White Evangelical Total Whites Total Population
issues played in the partisan affiliation calculus. Because Karol’s model ignores these aspects, it is notably limited. A more complete explanation of partisan affiliation would account for
multidimensional preferences.
That being said, Karol’s argument provides a useful method of thinking about party affiliation and is in many respects compelling. Clearly there was a top-down aspect to the white evangelical-GOP affiliation. However, because Karol fails to account for the impact of foreign affairs and racial politics, or other non-Christian issues on which white evangelicals advocated distinct positions, his theory of incorporation is limited. White evangelicals, like all political actors, have multidimensional preferences, and models of group incorporation should thus take into account all variables that affected their political decisions. Political scientist Geoffrey Layman at least partly accounts for this multidimensionality in his explanation of the evangelical-GOP affiliation
The Politics of Race and the Bottom-Up Theory of Incorporation
Layman expands upon Hunter’s culture wars thesis. As noted in Chapter 2, term refers to the notion that contemporary American society is fragmented between those with “orthodox” and “progressive” religious and moral orientations.211 According to Hunter, the division manifests itself as hostility between groups with different understandings of morality.212 Layman’s argument reflects this conflict, applying the progressive-orthodox cultural divide to party politics. In Layman’s words, “Cultural progressivism of the 1960s and 1970s and the orthodox
211
This literature was foreshadowed by the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that came to light during the 1920s as a result of the media and political attention paid to the Scopes trial. See Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World War II: 134-38.
212
Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America: 42-48. See also Layman and Hussey, "George Bush and the Evangelicals: Religious Commitment and Partisan Change Among Evangelical Protestants, 1964-2004," 183.
response of the 1970s and 1980s drew the lines for a new form of American cultural conflict.”213 This new form of cultural conflict helps to explain the partisan changes during the latter half of the 20th century.214 Consistent with the arguments presented in Chapter 2, increasingly secular and modernist opinion in the 1960s and 1970s in many ways forced white evangelicals “out of political hiding.”215 However this political coming out party for evangelicals, and their
subsequent affiliation with the GOP, was no immediate undertaking. Rather, it is perhaps better described as a process of dealignment and realignment.216
As seen in Figure 3.2, beginning in 1964 and lasting through the mid-1970s, there was a noticeable decline in the number of white evangelicals identifying with the Democratic Party. For example, in 1964 over 60% of white evangelicals identified themselves as strongly Democratic, weakly Democratic, or leaning Democratic. However by 1980 that number was under 40%. As previously mentioned, evangelicals prior to the 1970s tended to weakly identify with Democrats. Despite its weakness, this partisan preference suggests that there had some reason for the loss in Democratic allegiance. According to Layman, Democratic cultural, racial, and sexual liberalism pushed evangelicals to change their partisan identification.217 This partisan
213
Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics: 11. 214
Layman further argues that secular conservatives elites of the New Right aided the movement of evangelicals into the GOP. See ibid., 44; Geoffrey C. Layman, "Religion and Party Activists: A 'Perfect Storm' of Polarization or a Recipe for Pragmatism?," in Religion and Democracy in the United States: Danger or Opportunity?, ed. Alan Wolfe and Ira Katznelson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), 237.
215Layman, The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics: 33-34. 216
The notion of partisan dealignment and realignment is a corroborated hypothesis in political science literature. For an overview of the dealignment/realignment argument as it pertains to the politics of race, see James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1983). 352-75.
217I invoke the notion of partisan dealignment and realignment to describe the movement of evangelicals from the Democratic to Republican Parties. This can also be thought of a push and pull effect: Democrats “pushed”
evangelicals out of the Party by advocating racial and cultural liberalism. White evangelicals (and perhaps more generally southern whites) were later “pulled” into the Republican Party (per Karol’s argument) by GOP elites. See Ibid., 353-358 and Marjorie Randon Hershey, Party Politics in America, Longman classics in political science. (New York: Longman, 2011). 135-36.
realignment is even more striking if we narrow the analysis to include only white evangelicals in the South.
Figure 3.6
Note: “Democratic” and “Republican” includes those who indicated they were leaning to the party in question. South is defined per U.S. census regions: AL, AR, DE, D.C., FL, GA, KY, LA, MD, MS, NC, VA, WV, SC, TN, OK, TX. Source: American National Election Studies, 1960-2008
Fewer than 30% of southern white evangelicals identified as Republicans in 1960; however, by 2008 that number was nearly 70%. This shift was at least in part caused by the fact that
beginning in the 1960s, the national parties and their candidates began to take distinct stands on cultural issues, and liberal Democrats importantly dictated civil rights policymaking.218
There is a large literature that considers the creation and evolution of issues over time. Political scientists Edward Carmines and James Stimson, in studying issue evolution, have presented several hypotheses explaining why issues change. The most relevant of these hypotheses is that of mass party realignments. According to Carmines and Stimson, the
218
Layman and Hussey, "George Bush and the Evangelicals: Religious Commitment and Partisan Change Among Evangelical Protestants, 1964-2004," 188. 0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 80.0%