderate and high levels of ethno-racial diversity are significantly correlated with racially inclusive social capital (e.g. interracial dinner, friends) and political attitudes (e.g. government aid to blacks). Third, among Protestants, churches that combine high levels of religious authority (orthodoxy) with outsider status are more likely to bridge different races (and economic classes) than churches without such combinations.
Despite this caveat, Religion and American Politics and American Grace complement each other and offer an indispensable, historical and contemporary, analysis of religion and American politics. Highly recommended for all.
