------- Forwarded message follows ------- >From the issue dated September 8, 2000 http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i02/02b00701.htm What Scholarship Reveals About Politics and Religion By ALAN WOLFE We've been hearing a lot recently about the potential impact of religious groups on presidential politics. How will Al Gore's selection of an Orthodox Jew as a running mate play out with the electorate? By choosing Dick Cheney rather than Pennsylvania's Roman Catholic governor, Tom Ridge, or New York's Catholic governor, George Pataki, did George W. Bush compromise his chance to woo the Catholic vote? Will evangelical Christians find Bush's references to Jesus Christ, or his proclamation of a "Jesus Day" in Texas, attractive? Will supporters of the separation of church and state find such talk upsetting? The answers are a lot more complicated than politicians and pundits seem to assume, for the role that religion plays in politics no longer follows the patterns established in the years after World War II. In the 1950's and 1960's, American social scientists were strongly committed to what was known as the "secularization thesis." The idea was put forth in one way or another by sociologists as diverse as Talcott Parsons and the young Peter L. Berger: As society became more modern, increasingly adhering to rationality and efficiency, old-time religious fervor, belief in miracles, and orthodoxy would begin to disappear. Religion would become, in effect, a sociological marker. If we knew, for example, that a person was Jewish, we would have a fairly good idea about his or her level of education (relatively high), political views (relatively liberal), and preferred place of residence (the suburbs). The secularization thesis really did explain, throughout the 1950's and 1960's, a good deal about religion. But as society changed, so did the ideas of social scientists who were interested in how religion was actually practiced. A seminal article in 1993 in the American Journal of Sociology, by the sociologist R. Stephen Warner, pointed to what the author called a "new paradigm for the sociological study of religion." Two features of that emerging paradigm help explain the role religion is playing in the 2000 presidential campaign. One is the idea that religion that demands strong ties of adherence is not incompatible with modernity after all. The other is the notion, associated with what is known as "rational-choice theory," that religion, even its demanding forms, survives not because people need to be linked together with groups, but because they wish to make their own decisions about the costs and benefits associated with specific beliefs. Consider, first, the Lieberman nomination. In the past, scholars often viewed Jews, among all the religious groups in the United States, as the most committed to modern ideals of equality and opportunity. It followed that Jews would tend to be liberals and would vote in large numbers for the Democratic Party. From the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman through those of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, that was true. Jews were liberal out of a strong conviction that Democrats stood for civil rights and tolerance, while Republicans belonged to those country clubs, graduated from those universities, and worked in those law firms that kept Jews out. Crucial to the pattern of Jewish political liberalism was the assumption of Jewish theological liberalism. It was considered as something of a given that most American Jews would eventually assimilate, either by marrying non-Jews or by joining Reform Jewish congregations that played down the specifics of faith. Many Jews in the years after World War II did just that, confirming the secularization thesis. Yet these days, Jews in the United States do not automatically conform to either political or theological liberalism. It continues to be true that Jews vote in high numbers, but ever since the 1964 nomination of Barry Goldwater, a conservative Republican whose grandfather was Jewish, Jews can no longer be considered reflexive liberals. Many American Jews who previously viewed the Democrats as the party of inclusion have reservations about its support for affirmative action, which reminds them of the quotas that once kept Jews out of universities. Some find support for Israel in the pro-defense policies of the Republicans. Along similar lines, Jews have not necessarily become more secular in the land of American plenty. In scholarly writings about modernity, the assumption that they would do so was premised on the idea that Orthodoxy, which was associated with European ghettos and the early immigrant experience in the United States, would disappear. Yet, far from disappearing, Orthodox Jews compose 10 percent of American Jewry today, according to Samuel G. Freedman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and author of the just-published Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. Today's scholars tell us that one reason is that orthodoxy speaks to the needs of individuals who feel isolated in the modern world. For example, Lynn Davidman, a sociologist at Brown University, has looked at why some Jewish feminists have been attracted to Orthodox Judaism, which has not traditionally treated women as equal to men. In Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism, Davidman says that some feminists become Orthodox because they find individual satisfaction in being part of a religious movement with rich traditions and observances. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's nomination confirms the findings of scholars working in an era of postsecularization theory. Lieberman, like so many Jews, is a Democrat. But, reflecting the political changes in American Jewry, he is also a conservative Democrat, one who has questions about affirmative action and who is willing to join forces with conservatives on moral and cultural issues. Moreover, as an Orthodox Jew, Lieberman reflects the growing importance of tradition among American Jews, including those traditions of devout observance that, we were once told, would be left behind by modernity. That may suggest that Jewish voters will not be swayed as a bloc by the Lieberman nomination, but, like the senator himself, will make individual choices on the basis of what they think candidates will offer them. The findings of contemporary social scientists can also shed light on the question of whether George W. Bush sacrificed the Catholic vote by choosing the Protestant Dick Cheney as his running mate. In an earlier period, there was such a thing as a Catholic vote. The University of Notre Dame historian John T. McGreevy has shown, in a 1996 book, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North, that American Catholics, having invested considerable sums in the construction of their churches and parochial schools, remained connected to urban life throughout the 1940's and 1950's. Hence, they tended to keep their ties to the Democratic political machines of Chicago, Jersey City, or New York City. They were also less likely to attend college than Jews and liberal Protestants -- and, when they did seek higher education, less likely to go to the most prestigious universities. That, in turn, meant that Catholics were slower to leave working-class occupations and were, therefore, more likely to belong to unions whose members tended to vote Democratic. The sociologist Herbert Gans coined the term "urban villagers" to describe the close-knit ties of Catholics who chose to remain in the cities. Gans's ethnographic sociology treated urban Catholics empathetically, but not all social scientists admired their communal proclivities. Authority and hierarchy, rather than mobility and individual liberty, were seen as the crucial Catholic values. Catholics were expected to follow the voting suggestions of their ward bosses, just as they were expected to adhere to church doctrine. If Jews have become less likely to identify automatically with political and theological liberalism, Catholics have become less likely to remain tied to urban parishes. As the 1970's unfolded, urban political machines and labor unions, both of which sharply dropped in importance in American life, could no longer be counted on to deliver the Catholic vote to the Democrats. As Catholics moved to the suburbs, they became more likely to vote Republican; indeed, Alfonse D'Amato, the New York Republican senator who left office in 1999, created something of a Catholic patronage machine in suburban Long Island. The change in the nature of Catholic political allegiance is symbolized by the contrasting careers of the former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley and his son William. The father's focus was on city politics; the son is chairman of the Gore presidential campaign. National rather than local in his efforts, inclusive rather than tribal, William Daley has left behind his roots in Chicago Catholicism to become a behind-the-scenes power in the Democratic Party. The nature of religious authority among Catholics also changed drastically in the aftermath of the 1960's. Humanae Vitae (1968), in which Pope Paul VI issued pronouncements against birth control and reaffirmed the church's opposition to abortion, became the key event. Faced with interpretations of doctrine at odds with the realities of modern life, most American Catholics chose not to leave the church, but to redefine their relationship to it. According to a 1993 Gallup poll, many American Catholics believed that birth control was acceptable (84 percent); that divorced Catholics should be permitted by the church to remarry (78 percent); that women ought to be ordained as priests (63 percent); that opposition to abortion should be relaxed (58 percent); and that homosexuality (44 percent) or sex outside marriage (50 percent) were not always wrong. As sociologists like the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley concluded, American Catholics had come to include within the category of "good Catholic" those people whose behavior, in the eyes of the church in Rome, would define them as sinners. In her book last year, Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power, the sociologist Michele Dillon shows that even political activists working to counter the church's positions on gay rights or women's ordination tend to consider themselves faithful Catholics. That notion -- that one can redefine church teachings to suit one's own lifestyle -- offends conservative Catholics. Yet they hold positions on capital punishment contrary to the church's teachings on the sanctity of life, indirectly confirming the idea that one can disagree with the church hierarchy and still consider oneself loyal to the faith. The most extreme form of dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church is to leave it for another faith. One would think that recent Catholic immigrants to the United States, just like the Irish and Italians before them, would adhere strongly to church teaching. Yet the most dynamic development in religious life in Latin America -- and hence among Latino immigrants to the United States -- is the rise of evangelical Protestantism. Joseph Palacios, a Jesuit priest and sociologist, studied the phenomenon of Catholic conversion to evangelical Protestantism among immigrants in Los Angeles for his dissertation at the University of California at Berkeley. He concluded that at least one factor encouraging conversion is the church's position on birth control. Those willing to risk the dangers of immigration are predisposed toward modern values in the first place. And when faced with a choice between limiting family size to escape poverty and remaining within the church, they opt for a new religion. Considering that Catholicism has defined the religious identity of their families for centuries, and considering the depth of their faith, that willingness to switch from one religion to another is anything but a casual decision. It seems clear, in short, that the political behavior of American Catholics no longer reflects ideas about authority so prominent in the sociological literature of a previous era. Far from obeying either political or church officials, Catholics confirm today's rational-choice theory. They make up their own minds. If Jews can choose to be Orthodox, Catholics can choose to be theologically liberal. And, like other Americans, they cannot be counted on to vote as a bloc, but as individuals evaluating candidates on the basis of specific promises. Will George W. Bush's public assertions of faith in Jesus Christ help him by rallying the evangelical vote -- or hurt him among non-evangelicals? The new scholarship on religion is suggestive here, too. In the years after World War II, American Protestants were often divided by scholars who studied them into two groups: high-church Episcopalians and Congregationalists from the Northeast and low-church evangelicals from the South and West. The former, it was generally believed, were more likely to be liberal Republicans -- or even liberal Democrats -- while the latter were viewed as potential recruits for a new conservative movement emphasizing such social issues as prayer in schools and opposition to abortion. The experience of the Bush family, formerly of Connecticut but now from Texas, however, suggests a note of caution. Prescott Bush, the U.S. senator from Connecticut, and his son George, the president, indeed conformed to the tradition of high-church liberal Republicanism. George W. Bush, the governor, encouraged by his wife, became a Methodist and appeals, with great success, to Texas evangelicals, even as his talk of "compassionate conservatism" echoes the Republican liberalism of his father and grandfather. Clearly, it is possible to cross the frontlines of the Protestant split within one generation while maintaining support from both sides. One reason that divide can be crossed is that evangelical Protestants no longer bear much resemblance to the group described by historians and sociologists a generation ago. Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life was published in 1963, when liberals began to fear the emergence of a "radical right" hostile to cosmopolitan ideas, intolerant of dissent, and attracted to racist slogans. For Hofstadter, fundamentalist Protestants, who fashioned the forms of 20th-century conservative Protestantism that have influenced today's evangelicals, represented the forces in American life that would resist modernity and its accompanying cosmopolitanism. That assumption turned out to be as incorrect as the ideas that Orthodox Jewry would disappear and that Catholics would remain loyal to the Democratic Party. Evangelical Protestants, for one thing, are no longer necessarily antimodern. True, one can find support for such antiscientific ideas as creationism among some evangelicals, but, like Jews and Catholics before them, many evangelicals are upwardly mobile, increasingly suburban, and anxious to send their children to selective colleges. With those sociological transformations have come changes in political outlook. In a comprehensive survey of evangelical attitudes toward politics, conducted in 1996, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sociologist Christian Smith found that any stereotypes of evangelicals as dyed-in-the-wool opponents of modernity were incorrect. In his book Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, published this year, Smith says that two-thirds of the evangelicals surveyed did not want to prohibit abortion completely, and only 20 percent believed that a woman's place was in the home. Moreover, most evangelicals support the U.S. Constitution -- including its provisions on the separation of church and state. At a time when evangelical leaders like the Rev. Pat Robertson call on Governor Bush not to proceed with an execution, of Karla Faye Tucker in 1998, it becomes difficult to assume that theologically conservative Protestants will necessarily adhere to politically conservative positions. Behind all of those changes in the nature of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant life lie new assumptions about how Americans experience faith. Religion no longer functions, as an earlier generation of social scientists believed, to bind the individual to the group; instead, religious denominations, to survive, have to accommodate the needs and desires of individuals. Increasingly skeptical of authority in general, Americans want to play a role in determining what their faith means to them. That does not mean that religion has less of a place in their lives; if anything, the United States has experienced a religious revival that the social scientists of the postwar years could never have predicted. But no matter how deep their faith commitments, Americans are reluctant to allow their beliefs to determine their political outlook. Thus, it makes increasingly little sense to talk about a Catholic vote or an Episcopalian vote or a Jewish vote or an evangelical vote. The situation is far too fluid for that. These days, Americans ask of their religions and their politicians, "What have you done for me lately?" All those in authority, whether their authority derives from a mandate from heaven, a mandate from the electorate, or a mandate from the Nielsen ratings, had better have an answer. Alan Wolfe is director of the Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS ESSAY Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter (Alfred A. Knopf, 1963) Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power, by Michele Dillon (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want, by Christian Smith (University of California Press, 2000) Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry, by Samuel G. Freedman (Simon & Schuster, 2000) Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North, by John T. McGreevy (University of Chicago Press, 1996) Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism, by Lynn Davidman (University of California Press, 1991) http://chronicle.com Section: The Chronicle Review Page: B7 Front page | Career Network | Search | Site map | Help Copyright � 2000 by The Chronicle of Higher Education A<>E<>R Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] ------- End of forwarded message ------- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
