The Values Campaign?: The Christian Right and the 2004 Elections

CHAPTER TWO: Agents of Value: Christian Right Activists in 2004

chapter two Agents of Value Christian Right Activists in 2004 john c. green, kimberly h. conger, and james l. guth Within the intense debate over the meaning of the 2004 election there was a clear point of consensus: The Christian Right was a key player in the campaign. Indeed, the ballots had hardly been counted when a series of liberal pundits blamed Christian conservatives for the outcome (see Marshall 2004)—an accusation that conservative Christian leaders eagerly accepted, gladly taking credit for the Republican victory (Cooperman and Edsall 2004). Although a full explanation of the role of religion in this close election is far more nuanced (Muirhead et al. 2005), the Christian Right was as prominent in 2004 as in any national campaign since 1980. Christian Right activists helped put initiatives banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in eleven states and then waged strong grassroots campaigns on their behalf (Hook 2004). In addition, there was an unusually close link between the Bush reelection campaign and conservative Christians. The former built its own network of church liaisons to achieve Karl Rove’s goal of increasing turnout among evangelical Protestants and other religious traditionalists (Cooperman 2004). The latter deployed new voter mobilization efforts, such as the “I Vote Values” campaign, alongside older tactics, such as voter guide distribution in congregations. In fact, these broader mobilization efforts of the “religious right” revitalized the embryonic “religious left,” anxious to arouse the faithful on behalf of Democrats (Myers 2005). Who were these movement activists in the 2004 campaign? How did they differ from movement activists in the recent past? This chapter 22 offers a tentative answer to the first question and an educated guess on the second. Christian Right activists in the 2004 campaign can be fairly described as “agents of value,” both because they were motivated by traditional moral values and because they were valuable assets in the contest. Although the 2004 activists resembled their predecessors in many ways, they appear to be somewhat more diverse and pragmatic than in the past. That degree of internal diversity gave the Christian Right many faces in national politics . Although they were heavily engaged in 2004, they apparently were only modestly more active than in the past. Thus, the Christian Right’s prominence in 2004 may reflect the perception that key “values” were at stake in the contest, the movement’s close relationship to the Republican Party and the Bush campaign, and a broad effort to mobilize conservative Christian voters.1 The Christian Right Activist Corps The foregoing conclusions are cautious for a reason: The Christian Right activist corps is difficult to study. Because political activists make up only a small portion of the mass public—and Christian Rightists are only a small portion of the activist corps—surveys of the citizenry do not generate samples large enough for analysis. Thus, special studies of activists are required. Unfortunately, there is no “national registry” of movement activists, and the formal lists that do exist rarely are available to scholars. An alternative strategy is to study activists appearing in public documents, such as campaign finance disclosure forms, or among public officials, such as national convention delegates. However, the very processes that make such individuals public can introduce biases into the study. In short, constructing an adequate sample of movement activists is a challenge—which numerous scholars have taken on.2 Although we must take care in appropriating this previous work for our purposes, it reveals some key expectations about the characteristics of the Christian Right activist corps. Expectations from Past Studies Not surprisingly, religion is the defining characteristic of the Christian Right: Studies have found that activists are mostly highly traditional evangelical Protestants. Nevertheless, scholars have found considerable diversity among them, such as differences among self-identified fundamentalists , Pentecostals, charismatics, and “plain vanilla” evangelicals. Agents of Value: Christian Right Activists in 2004 23 24 green, conger, and guth Indeed, individual movement organizations often have been based in a particular evangelical subtradition (Wilcox 1988; Smidt et al. 1994). In demographic terms, Christian Right activists have looked much like other political activists: white, older, well-educated, affluent, and with high-status occupations (Guth et al. 1994); some studies have found a special role for clergy (Guth 1996). Although Christian Rightists typically have a slightly lower social status than regular party activists, they differ more in other respects; for example, they include more women and members of traditional nuclear...