The Immanent Frame, the Social Science Research Council’s blog on religion, secularism, and the public square, has a post up claiming that the current war of words between Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and supporters of Barack Obama may be inflating Dobson’s influence and furthering the myth of the evangelical monolith:
Though the Dobson/Obama debate is itself worthy of analysis, it is even more useful as a Rorschach test for contemporary evangelicalism. Though pundits and social scientists regularly talk about “the evangelical vote,” the contemporary controversy calls attention to something historian Nathan Hatch observed as far back as 1990, namely that “there is no such thing as evangelicalism.”
As a co-founder of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, Hatch did not mean to suggest that there were no religious leaders and organizations flying the evangelical flag. Nor did he wish to minimize the impact of revivalistic Protestantism in American history. What Hatch meant is that evangelicalism is too heterogeneous, theologically diverse, and institutionally pluriform to fit comfortably under a single label. This point was amplified by D.G. Hart in Deconstructing Evangelicalism, a book that traces the invention of the category by scholars, pollsters, and movement leaders. More recently, the journalist Christine Wicker has questioned the claim that conservative Protestantism is a unified, vital movement in The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, noting the over-counting of sheep by the Southern Baptist Convention and the small percentage of conservative Protestants who embrace a rigorous definition of evangelicalism.
The Obama/Dobson debate gets at the same issue by exposing the myth of the evangelical vote. The deep divisions in the evangelical house can be seen in the contrasting reactions to the controversy, suggesting that it may be more accurate to speak of multiple evangelicalisms, rather than a monolithic movement.
There’s been a lot of ink and airtime expended this election cylce on debunking the myth of the evangelical vote. Much if it has come from evangelicals themselves, sick of always being portrayed as Republican activists, especially in the days since the 2004 election. But amid all the current attempts to debunk the myth of the monolithic evangelical vote, it’s important to remember that evangelicals have voted as a bloc in modern elections, unlike other religious groups, like Catholics or Mainline Protestants.
That was especially true in the 2004 election, when 78-percent of self-identified evangelicals pulled the lever for George W. Bush. If that’s not a bloc, God-o-Meter doesn’t know what is.
Of course, the 2004 election was unusual. Bush got a greater share of the evangelical vote than any candidate on record. Nonetheless, the pattern of lopsided evangelical support for Republican candidates dates back a couple of decades. The 1980 election, the first after Jerry Falwell founded Moral Majority, saw evangelicals break two to one for Reagan. In 2000, 68-percent of them supported Bush over Al Gore.
That’s not to say that there’s no political diversity among evangelicals. And lefty activists like Jim Wallis have gotten lots of attention for their wing of the evangelical movement. But it’s beyond dispute that evangelicals are a Republican voting bloc.
There’s no way evangelicals will become swing voters this year. They’ll break again for the Republican presidential nominee in November. The question is whether Barack Obama could make modest enough inroads among them, or if John McCain will provoke enough of them to stay home, to make the Democrats’ job easier. That could happen. But it doesn’t mean evangelicals aren’t a cohesive voting bloc. They are, and one of the nation’s most formidable.
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posted July 15, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I agree that evangelicals (as measured by social scientists) have voted as a bloc for the Republicans. And aside from African-Americans, it is hard to find higher support for a political party.
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t internal diversity in the evangelical house (a point Gilgoff acknowledges). It also doesn’t mean that things can move in a new direction among segments of evangelicalism.
The Sojourners/Relevant Magazine/InterVarsity/Emerging Church kind of evangelical is different from the Focus on the Family/700 Club/Homeschooling/Creation museum variety. They read different publications, listen to different music, and go to different Christian colleges.
These differences appear subtle to an outsider, but could allow Obama to make inroads into a diverse subculture that still tilts Republican.
posted July 15, 2008 at 2:14 pm
John neglected to mention that he’s the author of the blog post (on The Immanent Frame) that God-o-Meter is responding to in this post.
John, thanks for your thoughtful comment. You make a very good point in that evangelicals, while displaying remarkable cohesion as a voting blog, inhabit a very rich and varied subculture. But the polls still show nearly 70-percent evangelicals support for this year’s Republican nominee, despite his well-documented shortcomings on traditional evangelical issues.
Here’s God-o-Meter’s question: if evangelical support stays where it is on Election Day, despite Obama’s unprecedented evangelical outreach and McCain’s stumbles on all things religion, is it worth it for future Democratic presidential candidates to make a serious play for evangelical votes? Isn’t it a waste of their time?
posted July 15, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Perhaps if “evangelicals themselves [are] sick of always being portrayed as Republican activists”, they might try working as Democratic activists.
How come the word “activist” is only pejorative when it is applied to those on the left?
Just wonderin’.
posted July 15, 2008 at 4:58 pm
An important detail is that the movement among evangelicals as well as Obama’s outreach breaks down along generational lines. If Obama gains only a few points among evangelicals overall, but with the bulk coming among under-25s, the swing will be under way. The reason product marketers focus so hard on the young is because their brand loyalties have yet to solidify. The same is true of strategists and voters.
posted July 15, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Dan Gilgoff makes some very good points in his response to my post. At the same time, he underestimates the potential for the Democrats to win over some evangelicals.
Let me begin by saying that 30% for Obama is still a lot of evangelicals, probably 6-10% of the electorate. This is larger than the Jewish vote, the Asian-American vote (which is 6.4% of the population), and nearly as large as the African-American vote. So it makes little sense for Democrats to write off this constituency.
Secondly, there are signs that things are beginning to shift. My original posting for the Immanent Frame cited the Pew survey documenting the drop in Republican partisan identification among evangelicals from 55 percent in 2005 to 40 percent in 2007. This is a trend that bears watching, though it may not bear electoral fruit for several election cycles. Of course, the survey didn’t find a huge increase in evangelical Democrats, just a decrease in Republicans. Still, there are cracks in the Republican base among young evangelicals.
Thirdly, as Dan Gilgoff surely knows, there are lots of ways to measure evangelicalism. Most of the recent surveys rely on a denominational affiliation item, which ignores the evangelicals in mainline denominations. Though these so-called “traditionalist” mainline Protestants may be largely Republican (that’s what the Henry Institute found), this adds a few more million voters to the evangelicals-for-Obama electorate.
Fourth, evangelicals may be open to liberal and Democratic views on certain policy positions. For example, on the Henry Institute survey 52 percent of evangelicals agreed that “Strict rules to protect the environment are necessary even if they cost jobs or result in higher prices,” more than Latino Catholics (47%) or Black Protestants (39%).
Fifth, evangelicals vary widely in their levels of devotion. Both John Green and the Henry Institute folks have distinguished between traditionalist and modernist evangelicals. In the past, Green and Beliefnet’s Steve Waldman have written about the so-called “freestyle evangelicals.” Anyone who has spent some time in the Bible Belt knows that there are plenty of lapsed Baptists and Pentecostals whose politics are more complicated than some of their church-going brethren. Sociologist Arthur E. Farnsley’s ethnography of “flea market believers” found that theologically conservative, non-church going Protestants were “no more likely to vote Republican than Democrat.” Another way to put this question would be, “Is it worth it for the Democrats to go after the Hank Williams, Jr. vote?”
Finally, there are surely evangelical Republicans who, due to temperament and style, are embarrassed by James Dobson’s harsh rhetoric. Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power found that evangelicals in the White House criticized Dobson’s “inability to focus on the family because he’s always focusing on someone else’s business.” This won’t help the Democratic party, but it will lead to a more civil political discourse in America.
Thanks to Dan Gilgoff for raising these questions and for sponsoring one of the more interesting blogs on religion and politics.