Religion

Though religious differences along denominational line are and have always been important in the United States,¹ the differences between the religiously observant of all denominations and more secular Americans is becoming wider and more central to an understanding of contemporary American politics. We look first at denominational differences, then at what has come to be called the "culture wars."

Religious Denominations

American Jews (about 2 percent of the U.S. population) began to join the Democratic party in the 1920s and did so overwhelmingly in the 1930s, in response to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal social policies and his foreign policy of resisting Hitler. Most Jews have stayed with the party. Next to African Americans, they remain the most Democratic group in the United States: About 49 percent identify themselves as Democrats and only 19 percent as Republicans. In the 2004 presidential election, Jews cast 74 percent of their votes for Kerry and only 25 percent for Bush. Jews are exceptionally liberal on social issues such as civil liberties and abortion. They also tend to be staunch supporters of civil rights. Though rising incomes have somewhat undercut Jews' economic liberalism, but they remain substantially more supportive of social welfare policies than other groups.

RELIGIOUSLY COMMITTED VS. THE LESS COMMITTED AND SECULAR Among the factors that most differentiates Americans on political attitudes and partisanship is their degree of religious belief and practice.² The religiously committed, no matter the religious denomination, are the most likely Americans to vote Republican and to hold conservative views, particularly on social issues such as abortion, the death penalty, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research. Committed and observant Catholics, Jews, and Protestants are not only much more Republican and socially conservative than people who practice no religion and/or claim to be totally secular, but they are also more Republican and socially conservative than their less committed and observant co-religionists. As an example, 55 percent of committed white Evangelicals identify as Republican compared to only 38 percent of other Evangelicals (and a miniscule 15 percent among people who say they are secular). Among mainstream Protestant denominations, the committed are 38 percent Republican compared to 31 percent among the less committed. Taking all denominations together, to look at another example of how relative religious commitment matters, the "churched" are far more likely to vote Republican than those who are less "churched" or who don't go to church (or synagogue or mosque) at all. (See Table 5.1). [Table 5.1 ABOUT HERE]

The gap between the religiously committed and other Americans-particularly those who say they never or almost never go to church-on matters of party identification, votes in elections, and attitudes about social issues has become so wide and the debates so fierce that many have come to talk about America's culture wars. On a range of issues-including Supreme Court appointments, abortion, the rights of gays and lesbians, prayer in the public schools, and the teaching of evolution-passions on both sides of the divide have reached what can only be called white hot fever pitch. To be sure, much of the noise in the culture war is being generated by leaders of and activists in religiously-affiliated organizations and advocacy groups, exaggerating, perhaps, the degree to which most Americans disagree among themselves on most core beliefs and political attitudes.³ But, the battle between the most and least religiously observant and committed has helped heat up the passions in American politics because each group has gravitated separately to one or the other political party-the former to the Republicans and the latter to the Democrats⁴-and become among the strongest activists and financial contributors within them.

Party Identification

Increasingly, what most differentiates how people feel and think about political matters is what party they identify with and how strongly they identify with it. The roots of people's party identification are not fully understood, but they seem to be related to the party identification of one's family, generational effects caused by major societal events such as the Great Depression and World War II, and other factors explored above, including race, religious affiliation, income, education, and region. Whatever the roots, many (though by no means all) Americans feel such an identification. When survey researchers ask people whether, generally speaking, they consider themselves Republicans, Democrats, independents, or something else, about 60 to 65 percent pick one of the two major parties , ⁵ though the exact numbers fluctuates a bit, year to year, particularly around election time. This sense of belonging to a party is called party identification. Notably, 35 to 40 percent of Americans claim no party identification at all, or say they are independent.

In a later section, we will examine long-term trends in party identification in the United States. For now, in this section on how people differ on political attitudes, we would simply point out that one's party identification seems to be a strong determinant of political outlooks; for about 6 in 10 Americans, party identity is a stable and powerful shaper of one's overall political identity. ⁶ People use the party label to help organize their thinking about politics: to guide them in voting, judging new policy proposals, and evaluating the government's performance. People who consider themselves Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to vote for Republican candidates and approve of Republican presidents; they tend to belong to different social and economic groups; and they are more likely to favor policies associated with the Republican party. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to support big business and an assertive national security policy; Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to support government programs to help the poor and help racial minorities get ahead. Table 5.2 shows some of these differences; on a wide range of issues on what government should do, Republicans and Democrats face each other across a wide chasm. [Table 5. 2 about here; not yet available]

The evidence suggests that the partisan organization of political outlooks is becoming even more pronounced. Republicans are much more likely than in the past to vote across the board for Republicans and hold conservative economic and social beliefs; Democratic identifiers are much more likely than in the past to vote for Democrats and to hold liberal economic and social beliefs. So, among the 60 percent or so who identify with one of the two major parties-which is considerably fewer than in the 1950s and 1960s, as you will see in a later section-- differences in public policy and ideological outlooks between Democrats and Republicans are becoming more and more pronounced (see Figure 5.2), and Democrats and Republicans hold these partisan-organized views more intensely than in the past. ⁷ [Figure 5.2 about here; not yet available]

While Democratic and Republican identifiers are moving farther apart, the distances are even greater between Democratic and Republican "active partisans," those Republican and Democratic identifiers who not only vote but are engaged in other party and candidate and party-support activities, such as making campaign contributions, attending candidate meetings, putting bumper stickers on their cars, and the like. Democratic "active partisans" are strongly liberal, with 78 percent supporting abortion, for example, 70 percent supporting the use of diplomacy over force in international relations, and 70 percent favoring environmental protection over job protection. For their part, Republican "active partisans" are a near mirror image, reporting only 41 percent, 11 percent, and 24 percent approval respectively for these things. ⁸

Table 5.1 Church Attendance and Vote in 2004 Presidential Election

Table 5.2 Partisanship and Issue Positions, 2003

¹For a summary of statistics on how adherents of different religious traditions divide on party identification and on a range of policy issues, see Erikson and Tedin, American Public Opinion, pp. 195-201.

²The data in this section is from Trends, 2005 from the PEW Research Center.

³Fiorina, Culture War.

⁴Ibid., 96-103.

⁵The Gallup Poll, 2005.

⁶Donald Green, Bradley Palmquist, and Eric Schickler, Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identity of Voters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Erikson and Tedin, American Public Opinion, pp. 77-83; Marjorie Randon Hershey, Party Politics in America (New York: Longman Classics, 2005), pp. 106-111; Fiorina, Culture War , pp. 34-5; PEW, Evenly Divided..."; and Greenberg, The Two Americas.

⁷Ibid. ⁸Data are from the 2004, reported in Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders, "Culture War in American: My or Reality," The Forum, vol.3, no. 2 (2005), pp. 1-22.

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