God and Country: America in Red and Blue

Chapter 7. RELIGION, WEALTH, AND POVERTY

125 Political scientists have often noted that Jews “look like” Episcopalians, but vote like blacks. That is, while Jews are demographically similar to (historically Republican) Episcopalians, they resemble African Americans in their voting patterns. More recently, Democratic activists have publicly expressed frustration over working-class voting behaviors that seem inimical to the economic self-interest of those voters. “Here we see the impact of a kind of value-based voting independent of social class” (Fowler and Hertzke, in Walsh 2000, 86). The importance of religious culture in framing economic policy commitments is amply confirmed by numerous studies of political behavior, and by poll results that cannot be explained solely by reference to economic or social status. Scholars have also documented significant policy differences among religious people all of whom are deeply observant—differences that correspond to the theological perspectives involved. One study of the relationship between religious identity and attitudes toward social welfare among American Protestants found that, contrary to the widespread assumption that more religious people are more politically conservative, individuals who demonstrated significant religiosity in their personal behaviors— those for whom religion was most salient—held quite different policy Chapter 7 RELIGION, WEALTH, AND POVERTY commitments, and those commitments correlated with the individualistic or communitarian orientation of the religious tradition involved. The study defined individualists as fundamentalists and evangelicals, and categorized most modernists as communitarian (Niles and McCammon 2000). Other studies have found that affluent churches— that is, those with sufficient resources to engage in social welfare ministries —are more likely to undertake such activities if they are theologically liberal (Davidson, Mock, and Johnson 1997). The Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics, conducted in 2004, further documented the persistence of policy preference differences between mainstream and evangelical Protestant voters. Respondents holding more traditional religious beliefs were more likely to object to public spending in general, and much more likely to approve of tax cuts, than were respondents holding modernist beliefs. When questioned about social welfare spending, although all groups (with the exception of the most traditional evangelicals) supported increasing such spending, white evangelical Protestants were the least supportive of all those questioned (Green 2004). A number of other studies have yielded similar conclusions. Despite the strength of the relationship between theological beliefs and economic policy preferences, it is important to emphasize that the reciprocal influences of culture and religion are by no means simple to untangle. The nonlinear nature of the relationship is particularly visible in the case of otherwise very traditional black churches, where history and experience have uncoupled literalist biblical beliefs and economic conservatism, but the phenomenon is by no means restricted to African Americans. In a great many ways, the ongoing dialectic between Americans’ Puritan and Enlightenment beliefs have created worldviews incorporating pieces of both. One result is that the behaviors—if not the expressed beliefs—of the majority of evangelical Protestants are indistinguishable from those of the general population. Ron Sider has pointed to some interesting paradoxes: “Divorce is more common among ‘born again’ Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most 126 / God and Country likely people to object to neighbors of another race” (Sider 2005; emphasis in the original). Prominent evangelical liberals like Sider and Jim Wallis argue forcefully that such behaviors, as well as evangelicals’ current enthusiasm for a virtually unfettered capitalism and their disapproval of social welfare measures intended to assist poor Americans, represent a serious departure from historic evangelical beliefs. This intermingling of Enlightenment and Puritan worldviews, and the difficulty in determining the actual genesis of current American attitudes that we categorize as religious, was a theme of “The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong.” When asked the source of the phrase God helps those who help themselves, three out of four Americans named the Bible. The actual source, of course, was Benjamin Franklin. “[N]ot only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical . Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up” (Henneberger 2005, 3). The confusion is one more example of the peculiar amalgam of American folk wisdom and Christian gospel that characterizes much of contemporary religious discourse. WEBER AND THE...