Few religious groups have received more scrutiny from political analysts than evangelical Protestants. Some credit them with mounting a potent Christian Right movement, influencing national elections, and, in the process, transforming the Republican Party. These pundits often resort to military metaphors, such as Frances Fitzgerald’s image of a “disciplined, charging army,” presumably headed off to battle in James Davison Hunter’s “culture wars.” Certainly Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer would savor this interpretation.
Other observers scoff at such notions. Sociologist Andrew Greeley, for example, warns us to ignore the “noisy entrepre-neurial elites” who foster the myth of an evangelical political powerhouse. Pay close attention to ordinary evangelicals, Greeley says, and “you don’t hear the clamor of a disciplined charging army.” To clinch the argument, Greeley points to the traditional political passivity of the evangelical community, internal religious divisions, disagreement on political issues, and the demise of some Christian Right organizations. Evangelical leaders such as Ron Sider and Jim Wallis might draw solace from Greeley’s assessment.
Of course, the truth may lie somewhere between such “maximalist” and “minimalist” stereotypes. The recent presidential election provides an ideal opportunity to evaluate these rival interpretations. In this article, we use the 2000 Survey of Religion and Politics, conducted by the University of Akron Survey Research Center for the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Unlike most national polls, this study contains a wealth of religious information, allowing us to delineate how faith influences evangelical politics.
A good place to begin is with the voting patterns of the major white Christian traditions, as measured by denominational affiliation. A quick look confirms one “maximalist” claim: in 2000, evangelical voters demonstrated an overwhelming Republican preference, giving George W. Bush 75 percent of their votes. By comparison, mainline Protestants, historically the dominant GOP religious constituency, gave Bush only 55 percent, and white Catholics, a vital “swing” group, only 49 percent. Perhaps the most striking fact about evangelicals’ importance to the GOP is that they supplied 40 percent of Bush’s total vote while constituting only about 25 percent of the adult population.
In contrast, Al Gore attracted only one-quarter of the evangelical vote, suffered a solid loss among mainline Protestants, and enjoyed only a slim majority among white Catholics. Nevertheless, he won a narrow national popular majority with overwhelming backing from most religious minorities: black Protestants (96 percent), Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and other non-Christians (80 percent), Jews (77 percent), Hispanic Catholics (76 percent), other Christians such as the Eastern Orthodox (72 percent), and Hispanic Protestants (67 percent). He also attracted the strong endorsement of the growing secular contingent (65 percent). Had Gore—a Southern Baptist—im-proved his dismal showing among “fellow” evangelicals, he would have carried several more states (Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia, among others) and, as a result, the Electoral College.
To investigate the evangelical community’s choices in 2000 in more detail, we divided evangelicals into Bush voters, Gore voters, and non-voters. The first important lesson provided by this exercise (reported in the accompanying Table) is that the “evangelical majority” is in fact not Republican but rather “non-participant.” Considered this way, some cracks appear in evangelicals’ monolithic Republicanism.
This peculiar version of “unity amidst diversity” is rooted in three interrelated influences: political orientation, religious traits, and demographic characteristics. Political factors are obviously a key to evangelical voting. Like other religious groups, evangelicals tend to vote in line with their party identification. As almost half of all evangelicals call themselves Republicans and only one-quarter Democrats, Bush obviously had an enormous initial advantage. On Election Day, the Texas governor’s voters were mostly Re-publican, the vice-president’s mainly Democratic, and non-voters leaned toward independence. Bush also had a signal advantage in evangelicals’ negative view of Al Gore’s senior partner, President Clinton. Only 38 percent gave Clinton a high job rating; very few awarded him gold stars on character. Bush voters, of course, gave the president dismal ratings on both, while Gore voters and, to a lesser extent, non-voters, approved his job performance, but not his personal traits. Certainly, Clinton’s “character issue” was a massive drag on Gore’s appeal to evangelicals.
Not surprisingly, each candidate’s evangelical followers reflected his party’s ideological leanings: Bush voters were pro-life, favored cutting taxes and governmental services, and were likely to put moral issues at the top of the national agenda. Gore voters, in sharp contrast, were pro-choice, pro-government services, and more likely to give priority to economic and social welfare issues. On abortion, government services, and most other issues not shown in the Table, Bush voters were closer than Gore voters to “all evangelicals.” In large part, then, the Texas governor’s victory reflected the greater resonance of his platform with evangelical political attitudes—predominantly, though not exclusively, conservative.
But what about the “real majority” of evangelical non-voters? As the Table shows, on both abortion and government services they were more liberal than the Bush voters, but more conservative than Gore’s. Indeed, non-voters typically occupied the middle ground between partisans. When asked to place themselves on a seven-point ideological scale, their average (4.84) was almost exactly halfway between the conservative Bush voters (5.87) and more liberal Gore camp (3.84). Interestingly, though, on most specific issues they were actually closer to Gore’s followers.
Candidate evaluations, on the other hand, were clearly in Bush’s favor, even among evangelical non-voters. During the spring primaries they reported feeling slightly closer to Bush, and by Election Day the gop candidate had gained a good bit of additional ground, even though Gore’s ratings had improved slightly. Still, taking partisanship, political attitudes, and candidate evaluations into account, it is hard to say which candidate would have benefited more from higher turnout among evangelicals.
The Bush campaign was undoubtedly helped by increasingly positive evangelical attitudes about political involvement. Although the “Great Reversal” of the 1920s left many evangelicals skeptical about politics, that posture characterizes only a small minority today. In the Akron survey, 78 percent of all evangelicals thought that religious groups should stand up for their beliefs in politics, with Bush voters especially committed to that stance. Smaller majorities said that faith was important to their political choices and that they felt close to the Christian Right, with Bush voters once more in the lead. Here again, non-voters fell between partisan camps, although generally closer to Gore’s.
Electoral divisions among evangelicals are also rooted in religious differences. Although evangelicals are overwhelmingly orthodox, at least compared to other Christian groups, there are small but consistent differences between partisans. For instance, while most evangelicals believe the Scriptures to be the “inerrant Word of God,” nine of ten evangelical Bush voters chose this option, but only two-thirds of Gore’s evangelical voters did. On another defining trait, Republican voters more frequently reported being “born again.” Personal devotionalism tells a similar story, as those choosing Bush are about twice as likely as Gore voters to read their Bible daily. Once more, non-voters fall between the two camps. Still, these consistent variations in belief and devotion are less impressive when compared with Christians in other traditions and, for that matter, with the comparable evangelical divisions over political issues.
Where Bush and Gore evangelicals differed more strikingly is in their degree of integration into religious communities. An overwhelming majority of evangelical Bush voters attend church at least once a week, compared to fewer than half of the Gore voters. Bush voters are also more than twice as likely to hold office in their congregation (38 to 15 percent for Gore supporters). In addition, 56 percent claim to give a tithe (or more) to their church, compared to “only” 37 percent of Gore supporters (both figures are extremely high in relation to giving patterns of churchgoers across the board). And Bush’s followers are much more likely to meet weekly in religious small groups (45 to 24 percent), to report a “very strong” denominational preference (49 to 23 percent), and to say that their own congregation is “very important” to them (67 to 48 percent). On all these measures, the non-voters look like Gore’s followers.
All this evidence confirms that Bush was the choice of those most fully incorporated into the evangelical subculture. Not surprisingly, Bush partisans also received more political communications from religious sources, including contacts from religious groups such as the Christian Coalition, voter guides in church, pastoral discussions, or input from friends in the congregation. Seventy-nine percent reported at least one such contact, compared to only 36 percent of Gore voters. Finally, Bush voters often relied on religious media for important information about the campaign; few Gore voters did. Once again, non-voters look very much like Gore voters, receiving few cues from religious sources.
Finally, demographic factors also influenced the vote. In the past evangelicals were less active politically not only for theological reasons but also because they were concentrated in the “non-political sectors” of society—less well-educated, less wealthy. As evangelicals have enjoyed a socioeconomic “coming of age” in recent decades, scholars have argued that the beneficiaries should be more active in politics and, probably, more conservative. And these trends favoring the Republicans should be most visible among younger evangelicals. On the other hand, those evangelicals “left behind”—older, or with less education and income—might enter the Democratic column, or, perhaps, remain apolitical.
In fact, social status does provide a useful perspective on evangelical political choices, especially the decision not to vote. On the one hand, Republicans have profited from upward mobility among evangelicals. Note, however, that although more Bush voters have a college education and a middle-class income, Gore partisans are not far behind (indeed, they actually have a larger proportion of graduate degrees). On the other hand, evangelicals with modest education and lower incomes are overwhelmingly non-voters.
Not surprisingly, the evangelical movement toward the GOP is most visible among younger people. Over two-thirds of Bush’s voters are 50 or under, whereas a solid majority of Gore’s are over that age. On this count, however, non-voters look more like the Bush partisans. Barring a major political upheaval, such evidence suggests a continuing trend toward the GOP, as younger, better-educated, and wealthier evangelicals replace an older, less upscale Democratic political generation.
Gender may be a complicating factor. As the Table shows, the evangelical ranks include more women than men, but men constitute a narrow majority of Bush’s voters. On the other side, fully two-thirds of Gore’s evangelicals are women, as are 61 percent of the non-voters. Nevertheless, the “gender gap” was not as large among evangelicals as in the electorate as a whole, largely because Bush almost held his own among evangelical women. In fact, the Texas governor edged out Gore among married women with children—evangelical “soccer moms.” Gender interacted with marital and family status in other ways. Married evangelical men with children at home were the most receptive audience for the GOP’s “family values” appeal, while unmarried, divorced, separated, and widowed evangelical women without young children were more likely not to vote, or if they did, to back Gore.
In summary, then, our study provides some support for both maximalist and minimalist interpretations. Evangelical voters provided overwhelming—and crucial—support for George W. Bush in 2000. Firmly embedded in evangelical life, Bush voters were strongly Republican, conservative, and attuned to politics. Orthodox religious belief and traditional practice provided the underpinnings for their vote, reinforced by affluence, traditional family status, and education. In contrast, evangelicals who voted for the vice-president more frequently occupied the political, religious, and demographic fringes of the evangelical subculture.
Finally, the “real evangelical majority” of non-voters falls between rival camps on most political, religious, and demographic measures. Independent, moderate, and less connected to either the political or religious world, these evangelicals often lack the crucial personal resources that foster political participation. At least half of them are permanently disengaged from politics, but others move in and out depending on the appeal of particular candidates. Thus, this untapped bloc of potential voters is still available to any party or candidate who finds a way to reach them. Although this may prove a rather daunting task, politicians and pundits ignore the silent evangelical majority at their peril.
Lyman A. Kellstedt is professor of political science at Wheaton College. Corwin E. Smidt is director of the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College. James L. Guth is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Furman University. John C. Green is director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.
Copyright © 2001 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture Magazine. Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
