The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism

6. The Changing Political Fortunes of Mainline Protestants

159 6 The Changing Political Fortunes of Mainline Protestants Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks In the first two decades after World War II, the political worlds of mainline Protestants were remarkably stable. Mainline voters regularly provided a large and stable bloc of votes for Republican candidates in national elections . In particular, they provided key support for the Eisenhower/Nixon/ Rockefeller “liberal” wing of the Republican Party, with its characteristic combination of support for civil rights and fiscal conservatism. This political and ideological alignment could be traced back to the nineteenth century , enduring through the political upheavals of the Progressive and New Deal eras. This pattern began to change in the middle 1960s. Increasingly partisan conflicts over civil rights legislation and the Republican Party’s nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 presented new dilemmas for mainline voters. The growing liberalism of mainline clergy beginning in the 1960s—particularly with regard to civil rights legislation and opposition to the Vietnam War—generated new tensions within mainline denominations. Although the decline of the social movements of the 1960s and the return to dominance (at the national level) of moderate Republican leaders such as Nixon and Ford provided a temporary halt to such conflicts, they have reemerged since the late 1970s to shape the experience of the mainline Protestant community. These tensions have included conflicts generated by the Christian Right, as well as the emergence of a dominant conservative wing within the Republican Party since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, in the face of a continuing liberal shift within many mainline denominations.1 These events provide the background against which to understand one key finding of this chapter: traditionally robust support for the Republican 160 / Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks Party among mainline voters has declined. In recent elections, mainline voters have voted in much the same way as the rest of the electorate, marking a significant shift to the political center since the 1950s. At the same time, the impact of mainline Protestants in the American electoral arena has diminished significantly because of their steady decline in membership and size (relative to other religious groups). We have estimated elsewhere that whereas mainline voters constituted nearly half of the entire electorate (46 percent) in 1960, they had fallen to under 28 percent by 1996.2 As a result of both declining size and electoral support for the Republican Party, mainline Protestants are a significantly reduced bloc of voters within the Republican coalition. However, their increasing receptivity to the Democrats has not produced a large impact on the Democratic electoral coalition or on the activities of party leaders, because it has occurred at the same time as membership declines. In this chapter, we argue that these trends have—in the last few decades —led to a significant erosion of the influence of mainline Protestants in American politics. We start with a brief discussion of the relationship between religious group memberships and political behavior to provide the necessary background for the discussion and analysis developed in the rest of the chapter. Next, we present a series of analyses that examine three related questions. First, to what extent have the political alignments of mainline voters shifted, in comparison both to conservative Protestants and to the rest of the electorate, since the 1960s?3 Second, what ideological differences in attitudes explain these trends? Third, how have changes in the relative size of the mainline electorate and their political alignment affected the Republican and Democratic Party coalitions respectively? By presenting comparisons with conservative Protestant and all other voters, we situate changes affecting either or both Protestant groups within a broader comparative framework, thereby distinguishing trends that have affected mainline (and conservative Protestant) voters from trends that have affected all voters. The analyses presented in this chapter utilize data from two regularly administered national surveys of adults in the United States, the National Election Studies (NES) and the General Social Surveys (GSS).4 the religious cleavage in american politics The role of religion in American politics has long been understood to be important. Tocqueville’s famous analysis of democracy in America em- Changing Political Fortunes / 161 phasized the strength of voluntary associations rooted in religious organizations and highlighted their contribution to the vitality of American democracy.5 Whatever its virtues for holding civil society together, religion has frequently been deployed as a weapon in partisan political conflicts as well...