short essay on religion and politics

Religion and Politics: the Role of Religion in Politics Essay Example

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Introduction

Relationship between religion and politics, religious fundamentalism, works cited.

Religion is closely related to politics in a number of ways. In the traditional society, religious leaders were both temporal and civil leaders. In 1648, a treaty of Westphalia was signed, which separated politics from the Church. However, religion has always influenced policy making process and decision-making in government. In many parts of the world, religious leaders influence political leaders to come up with policies that are in line with the provisions of religious beliefs.

However, the main question is how religion influences politics. In the United States, there is a clause in the Bill of Rights referred to as the disestablishment clause, which provides that politics must be kept separate from politics. In established democracies, somebody with questionable religious record stands no chance of being elected. The populace believes that a religious leader would always be willing to listen to the wishes of the majority (Settimba 9).

A non-religious leader is believed to be indifferent to the sufferings of the majority in society. In other words, a non-religious leader would fulfill his or her own interests instead of serving those who elected him or her. During campaigns at state level in the United States, local leaders quote the Bible whenever they want to bring out a certain fact.

In human life, each group has a belief system that is established with the help of religious values. These beliefs influence the political standpoint of an individual in a political system. The media will always evaluate the life of a politician using certain religious principles.

These principles are derived from religious morals and beliefs. In this case, a candidate in an election is identified as a Christian or a Muslim. The religion of a political leader determines the number of votes he or she would gunner in an election. In the United States, politicians associate themselves with Christianity because a majority of voters are Christians.

In the Arab world, a political leader must associate himself with Islam because it is a dominant religion in the region. Furthermore, the religious sects must be stated clearly before a political leader is elected. In other countries, religion is the major variable in every electioneering year. It is believed that certain religious affiliations are related to cultural beliefs that affect the performance of leaders in any political system. Recently, the issue of religion emerged in the United States when Obama was said to be a Muslim.

Many people were much worried that Obama was a Muslim. Islam has always been associated with extremism meaning that Muslims are accused of using warped means to attain justice. It was feared that Obama could support Muslims once he became president. However, the president dispelled fears by declaring that he was indeed a Christian. This nearly cost him the presidency (Johnstone 64).

There is a popular belief among Christians that good leaders are usually sent by God. This is based on the Bible whereby many kings and prophets were sent by God to lead Israelites in the times of war and calamities. Political leaders have always presented themselves as leaders sent by God to accomplish certain missions.

Through this, they have been able to ascend to leadership positions. Whenever political leaders make speeches, they quote the Bible to show the electorate that they understand the Christian principles. The idea that political leaders must come up with policies favoring the poor is based on the teachings of the Bible. The Bible and the Koran teaches that people must always be assisted to achieve their potentials in society.

It is not the interest of the ruling class to help the poor. The main aim of the ruling class is to amass wealth and use the proletariat to ascend to power. Political parties that tend to favor the poor in their manifestos have always clinched political power. Social justice ideology is based on the teachings of the Bible because the poor must have equal access to resources including healthcare, education, and employment.

Religious fundamentalism was first used in the United States to refer to those individuals who opposed the principles of the mainstream church. Those who subscribed to the ideas of the Protestant Churches were perceived as religious fundamentalists. In other words, fundamentalism was interpreted to mean diverting from the mainstream faith.

However, what should be clear is that fundamentalists had pertinent issues with the mainstream church since the mainstream church never allowed competition. Religious fundamentalists observed that it was critical to follow the teachings of the Bible instead of subscribing to the interpretations provided by the religious leaders. Religious leaders interpreted the teachings in the Bible to suit their interests.

Many people were not happy with this behavior. The mainstream church interpreted the Bible in accordance to the new dynamics of the modern world. However, fundamentalists were never happy about this. They believed that it would be better to stick to the teachings of the Bible. In the modern society, fundamentalism is used loosely to mean diverting from the normal beliefs and principles of major religions (McGuire 76).

Fundamentalism is a relatively new term in the sociology of religion because it was first used in the 19 th century. The modern society is complex to understand because of the changes brought about globalization and technology. Therefore, fundamentalism in the modern society has a different meaning. Religion in the modern society serves a different purpose as compared to its role in the traditional society. Religion is an instrument that brings people together.

In this regard, it must be used to bring about understanding and unity. This implies that religious teachings are usually interpreted to simplify the complexities in life. Religious fundamentalists do not believe that anything has changed as far as religion is concerned. In this case, modern interpretations must not be accepted because they go against the traditional teachings of religion (Weber 22).

When other people embrace change in society, religious fundamentalists encourage conservatism. To them, religion is absolute meaning that it dictates everything in society. There is a controversy among scholars regarding the use of the term because fundamentalists are perceived as people who are not intelligent.

Others view them as uneducated individuals who believe religion is everything in society. Religious fundamentalists believe that some things should not be allowed to go on in society. For instance, they oppose science, abortion, feminism, the use of family planning drugs, and homosexuality.

Recently, the term has been associated with Islamic extremists who believe that justice should be sought through terrorism and violence. For Islamic fundamentalists, the main problem in the world is exploitation. The west has always exploited people in other parts of the world, including the Middle East. To them, the main issue is that the west has always neglected the presence of Arabs.

Johnstone, Ronald. Religion in Society: Sociology of Religion . Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.

McGuire, Meredith. Religion: the Social Context . New York: Sage, 2002. Print.

Settimba, Henry (2009). Testing times: globalization and investing theology in East Africa . Milton Keynes: Author House, 2009. Print.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . Los Angeles: Roxbury Company, 2002. Print.

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Religion and Political Theory

When the well-known political theorist Leo Strauss introduced the topic of politics and religion in his reflections, he presented it as a problem —the “theologico-political problem” he called it (Strauss 1997). [ 1 ] The problem, says Strauss, is primarily one about authority: Is political authority to be grounded in the claims of revelation or reason, Jerusalem or Athens? In so characterizing the problem, Strauss was tapping into currents of thought deep in the history of political reflection in the west, ones about the nature, extent, and justification of political authority. Do monarchies owe their authority to divine right? Has God delegated to secular rulers such as kings and emperors the authority to wage war in order to achieve religious aims: the conversion of the infidel or the repulsion of unjust attacks on the true faith? Do secular rulers have the authority to suppress heretics? What authority does the state retain when its principles conflict with God's? Is the authority of the natural law ultimately grounded in divine law? These and other questions animated much of the discussion among medieval and modern philosophers alike.

With the emergence of liberal democracy in the modern west, however, the types of questions that philosophers asked about the interrelation between religion and political authority began to shift, in large measure because the following three-fold dynamic was at work. In the first place, divine-authorization accounts of political authority had lost the day to consent-based approaches. Political authority in a liberal democracy, most prominent defenders of liberal democracy claimed, is grounded in the consent of the people to be ruled rather than in God's act of authorization. Second, the effects of the Protestant Reformation had made themselves felt acutely, as the broadly homogeneous religious character of Western Europe disintegrated into competing religious communities. The population of Western Europe and the United States were now not only considerably more religiously diverse, but also deeply wary of the sort of bloodshed occasioned by the so-called religious wars. And, finally, secularization had begun to take hold. Both the effects of religious diversity and prominent attacks on the legitimacy of religious belief ensured that one could no longer assume in political discussion that one's fellow citizens were religious, let alone members of one's own religious tradition.

For citizens of contemporary liberal democracies, this three-fold dynamic has yielded a curious situation. On the one hand, most take it for granted that the authority of the state is located in the people, that the people are religiously diverse, and that important segments of people doubt the rationality of religious belief and practice of any sort. On the other hand, contrary to the predictions of many advocates of secularization theory, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, and (at one time) Peter Berger, this mix of democracy, religious diversity, and religious criticism has not resulted in the disappearance or privatization of religion. Religion, especially in liberal democracies such as the United States, is alive and well, shaping political culture in numerous ways. Consequently, there very much remains a theologico-political problem. The problem, moreover, still concerns political authority, though now reframed by the transition to liberal democracy. If recent reflection on the issue is any guide, the most pressing problem to address is this: Given that state-authorized coercion needs to be justified, and that the justification of state coercion requires the consent of the people, what role may religious reasons play in justifying state coercion? More specifically, in a religiously pluralistic context such as one finds in contemporary liberal democracies, are religious reasons sufficient to justify a coercive law for which reasonable agents cannot find an adequate secular rationale?

This entry considers the most important answers to these questions offered by recent philosophers, political theorists, and theologians. We present these answers as part of a lively three-way discussion between advocates of what we call the standard view, their liberal critics, and proponents of the so-called New Traditionalism. Briefly stated, advocates of the standard view argue that in contemporary liberal democracies, significant restraints must be put on the political role of religious reasons. Their liberal critics deny this, or at least deny that good reasons have been given to believe this. New Traditionalists, by contrast, turn their back on both the standard view and its liberal critics, arguing that religious orthodoxy and liberal democracy are fundamentally incompatible. To have a grip on this three-way debate, we suggest, is to understand that dimension of the theologico-political problem that most animates philosophical reflection in liberal democracies on the relation between religion and politics.

1. The Standard View

2.1 core components of the doctrine of religious restraint, 3.1 the argument from religious warfare, 3.2 the argument from divisiveness, 3.3 the argument from respect, 4. liberal critics of the doctrine of religious restraint, 5. the primary concern regarding the doctrine of religious restraint.

• 7. A Convergence Alternative

8.1 The Declinist Narrative of the New Traditionalism

8.2 two concerns about the narrative, other internet resources, related entries.

The standard view among political theorists, such as Robert Audi, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Larmore, Steven Macedo, Martha Nussbaum, and John Rawls is that religious reasons can play only a limited role in justifying coercive laws, as coercive laws that require a religious rationale lack moral legitimacy. [ 2 ] If the standard view is correct, there is an important asymmetry between religious and secular reasons in the following respect: some secular reasons can themselves justify state coercion but no religious reason can. This asymmetry between the justificatory potential of religious and secular reasons, it is further claimed, should shape the political practice of religious believers. According to advocates of the standard view, citizens should not support coercive laws for which they believe there is no plausible secular rationale, although they may support coercive laws for which they believe there is only a secular rationale. (Note that not just any secular rationale counts.) We can refer to this injunction to exercise restraint as The Doctrine of Religious Restraint (or the DRR, for short). [ 3 ] This abstract characterization of the DRR will require some refinements, which we'll provide in sections 2 and 3. For the time being, however, we can get a better feel for the character of the DRR by considering the following case.

2. The Doctrine of Religious Restraint

Rick is a politically engaged citizen who intends to vote in a referendum on a measure that would criminalize homosexual relations. As he evaluates the relevant considerations, he concludes that the only persuasive rationale for that measure includes as a crucial premise the claim that homosexual relations are contrary to a God-established natural order. Although he finds that rationale compelling, he realizes that many others do not. But because he takes himself to have a general moral obligation to make those political decisions that, as best he can tell, are both just and good, he decides to vote in favor of criminalization. Moreover, he tries to persuade his compatriots to vote with him. In so doing, he offers relevantly different arguments to different audiences. He tries to convince like-minded citizens by appealing to the theistic natural law argument that he finds persuasive. But he realizes that many of his fellow citizens are unpersuaded by the natural law argument that convinces him. So he articulates a variety of other arguments—some secular, some religious—that he hopes will leverage those who don't share his natural law theism into supporting his position. He does so even though he doubts that any of those leveraging arguments are cogent, realizes that many of those to whom he addresses them will have comparable doubts about their cogency, and so believes that many coerced by the law he supports have no good reason, from their perspective, to affirm that law.

Advocates of the standard view will be troubled by Rick's behavior. The relevantly troubling feature of Rick's behavior is not primarily his decision to support this particular policy. Rather, it is his decision to support a policy that he believes others have no good reason, from their perspective, to endorse. After all, Rick votes to enact a law that authorizes state coercion even though he believes that the only plausible rationale for that decision includes religious claims that many of his compatriots find utterly unpersuasive. In so doing, Rick violates a normative constraint at the heart of the standard view, viz., that citizens in a pluralistic liberal democracy ought to refrain from using their political influence to authorize coercive laws that, to the best of their knowledge, can be justified only on religious grounds and so lack a plausible secular rationale. [ 4 ] Or, otherwise put, Rick violates the DRR. For the DRR tells us that, if a citizen is trying to determine whether or not she should support some coercive law, and if she believes that there is no plausible secular rationale for that law, then she may not support it.

The DRR is a negative constraint; it identifies a kind of reason that cannot itself justify a coercive law and so a kind of reason on which citizens may not exclusively rely when supporting a coercive law. But this negative constraint is typically conjoined with a permission: although citizens may not support coercive laws for which they believe themselves to have only a religious rationale, they may support coercive laws for which they believe there is only a plausible secular rationale. As we'll see in a moment, advocates of the DRR furnish reasons to believe that religious and secular reasons have this asymmetrical justificatory role.

The standard view has often been misunderstood, typically by associating the DRR with claims its advocates are free to deny. It will therefore be helpful to dissociate the DRR from various common misunderstandings.

First, the DRR is a moral constraint, one that applies to people in virtue of the fact that they are citizens of a liberal democracy. As such, it need not be encoded into law, enforced by state coercion or social stigma, promoted in state educational institutions, or in any other way policed by the powers that be. Of course, advocates of restraint are free to argue that the state should police violations of the DRR (see Habermas 2006, 10). [ 5 ] Perhaps some liberal democracies do police something like the DRR. But advocates of the standard view needn't endorse restrictions of this sort. [ 6 ]

Second, the DRR does not require a thorough-going privatization of religious commitment. Indeed, the DRR permits religious considerations to play a rather prominent role in a citizen's political practice: citizens are permitted to vote for their favored coercive policies on exclusively religious grounds as well as to advocate publicly for those policies on religious grounds. What the DRR does require of citizens is that they reasonably believe that they have some plausible secular rationale for each of the coercive laws that they support, which they are prepared to offer in political discussion. In this respect, the present construal of the DRR is weaker than comparable proposals, such as that developed by Robert Audi, which requires that each citizen have and be motivated by some evidentially adequate secular rationale for each of the coercive laws he or she supports (see Audi 1997, 138 and Rawls 1997, 784ff).

Third, the DRR places few restrictions on the content of the secular reasons to which citizens can appeal when supporting coercive laws. Although the required secular reasons must be “plausible” (more on this in a moment), they may make essential reference to what Rawls calls “comprehensive conceptions of the good,” such as Platonism, Kantianism, or utilitarianism. [ 7 ] Accordingly, the standard view does not commit itself to a position according to which secular reasons must be included or otherwise grounded in a neutral source—a set of principles regarding justice and the common good such that everybody has good reason, apart from his own or any other religious or philosophical perspective, to find acceptable. Somewhat more specifically, advocates of the standard view needn't claim that secular reasons must be found in what Rawls calls “public reason,” which (roughly speaking) is a fund of shared principles about justice and the common good constructed from the shared political culture of a liberal democracy. That having been said, it is worth stressing that some prominent advocates of the standard view adopt a broadly Rawlsian account of the DRR, according to which coercive laws must be justified by appeal to public reason (see Gutmann and Thompson 1996, Larmore 1987, Macedo 1990, and Nussbaum 2008). We shall have more to say about this view in section 6.

Fourth, the DRR itself has no determinate policy implications; it is a constraint not on legislation itself, but on the configuration of reasons to which agents may appeal when supporting coercive legislation. So, for example, it forbids Rick to support the criminalization of homosexuality when he believes that there are no plausible secular reasons to criminalize it. As such, the moral propriety of the DRR has nothing directly to do with its usefulness in furthering, or discouraging, particular policy aims.

The DRR, then, is a norm that is supposed to provide guidance for how citizens of a liberal democracy should conduct themselves when deliberating about or deciding on the implementation of coercive laws. For our purposes, it will be helpful to work with a canonical formulation of it. Let us, then, formulate the DRR as follows:

The DRR : a citizen of a liberal democracy may support the implementation of a coercive law L just in case he reasonably believes himself to have a plausible secular justification for L, which he is prepared to offer in political discussion.

About this formulation of the DRR, let us make two points. First, in what follows, we will remain largely noncommittal about what the qualifier “plausible” means, as advocates of the standard view understand it in different ways. For present purposes, we will simply assume that a plausible rationale is one that epistemically and morally competent peers will take seriously as a basis for supporting a coercive law. Second, according to this formulation of the DRR, a citizen can comply with the DRR even if he himself is not persuaded to support a coercive law for any secular reason. What matters is that he believes that he has and can offer a secular rationale that his secular cohorts can take seriously.

Suppose, then, we have an adequate working conception of the DRR. The question naturally arises: Why do advocates of the standard view maintain that we should conform to the DRR? For several reasons, most prominent of which are the following three arguments. Of course, there are many more arguments for the DRR than we can address here. See, for example, Andrew Lister's appeal to the value of political community (2013).

3. Three Arguments for the Doctrine of Religious Restraint

Advocates of the standard view sometimes commend the DRR on the grounds that conforming to it will help prevent religious warfare and civil strife. According to Robert Audi, for example, “if religious considerations are not appropriately balanced with secular ones in matters of coercion, there is a special problem: a clash of Gods vying for social control. Such uncompromising absolutes easily lead to destruction and death” (Audi 2000, 103). The concern expressed here, presumably, is this: for all we reasonably believe, citizens who are willing to coerce their compatriots for religious reasons will use their political power to advance their sectarian agenda—using the power of the state to persecute heretics, impose orthodoxy, and enact stringent morals laws. In so doing, these citizens will thereby provoke determined resistance and civil conflict. Such a state of affairs, however, threatens the very viability of a liberal democracy and, so, should be avoided at nearly all costs. Accordingly, religious believers should exercise restraint when deliberating about the implementation of coercive laws. Exercising restraint, however, is best accomplished by adhering to the DRR.

According to the liberal critics of the standard view, there are several problems with this argument. First, the liberal critics contend, while there may have been a genuine threat of confessional warfare in 17 th century Western Europe, there is little reason to believe that there is any such threat in stable liberal democracies such as the United States. Why not? Because confessional conflict, the liberal critics continue, is typically rooted in egregious violations of the right to religious freedom, when, for example, people are jailed, tortured, or otherwise abused because of their religious commitments. John Locke puts the point thus:

it is not the diversity of Opinions (which cannot be avoided) but the refusal of Toleration to those that are of different Opinions (which might have been granted) that has produced all the Bustles and Wars, that have been in the Christian World, upon account of Religion. (Locke 1983, 155)

If Locke is correct, then what we need to prevent confessional conflict is not compliance with a norm such as the DRR, but firm commitment to the right to religious freedom. A stable liberal democracy such as the United States is, however, fully committed to protecting the right to religious freedom—and will be for the foreseeable future. True enough, there are passionately felt disagreements about how to interpret the right to religious freedom: witness recent conflicts as to whether or not the right to religious freedom should be understood to include the right of religious objectors to be exempted from generally justified state policies (See Koppelman 2013; Leiter 2012). But it is difficult to see, the liberal critics claim, that there is a realistic prospect of these disagreements devolving into violent civil conflict.

Second, even if there were a realistic prospect of religious conflict, liberal critics claim that it is unclear that adhering to the DRR would lower the probability that such a conflict would occur. After all, the trigger for religious war—typically, the violation of the right to religious freedom—is not always, or even typically, justified by exclusively religious considerations. As historian Michael Burleigh has argued, secularists have a long history of hostility to the right to religious freedom and, presumably, that hostility isn't at all grounded in religious considerations (Burleigh 2007, 135 and, more generally, Burleigh 2005).

Third, the liberal critics maintain, when religious believers have employed coercive power to violate the right to religious freedom, they themselves rarely have done so in a way that violates the DRR. Typically, when such rights have been violated, the justifications offered, even by religious believers, appeal to alleged requirements for social order, such as the need for uniformity of belief on basic normative issues. One theological apologist for religious repression, for example, writes this: “The king punishes heretics as enemies, as extremely wicked rebels, who endanger the peace of the kingdom, which cannot be maintained without the unity of the faith. That is why they are burnt in Spain” (quoted in Rivera, 1992, 50). Ordinarily, the kind of religious persecution that engenders religious conflict is legitimated by appeal to secular reasons of the sort mandated by the DRR. (This is the case even when religious actors are the ones who appeal to those secular reasons.)

Finally, liberal critics point out that some religious believers affirm the right to religious freedom on religious grounds; they take themselves to have powerful religious reason to affirm the right of each person to worship as she freely chooses, absent state coercion. So, for example, the 4 th century Nestorian Mar Aba: “I am a Christian. I preach my faith and want every man to join it. But I want him to join it of his own free will. I use force on no man” (quoted in Moffett 1986, 216). [ 8 ] A believer such as Mar Aba might be willing to violate the DRR; however, his violation would, according to the liberal critics, help not to cause religious war but to impede it. For Mar Aba's 'sectarian rationale' supports not the violation of religious freedom but its protection.

If the liberal critics are correct, one of the problems with the argument from warfare is that there is no realistic prospect of religious warfare breaking out in a stable liberal democracy such as the United States. Still, there may be other evils that are more likely to occur under current conditions, which compliance with the DRR might help to prevent. For example, it is plausible to suppose that the enactment of a coercive law that cannot be justified except on religious grounds would engender much anger and frustration on the part of those coerced: “when legislation is expressly based on religious arguments, the legislation takes on a religious character, to the frustration of those who don't share the relevant faith and who therefore lack access to the normative predicate behind the law” (Greene 1993, 1060). This in turn breeds division between citizens—anger and distrust between citizens who have to find some amicable way to make collective decisions about common matters. This counts in favor of the DRR precisely because compliance with the DRR diminishes the likelihood of our suffering from such bad consequences.

To this argument, liberal critics offer a three-part reply. First, suppose it is true that the implementation of coercive laws that can be justified only on religious grounds often causes frustration and anger among both secular and religious citizens. The liberal critics maintain that there is reason to believe that compliance with the DRR would also engender frustration and anger among other religious and secular citizens. To this end, they point to the fact that many religious believers believe that conforming to the DRR would compromise their loyalty to God: if they were prohibited from supporting coercive laws for which they take there to be strong but exclusively religious reasons to support, they would naturally take themselves to be prohibited from obeying God. But for many religious believers this is distressing; they take themselves to have overriding moral and religious obligations to obey God. Similarly, some secular citizens will likely be frustrated by the requirement that the DRR places on religious citizens. According to these secular citizens, all citizens have the right to make political decisions as their conscience dictates. And, on some occasions, these secular citizens hold that exercising that right will lead religious citizens to violate the DRR. [ 9 ]

If this is correct, for the argument from divisiveness to succeed, it would have to provide reason to believe that the level of frustration and anger that would be produced by violating the DRR would be greater than that of conforming to the DRR. But, the liberal critics claim, it is doubtful that we have any such reason: in a very religious society such as the United States, it might be the case that restrictions on the political practice of religious believers engenders at least as much frustration as the alternative.

Second, the liberal critics argue, there is reason to believe that conformance to the DRR would only marginally alleviate the frustration that some citizens feel when confronted with religious reasons in public political debate. The DRR, after all, does not forbid citizens from supporting coercive laws on religious grounds, nor does it forbid citizens to articulate religious arguments in public. Furthermore, complying with the DRR does not prevent religious citizens from advocating their favored laws in bigoted, inflammatory, or obnoxious manners; it has nothing to say about political decorum. So, for example, because the DRR doesn't forbid citizens from helping themselves to inflammatory or demeaning rhetoric in political argument, the anger and resentment engendered by such rhetoric does not constitute evidence for (or against) the DRR.

Third, the liberal critics contend that because most of the laws that have a chance of enactment in a society as pluralistic as the United States will have both religious and secular grounds, it will almost never be the case that any of the actual frustration caused by the public presence of religion supports the DRR. Given that the DRR requires not a complete but only a limited privatization of religious belief, very little of the frustration and anger apparently engendered by the public presence of religion counts in favor of the DRR. To which it is worth adding the following point: advocates of the standard view could, with Rorty (1995), adopt a more demanding conception of the DRR that requires the complete privatization of religious belief. But, as many advocates of the standard view itself maintain, it is doubtful that this move improves the argument's prospects. The complete privatization of religion is much more objectionable to religious citizens and, thus, more likely to create social foment. (Rorty, it should be noted, softened his approach on this issue. See Rorty 2003).

There are no doubt other factors that need to be taken into consideration in the calculation required to formulate the argument from divisiveness. But, the liberal critics maintain, it is unclear how those disparate factors would add up. In particular, if the liberal critics are correct, it is not clear whether requiring citizens to obey the DRR would result in less overall frustration, anger, and division than would not requiring them to do so. The issues at stake are empirical in character and the relevant empirical facts are not known.

The third and most prominent argument for the DRR is the argument from respect. Here we focus on only one formulation of the argument, which has affinities with a version of the argument offered by Charles Larmore (see Larmore 1987). [ 10 ]

The argument from respect runs as such:

• Each citizen deserves to be respected as a person.
• If each citizen deserves to be respected as a person, then there is a powerful prima facie presumption against the permissibility of state coercion. (On this basic claim, See Gaus, 2010, Gaus and Vallier, 2009.)
• So, there is a powerful prima facie presumption against the permissibility of state coercion.
• If the presumption against state coercion is to be overcome (as it sometimes must be), then state coercion must be justified to those who are coerced.
• If state coercion must be justified to those who are coerced, then any coercive law that lacks a plausible secular rationale is morally illegitimate (as there will be many to whom such coercion cannot be justified).
• If any coercive law that lacks a plausible secular rationale is morally illegitimate, then a citizen ought not to support any law that he believes to have only a religious rationale.

However, on the assumption that the antecedent to premise (4) is true—that there are cases in which the state must coerce—it follows (given a few other assumptions) that:

• The DRR is true.

That is, the DRR follows from a constraint on what makes for the moral legitimacy of state coercion—viz., that a morally legitimate law cannot be such that there are those to whom it cannot be justified—and from the claim that citizens should not support any law that they realize lacks moral legitimacy.

The argument from respect has received its fair share of criticism from liberal critics. Perhaps the most troubling of these criticisms is that the argument undermines the legitimacy of basic liberal commitments. To appreciate the thrust of this objection, focus for a moment on the notion being a coercive law that is justified to an agent , to which the argument appeals. How should we understand this concept? One natural suggestion is this:

A coercive law is justified to an agent only if he is reasonable and has sufficient reasons from his own perspective to support it.

Now consider a coercive law that protects fundamental liberal commitments, such as the right to exercise religious freedom. Is this law justified to each citizen of a liberal democracy? Liberal critics answer: no. For there appear to be reasonable citizens who have no good reason from their own perspective to affirm it. Consider, for example, a figure such as the Islamic intellectual Sayyid Qutb. While in prison, Qutb wrote an intelligent, informed, and morally serious commentary on the Koran in which he laid the ills of modern society at the feet of Christianity and liberal democracy. [ 11 ] The only way to extricate ourselves from the problems spawned by liberal democracy, Qutb argued, is to implement shariah or Islamic legal code, which implies that the state should not protect a robust right to religious freedom. In short, Qutb articulates what is, from his point of view, a compelling theological rationale against any law that authorizes the state to protect a robust right to religious freedom. If respect for persons requires that each coercive law be justified to those reasonable persons subject to that law, and if a person such as Qutb were a citizen of a liberal democracy, then the argument from respect implies that laws that protect the right to religious freedom are morally illegitimate, as they lack moral justification—at least for agents such as Qutb. [ 12 ] And for a defender of the standard view, this is certainly an unwelcome result.

This kind of case leads liberal critics of the standard view to deny the fourth premise of the argument from respect. If they are correct, it is not the case that coercive laws must be justified to those who must obey them (in the sense of justified to introduced earlier). Although having a persuasive justification would certainly be desirable and a significant moral achievement, the liberal critics maintain that the moral legitimacy of a law is not a function of whether it can be justified to all citizens—not even to all reasonable citizens. Some citizens are simply not in a strong epistemic position to recognize that certain coercive laws are morally legitimate. In such cases, liberal critics claim that we should do what we can to try to convince these citizens that they have been misled. And we should certainly do what we can to accommodate their concerns in ways that are consistent with basic liberal commitments (see Swaine 2006). At the end of the day, though, we may have no moral option but to coerce reasonable and epistemically competent peers whom we recognize have no reason from their perspective to recognize the legitimacy of the laws to which they are subject. However, if a coercive law can be morally legitimate even though some citizens are not in a strong position to recognize that it is, then (in principle) a coercive law can be justified even if it requires a religious rationale. After all, if religious reasons can be adequate (a possibility that advocates of the standard view do not typically deny), then they are just the sort of reason that can be adequate without being recognized as such even by our morally serious and epistemically competent peers.

It should be conceded, however, that this objection to the argument from respect relies on a particular understanding of what it is for a coercive law to be justified to an agent. Is there another account of this concept that would aid the advocates of the standard view? Perhaps. Nearly all theorists have argued that a coercive law's being justified to an agent does not require that that agent actually have what he regards as an adequate reason to support it (see Gaus 1996, Audi 1997, and Vallier 2014). “The question is not what people do endorse but what people have reason to endorse” (Gaus 2010, 23). Better to understand the concept being a coercive law that is justified to an agent along the following lines:

A coercive law is justified to an agent only if, were he reasonable and adequately informed, then he would have a sufficient reason from his own perspective to support it.

Given this weaker, counterfactual construal of what makes for morally permissible coercion, the argument from respect needn't undermine the legitimacy of the state's using coercion to protect basic liberal commitments. For we can always construe those counterfactual conditions in such a way that those who in fact reject basic liberal commitments would affirm them if they were more reasonable and better informed. In that case, using coercion to ensure that they comply with basic liberal commitments would not be to disrespect them. If this is correct, the prospect of there being figures such as Qutb, who reject the right to religious freedom, need not undermine the legitimacy of the state's coercive enforcement of that basic liberal commitment.

Liberal critics find this response unsatisfactory. After all, if this alternative construal of the argument is to succeed, it must be the case not only that:

Were an agent such as Qutb reasonable and adequately informed, he would have sufficient reason from his own perspective to support coercive laws that protect the right to religious liberty;

Every coercive law that protects basic liberal commitments is such that adequately informed and reasonable secular citizens would have a sufficient secular reason to support it.

These two claims, however, are highly controversial. Let us consider the first. Were we to ask Qutb whether he would have reasons to support laws that protect a robust right to religious freedom if he were adequately informed and reasonable, surely he would say: no. Moreover, he would claim that his compatriots would reject the liberal protection of such a right if they were adequately informed about the divine authorship of the Quran and the proper rules of its interpretation. While Qutb's say-so doesn't settle the issue of who would believe what in improved conditions, liberal critics maintain that his response indicates just how complicated the issue under consideration is. Among other things, to establish that Qutb is wrong it seems that one would have to deny the truth of various theological claims on which Qutb relies when he determines that he would reject the right to religious freedom were he adequately informed and reasonable. That would require advocates of the standard view to take a stand on contested religious issues. However, liberal critics point out that defenders of the standard view have been wary of explicitly denying the truth of religious claims, especially those found within the major theistic religions.

Turn now to the second claim. Some liberal critics of the standard view, such as Nicholas Wolterstorff, maintain that at the heart of liberal democracy is the claim that some coercive laws function to protect inherent human rights. Wolterstorff further argues that attempts to ground these rights in merely secular considerations fail. Only by appeal to explicitly theistic assumptions, Wolterstorff argues, can we locate an adequate justification for the ascription of these rights (see Wolterstorff 2008, Pt. III as well as Perry 2003). What would a reasonable and adequately informed secular citizen make of Wolterstorff's arguments? Would he endorse them?

It's difficult to say. Liberal critics maintain that we are simply not in good epistemic position to judge the reasons an agent would have to support laws that protect basic liberal commitments were he better informed and more reasonable. More exactly, liberal critics maintain that we are not in a good epistemic position to determine whether a secular agent who is reasonable and better informed would endorse or reject the type of theistic commitments that philosophers such as Wolterstorff claim justify the ascription of natural human rights. The problem is that we don't really have any idea how radically a person would change his views were he to occupy these conditions. The main, and still unresolved, question for this version of the standard view, then, is whether there is some coherent and non-arbitrary construal of the relevant counterfactual conditions that is strong enough to prohibit exclusive reliance on religious reasons but weak enough to allow for the justification of basic liberal commitments. (See Vallier 2014 for the most recent and sophisticated attempt to specify those counterfactual conditions.)

In the last section, we considered three arguments for the DRR and responses to them offered by the liberal critics. In the course of our discussion, we began to see elements of the view that liberal critics of the standard view—critics such as Christopher Eberle, Philip Quinn, Jeffrey Stout, and Nicholas Wolterstorff—endorse. To get a better feel for why these theorists reject the DRR, it will be helpful to step back for a moment to consider some important features of their view.

Earlier we indicated that liberal critics of the standard view offer detailed replies to both the Argument from Religious Warfare and the Argument from Divisiveness. Still, friends of the standard view may worry that there is something deeply problematic about these replies. For by allowing citizens to support coercive laws on purely religious grounds, they permit majorities to impose their religious views on others and restrict the liberties of their fellow citizens. But it is important to see that no liberal critic of the standard position adopts an “anything goes” policy toward the justification of state coercion. Citizens, according to these thinkers, should adhere to several constraints on the manner in which they support coercive laws, including the following.

First, liberal critics of the standard view assume that citizens should support basic liberal commitments such as the rights to religious freedom, equality before the law, and private property. Michael Perry argues, for example, “that the foundational moral commitment of liberal democracy is to the true and full humanity of ever y person—and therefore, to the inviolability of every person—without regard to race, sex, religion… .” This commitment, Perry continues, is “the principal ground of liberal democracy's further commitment to certain basic human freedoms” that are protected by law (Perry 2003, 36). [ 13 ] More generally, liberal critics maintain that citizens should support only those coercive laws that they reasonably believe further the common good and are consistent with the demands of justice. These commitments, they add, are not in tension with the claim that citizens may support coercive laws that they believe to lack a plausible secular rationale. So long as a citizen is firmly committed to basic liberal rights, she may coherently and without impropriety do so even though she regards these laws as having no plausible secular justification. More generally, liberal critics of the DRR maintain that a citizen may rely on her religious convictions to determine which policies further the cause of justice and the common good and may support coercive laws even if she regards them as having no plausible secular rationale.

Second, liberal critics of the standard view lay down constraints on the manner in which citizens arrive at their political commitments (see Eberle 2002, Weithman 2002, and Wolterstorff 1997, 2012a). So, for example, each citizen should abide by certain epistemic requirements: precisely because they ought not to support coercive laws that violate the requirements of justice and the common good, citizens should take feasible measures to determine whether the laws they support are actually just and good. In order to achieve that aim, citizens should search for considerations relevant to the normative propriety of their favored laws, weigh those considerations judiciously, listen carefully to the criticisms of those who reject their normative commitments, and be willing to change their political commitments should the balance of relevant considerations require them to do so. Again, liberal critics deny that even the most conscientious and assiduous adherence to such constraints precludes citizens from supporting coercive laws that require a religious rationale. No doubt, those who support coercive laws that require a religious rationale might do so in an insular, intransigent, irrational, or otherwise defective manner. But they need not do so and, thus, their religiously-grounded support for coercive laws need not be defective.

Third, critics of the standard view need have no aversion to secular justification and so need not object to a state of affairs in which each person, secular or religious, has what he or she regards as a compelling reason to endorse coercive laws of various sorts. (Indeed, they claim that such a state of affairs would arguably be a significant moral achievement—a good for all concerned.) According to the liberal critics, however, what is most important is that parity reigns: any normative constraint that applies to the reasons on the basis of which citizens make political decisions must apply impartially to both religious and secular reasons. Many secular reasons employed to justify coercion—ones that appeal to comprehensive perspectives such as utilitarianism and Kantianism, for example—are highly controversial; in this sense, they are very similar to religious reasons. For this reason, some advocate for a cousin —more or less distant, depending on the formulation—of the DRR, namely, one that lays down restrictions on all religious reasons and on some particularly controversial secular reasons. (See section 6 below.) Moreover, the normative issues implicated by certain coercive laws are so complex and contentious that any rationale for or against these laws will include claims that can be reasonably rejected—secular or religious as the case might be.

If this is right, according to the liberal critics, equal treatment of religious and secular reasons is the order of the day: religious believers have no more, and no less, a responsibility to aspire to persuade their secular compatriots by appeal to secular reasons than secularists have an obligation to aspire to persuade their religious compatriots by appeal to religious reasons. Otherwise put, according to the liberal critics, if we accept the claim that:

If a religious citizen finds herself in a position in which she has excellent reason to believe that she cannot convince a fellow secular citizen to support a coercive law that she deems just by appeal to religious reasons, then she should do her best to appeal to secular reasons—reasons that her cohort may find persuasive;

we should also accept:

If a secular citizen finds herself in a position in which she has excellent reason to believe that she cannot convince a fellow religious citizen to support a coercive law that she deems just by appeal to secular reasons, then she should do her best to appeal to religious reasons—reasons that her cohort may find persuasive.

Recognizing parity of this sort, according to the liberal critics, lies at the heart of what it is to be a good citizen of a liberal democracy. For being a good citizen involves respecting one's fellow citizens, even when one disagrees with them. In a wide range of cases, however, an agent exercises respect not by treating her interlocutor as a generic human being or a generic citizen of a liberal democracy, but by treating her as a person who has a particular narrative identity and life history, say, as an African American, a Russian immigrant, or a Muslim citizen. But doing this often requires pursuing and appealing to considerations that it is likely that one's interlocutors with their own particular narrative identity will find persuasive. And depending on the case, these reasons may be exclusively religious.

To this we should add a clarification: strictly speaking, the liberal critics' insistence on parity between the pursuit of secular and religious reasons is consistent with the DRR. For, as we have construed it, the DRR allows that religious citizens may support coercive laws for religious reasons (so long as they have and are prepared to provide a plausible secular justification for these laws). And while its advocates do not typically emphasize the point, the DRR permits secular citizens to articulate religious reasons that will persuade religious believers to accept the secular citizens' favored coercive laws (for reservations about this practice, see Audi 1997, 135-37 on “leveraging reasons”. See also Schwartzman 2014). Still, the DRR implies that there is an important asymmetry between the justificatory role played by religious and secular reasons. To this issue we now turn.

Assume that, in religiously pluralistic conditions, religious citizens have good moral reason—perhaps even a moral obligation—to pursue secular reasons for their favored coercive laws. Assume as well that secular citizens have good reason to pursue religious reasons for their favored coercive policies (if only because, with respect to some coercive laws, some of their fellow citizens find only religious reasons to support them). What should citizens do, religious or secular, when they cannot identify these reasons?

According to advocates of the standard view, if a religious citizen fails in his pursuit of secular reasons that support a given coercive law, then he is morally required to exercise restraint. After all, if his pursuit of these reasons fails, then he does not have any secular reason to offer in favor of that law. Liberal critics of the standard view, by contrast, deny that citizens so circumstanced are morally required to exercise restraint. They claim that from the fact that religious citizens are morally required to pursue secular reasons for their favored coercive laws (when that is necessary for persuasion), it does not follow that they should refrain from supporting coercive laws if their pursuit of secular reasons fails. Because our having an obligation to try to bring about some state of affairs tells us nothing about what we ought to do if we cannot bring it about, nothing like the DRR follows from the claim that citizens should pursue secular reasons for their favored coercive laws. According to the liberal critics, a parallel position applies to non-religious citizens: from the fact that non-religious citizens are morally required to pursue religious reasons for their favored laws (when that is necessary for persuasion), it doesn't follow that they should refrain from supporting coercive laws if their pursuit of religious reasons fails. For the liberal critics, parity between the religious and the secular obtains both with respect to the obligation to pursue justifying reasons and with respect to the permission not to exercise restraint when that pursuit fails.

Have we identified a genuine point of disagreement between the liberal critics and advocates of the standard view? It seems so. If the liberal critics are correct, all that can be reasonably asked of religious citizens is that, in a pluralistic liberal democracy, they competently pursue secular reasons for the coercive laws they support. If the pursuit fails, then they may support these laws for exclusively religious reasons. Proponents of the standard view disagree, maintaining that if the pursuit fails, these citizens must exercise restraint. This disagreement is rooted in differing convictions about the justificatory role that religious reasons can play. Once again, advocates of the standard view maintain that religious reasons can play only a limited justificatory role: citizens must have and be prepared to offer (at least certain kinds of) secular reasons for any coercive law that they support, as religious reasons are not enough. The liberal critics deny this, maintaining that no persuasive arguments have been offered to believe this. The DRR highlights this disagreement, as it incorporates an assumption that religious and secular reasons play asymmetrical roles in justifying coercive laws. [ 14 ]

As we have explicated the view of the liberal critics, religious citizens are (in a wide range of cases) morally required to pursue secular reasons for their favored coercive laws, but they needn't exercise restraint if they fail in their pursuit. But this position raises a question: What's so bad about requiring citizens to exercise restraint? Why should liberal critics object to this?

According to the liberal critics, one of the core commitments of a liberal democracy is a commitment to religious freedom and its natural extension, the right to freedom of conscience. When citizens use the modicum of political influence at their disposal, liberal critics claim that we should want them to do so in a way that furthers the cause of justice and the common good. So, for example, when a citizen deliberates about whether he should, say, support the invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and its NATO allies, we want him to determine, as best he can, whether the invasion of Afghanistan is actually morally appropriate. In order to determine that, he should be as conscientious as he can in his collection and evaluation of the relevant evidence, reach whatever conclusions seem reasonable to him on the available evidence, and act accordingly. If he concludes that invading Afghanistan would be unjust, then he should oppose it. That he does so is not only his right but also morally excellent, as acting in accord with responsibly held normative commitments is an important moral and civic good.

This, the liberal critics maintain, suggests a general claim. Whatever the policy and whatever the reasons—whether religious or secular—we have powerful reason to want citizens to support the coercive policies that they believe, in good conscience, to be morally appropriate. But that general claim has direct application to the issue at hand. It is possible, the liberal critics claim, for a morally sensitive and epistemically competent citizen to regard only certain religious considerations as providing decisive support for a given coercive law. Nicholas Wolterstorff, to return to an earlier example, maintains that only theistic considerations can ground the ascription of inherent human rights, some of which are protected by coercive law. Arguably, were a citizen to find a position such as Wolterstorff's persuasive, then he should appeal to those considerations that he actually believes to further the cause of justice and the common good. And this should lead us to want him to support that law, even though he does so solely on religious grounds, even if he regards that law as having no plausible secular justification. Good citizenship in a pluralistic liberal democracy unavoidably requires citizens to make political commitments that they know their moral and epistemic peers reject but that they nevertheless believe, with due humility, to be morally required. This ideal of good citizenship, so the liberal critics claim, applies to religious and secular citizens alike.

The portrait that we have offered of the standard view (and that of its liberal critics) is a composite, one which blends together various claims that its advocates make about the relation between coercive law and religious reasons. Because of this approach we have made relatively little explicit mention of particular advocates of the standard view, such as that towering figure of contemporary political philosophy, John Rawls. Of all the contemporary figures who have shaped the debate we are considering, however, none has exercised more influence than Rawls. It is natural to wonder, then, whether we've presented the standard view in its most powerful form and, thus, whether we've omitted a crucial dimension of the debate between the standard view and its liberal critics. We believe not. The version of the standard view that we have considered is one that borrows liberally from Rawls' thought, albeit softened and modified in certain ways. Still, before moving forward, it will be helpful to say something more about Rawls' view. We limit ourselves to the following three observations.

First, Rawls' own position about the relation between coercive law and religious reasons has shifted. In Political Liberalism , Rawls admits that at one point he inclined toward accepting an ambitious version of the DRR according to which each citizen of a liberal democracy ought not to appeal to religious reasons when deliberating about matters of basic justice and constitutional essentials (see Rawls 1993, 247 n.36). In the face of criticism, Rawls modified his position, arriving at a close relative of the DRR, viz., that while an agent may appeal to religious reasons to justify coercive law, he may not appeal solely to these reasons. Secular reasons must be forthcoming (see Rawls 1997). [ 15 ]

Second, Rawls places significant restrictions on the content of the secular reasons to which an agent may appeal. To advert to a point made earlier, Rawls argues that when deliberating about matters of basic justice and constitutional essentials, citizens should appeal to “public reason,” which (roughly speaking) is a fund of shared principles about justice and the common good that is constructed from the shared political culture of a liberal democracy—principles that concern, for example, the equality of citizens before the law and their right to a fair system of cooperation. In Rawls' view, when deliberating about these matters, appealing solely to secular comprehensive accounts of the good such as Aristotelianism or utilitarianism is no more legitimate than appealing solely to religious reasons. For all of these comprehensive doctrines will be alien to some of one's reasonable compatriots.

As will have been evident, in our presentation of the DRR, we have relaxed Rawls' stipulation, allowing for the legitimacy of appealing to only secular reasons that have their home in one or another comprehensive conception of the good. This might render the DRR vulnerable to the criticism that it invidiously and arbitrarily discriminates against religion. But the Rawlsian 'public reason' alternative is also vulnerable to criticism. It is not clear, for one thing, that the content of public reason will be rich enough to provide compelling reasons to support genuinely informative positions on matters of basic justice or constitutional essentials. Perhaps, for example, the claims that belong to public reason are only fairly sweeping ones that ascribe basic rights of various sorts but offer no guidance about how they should be weighed (see Quinn 1997, 149-52). Furthermore, it is unclear that appealing to public reason is the best way to respect one's fellow citizens. Perhaps, as Wolterstorff and Stout have argued, respect is better served both by explicitly disclosing to one's interlocutors the reasons one finds most persuasive (whatever they may be) and appealing to reasons that they might most find most persuasive, given their own commitments to one or another comprehensive perspective (see Wolterstorff 1997 and Stout 2004, Chs. 2-4).

In fact, Wolterstorff has argued that, ironically, Rawls' methodology has the implication that appealing to public reason would be to treat others with profound disrespect. For note that when Rawls formulates his version of public reason, he claims that it will incorporate the idea that liberal democracy is a society with a system of fair cooperation over time. How do we identify such a system? Rawls maintains that doing so requires that we set off to the side those who are “unreasonable” – these being those who are “unwilling to honor, or even to propose … fair terms of cooperation” (Rawls 1993, 51). But, as Wolterstorff contends, there are many who do not satisfy Rawls' account of reasonability, including those who think of politics not in terms of distributive justice but other categories such as preserving individual liberty, protecting small government, maximizing their own wealth, and so on. The implication of setting these people off to the side is that, when engaging in public political deliberation about some issue of basic justice, the “reasonable” citizens are free to ignore the views of their “unreasonable” compatriots. This, however, raises the concern that far from advocating a system in which all other citizens are respected as free and equal, Rawls' view has the paradoxical implication that “to follow the duty of civility is perforce to perpetrate injustice” by Rawls' own lights (Wolterstorff 2012, 121).

Third, as Paul Weithman points out (in Weithman 2007), there are really two types of argument that Rawls provides in favor of his position. The first is a variant of the argument from respect. More specifically, it is a relative to the first version of the argument from respect that we considered earlier, which maintains that coercive laws are morally legitimate only if they can be justified to citizens of a liberal democracy with their actual commitments and beliefs. This argument, if the liberal critics are correct, is subject to some fairly powerful replies, among which is that, given the fact that there is widespread pluralism about God and the good among the citizens of liberal democracies, it is impossible for coercive laws that protect basic liberal commitments to be justified to them. The second type of argument that Rawls provides in favor of his favored restrictions on religious reasons, however, appeals not to the claim that justifying coercion on the basis of alien reasons disrespects our compatriots, but to the idea that the reasons on which we rely must be ones that others can endorse as autonomous agents. In Kantian categories, this second line of argument singles out not the evil of heteronomous considerations, but the goodness of considerations that autonomous and reasonable agents could accept as an appropriate basis for settling fundamental political questions.

It is difficult to see, however, that this latter argument genuinely moves beyond the argument from respect. The problem is that it is not evident that the content of what Rawls terms public reason is that to which reasonable and autonomous agents would primarily appeal when attempting to settle fundamental political questions. Once again, the content of public reason may be too thin to settle anything of importance. Moreover, it is unclear that reasonable and autonomous agents would regard as inappropriate a democratic system in which agents bring to the table whatever reasons that seem best to them and vote solely on their basis.

Imagine, for example, a scenario in which citizens of a liberal democracy such as ours must deliberate on an issue of basic justice such as health care reform. One approach these citizens might take is Rawls': they appeal primarily to public reason. Another approach is that they try to forge a consensus about the issue that incorporates features that belong to rather different comprehensive perspectives. According to this latter approach, Jews, Christians, Kantians, Buddhists, and Aristotelians all offer each other the reasons from their own comprehensive perspectives that seem to support health care reform, pointing out to each other the degree to which their reasons overlap. No public reasons are offered, only a plethora of particularistic reasons each of which is reasonably rejected by some citizens. Then the matter is put to a vote. Would an agent who is reasonable and autonomous reject this procedure in favor of appealing to public reason? According to the liberal critics, it is difficult to see why we should believe he would. If so, the connection that Rawls attempts to forge between the exercise of autonomy and public reason is too tight. (In the next section, we discuss a version of ‘public reason liberalism’ that incorporates the basic idea that respect for persons is compatible with each citizen’s offering to one non-shared, non-public reasons for state coercion.)

A final concern is worth airing. Figures such as Philip Quinn, Jeffrey Stout, and Nicholas Wolterstorff interpret Rawls as addressing the issue of how citizens in actual liberal democracies ought to conduct themselves when debating matters of justice and the common good. But there is evidence that Rawls' texts ought not to be read in this way. For, as Rawls indicates at various places, he takes himself to be discussing well-ordered societies. A well-ordered society is such that it contains no egoists, everyone complies with the principles of justice, everyone wants to participate in forms of social life that call forth their own and others' natural talents, treachery and betrayal are absent, and its members want to cooperate with others on terms that are mutually justifiable and affirm only reasonable comprehensive doctrines (Weithman 2012, 65, 162, 169, 310). In short, a well-ordered society is nothing like the actual world but is something approximating a political Utopia.

Suppose Rawls were to establish that in a well-ordered society agents would conform to his favored version of the restrictions on religious reasons. This would not imply that, in those circumstances in which we actually find ourselves, citizens should appeal to his version, thinking of it as a regulatory ideal in their political thinking. Not all ideals, after all, are worth pursuing. It might be, for example, that pursuing the Rawlsian ideal would make it much more difficult for citizens to employ other approaches to political deliberation that would result in a liberal democracy being sufficiently stable for the right reasons, which, says Rawls, should be a primary objective of any liberal democracy. If this were correct, then Rawls's project would have very modest implications for how to think about the relation between religion and public reason, since it would provide little or no guidance for how citizens ought to conduct their behavior (see Cuneo 2013).

7. A Convergent Alternative

Liberal critics of the standard view have not been free of their own critics. We conclude this part of our discussion by articulating one important response.

At the heart of the liberal critics’ conception of religion and public life is a commitment to parity between the religious and the secular: because there are no morally, sociologically, or epistemically relevant differences between religious and secular reasons, religious and secular reasons may play exactly the same role in a citizen’s deliberations or decision-making regarding state coercion. This parity claim seems flatly inconsistent with the DRR – which singles out religious reasons for special, discriminatory treatment. But some theorists have argued that the parity claim, which is so important to the liberal critics, is in fact consistent with a version of the DRR. An argument of this sort has been articulated by Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier (Gaus 2012, Gaus and Vallier, 2009, Vallier, 2014).

Gaus and Vallier's argument rests on two central claims. First, state coercion is presumptively wrong; each and every coercive state enactment must be justified by each and every citizen subject to it. By contrast, the lack of any state policy is not presumptively wrong, and so need not be justified – even to citizens whose well-being is affected by the lack of state activity. Second, the reasons by which state coercion is justified need not be shared by (or be accessible to) the citizens who are subject to a given coercive measure. What matters for purposes of the justification of coercion is that each citizen has sufficient reason, as judged from his or her particular perspective, to endorse state coercion. Since this view places no restrictions on the reasons to which an agent might appeal, religious and secular reasons can play exactly the same justificatory role, namely, to defeat what would, in the absence of contrary reasons, be permissible acts of state coercion.

Gaus and Vallier, then, have defended a convergence rather than a consensus account of the standard view. If this account is correct, state coercion must be justifiable to religious citizens as religious believers and when it is not, then state coercion lacks moral legitimacy. The same holds true for non-religious citizens. Although the convergent conception of the standard view accords religious reasons a potentially decisive role in defeating state coercion, and so accords religious reasons a much more prominent role in the justification of state coercion than religious reasons have on most alternative formulations of the standard view, it is also consistent with the DRR. How so?

In any liberal polity, there will inevitably be some secular citizens. If there is nothing to be said from any secular perspective that decisively justifies some coercive measure, and if the only plausible rationale for that coercive measure is a religious rationale, then there will inevitably be some citizens to whom that coercive measure cannot be justified. According to the view under consideration, such a coercive measure would be disrespectful and so illegitimate. So the convergent variation on the standard view maintains the core conviction that religious considerations cannot decisively justify state coercion in pluralistic liberal politics. The implications for the duties of religious citizens seem direct: they ought to restrain themselves from supporting any act of state coercion that they know cannot be justified other than by religious reasons. That is, they must comply with the DRR. If Gaus and Vallier are correct, then, commitment to equal treatment of religion is entirely consistent with a version of the DRR. (Gaus and Vallier, it is worth noting, reject the DRR as an account of the duties of citizens, accepting only a milder version that applies to certain public officials in certain circumstances.)

Although the convergent variation of the standard view will likely be more attractive to liberal critics than familiar alternatives, they still have reason to be skeptical. The convergent conception of the standard view is, after all, demanding: state coercion must pass muster before the bar of religious and secular reasons. However, many citizens will have compelling reasons to reject core liberal commitments. It follows that, according to the convergence view, those liberal commitments will lack justification. If so, liberal critics have reason to reject the convergent view, not because of its implications for religion but for liberalism. Consider in this regard the case of Qtub treated earlier. Qtub seems to have articulated compelling theological objections to the right to religious freedom, and thus articulated compelling theological reasons to deny that the state may coercively enforce that right. In this case, the state's enforcement of the right to religious freedom seems, according to the convergent conception, to lack legitimacy.

8. The New Traditionalism

To this point, we have been primarily concerned to articulate the standard view and lay out the response offered to it by its liberal critics. We have emphasized that there are important differences between these two views. While not trivial, these differences should not be exaggerated, however. Both views are deeply committed to the core components of liberal democracy, including the protection of basic freedoms such as the freedom to practice religion as one sees fit. Furthermore, both views recognize the legitimacy of religious reasons in political deliberation, noting the role of such reasons in important social movements such as the civil rights movement. The main difference between advocates of the standard view and their liberal critics, we've contended, is how they view the justificatory role of these reasons. That said, the liberal critics are not the only or even the most influential critics of the standard view. Indeed, if the central argument of Jeffrey Stout's book Democracy and Tradition is correct, the standard view has generated a worrisome backlash among prominent Christian theologians and political theorists. These theologians and political theorists, who Stout labels the New Traditionalists , reject not only the standard view, but also liberal democracy as such—their assumption being that the standard view is a more or less inevitable outgrowth of liberal democracy. In spite of their fairly radical position, Stout contends that these thinkers need to be taken seriously by the friends of democracy, as they exercise considerable influence in certain sectors of the academy and the culture at large.

Suppose Stout is right to say that New Traditionalists such as John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Stanley Hauerwas are widely influential in the academy and elsewhere. Should they be taken seriously by political philosophers? That depends on what one understands the role of political philosophers to be. Suppose, however, we assume that political philosophers should be multidisciplinary in orientation, engaging with what sociologists, psychologists, and theologians write and say. If we assume this, then taking a multidisciplinary approach in this case seems to make sense. The topic under consideration, after all, is the relation between religion and politics, and theologians have had much to say about their interrelations. Furthermore, while the approach that the New Traditionalists take to our topic is different from that taken by the advocates of the standard view—the New Traditionalists tell a historical narrative about the ills of liberal democracy—the narrative that they tell is a philosophical one. Indeed, it is a narrative whose main lines will be familiar to most philosophers working in ethics and political philosophy. It is natural to want to know whether this historical-philosophical narrative survives philosophical scrutiny. We shall close, then, by considering the narrative that the New Traditionalists tell about the emergence of modern liberal democracies, highlighting the response offered to it by the liberal critics.

Those familiar with the work of Alasdair MacIntyre will immediately recognize the New Traditionalists' narrative. For in its broad structure, it bears a close resemblance to the one that MacIntyre tells in his three books After Virtue , Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (MacIntyre 1984, 1988, and 1990, respectively). [ 16 ] The MacIntyrean narrative is broadly declinist in character, depicting the degeneration of Western moral and political thought in the following four stages.

In the first stage, the New Traditionalists maintain that the late ancient and the high medieval thinkers of the west embraced a unified philosophical vision that includes three fundamental components. The first component is a commitment to a “thick” teleological account of the human good, according to which human beings have rational natures that can be perfected. The second component is a commitment to the claim that virtue consists in the perfection of our rational nature in both its practical and theoretical dimensions. Practical reason, according to the vision, can ascertain not merely the means to achieve one's ends, but also the very telos or end for human beings. And theoretical reason, so the vision has it, can gain genuine insight into the world by viewing the entire created order as participating in or resembling the divine nature. The third component of the vision is that moral thought and discourse should be framed primarily in terms of the virtues—the virtues providing the dominant conceptuality in terms of which we conduct moral reasoning. To which it is worth adding the following point: advocates of the MacIntyrean narrative do not deny that pre-modern societies had their share of moral, religious, and political problems. Their claim is merely that these societies enjoyed (at least in principle) the shared conceptual resources with which they could coherently address and remedy them.

In the second stage of the narrative, there is a fall into our current fragmented moral and religious condition. Although the New Traditionalists regard different movements and figures as responsible for the fall, they agree on this much: the philosophical vision that unified the societies of pre-modernity fell apart. The teleological worldview was replaced by a nominalist and mechanistic one. Practical reason became instrumentalized—viewed as merely a “slave of the passions,” to use Hume's phrase. And theoretical reason was conceived of as working in a perfectly adequate fashion apart from any commitment to there being a divinely-ordered reality. Furthermore, the language of justice and individual rights supplanted that of virtue. As a result, the state that we now occupy is one in which we no longer enjoy a shared conception of the good, and politics has become—to use MacIntyre's memorable phrase—“civil war by other means.” Without such a conception of the good, we now face all manner of moral, religious, and political problems that we lack the conceptual resources to resolve or even properly understand.

In the third stage of the narrative, New Traditionalists maintain that liberal democracy emerges as the more or less natural political consequence of the fall from the pre-modern state. Liberal democracy, according to the New Traditionalists, is not only a political structure that protects putative individual rights (such as to religious freedom), but is also committed to a broad thesis of neutrality with respect to notions of God and the good. According to this understanding of liberal democracy, the state should not enact laws that require a religious rationale and citizens should therefore comply with the DRR. Given its commitment to neutrality and the DRR, the New Traditionalists claim that liberal democracy is a mode of governance that is fundamentally at odds with the type of traditional religious way of life that informed society during its pre-modern state.

In the final stage of the narrative, New Traditionalists offer proposals of various sorts for how traditionally religious believers should cope with being citizens of a political system whose fundamental commitments are at odds with their own. The proposals are generally not injunctions to transform the liberal state. Rather, they are broadly separatist in nature, exhorting traditional believers to distance themselves from the liberal state, say, by living in small religious communities, which owe their ultimate allegiance to the church or some larger religious tradition. If they are correct, the DRR is both crucial to liberal democracy and an important reason for traditional believers to reject it.

The MacIntyrean narrative is intriguing but highly controversial. Liberal critics have raised the following two objections to it.

The first feature of the narrative to which liberal critics have drawn attention is its highly intellectualized character. If John Milbank and MacIntyre are correct, for example, the fall into secularist liberalism is driven by the influence of some fairly abstract philosophical claims about the nature of reason and existence, which were defended by the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus. By rejecting the broadly Augustinian/Thomistic picture of reason and existence, the New Traditionalists claim, Scotus paved the way for the rise of secularism, which is endemic to contemporary liberal democracies (see Milbank 1990 and MacIntyre 1990, Ch. 7).

Liberal critics maintain that, as a matter of intellectual history, this is not correct. Proponents of broadly Scotistic or anti-theistic views, according to thinkers such as Stout, never had the numbers or clout to change the world as dramatically as New Traditionalists claim. In fact, if Stout is correct, there is a counter-narrative to tell that is at least as plausible as the one that New Traditionalists champion. According to this counter-narrative, we should distinguish two types of secularism: on the one hand, there is secularism as understood by the standard view, which tells us that appeal to religious reasons in public political discourse is insufficient to justify coercive laws. On the other, there is broadly pluralistic secularism, which tells us merely that participants in public political discourse are not in a position to assume that their interlocutors are making the same religious assumptions that they are. Stout maintains that liberal democracy is committed only to secularism of the second sort. Indeed, even critics of the standard view who affirm liberal democracy on religious grounds, such as Wolterstorff, grant that liberal democracy is secular in Stout's second, pluralistic sense. Certainly, the liberal critics maintain, there is nothing about liberalism that commits it to a version of secularism in which the liberal state is an anti-Christian ecclesia or an alternate vehicle for salvation, as some New Traditionalists have claimed (see, for example, Milbank, et al. 1999, 192).

Suppose that the liberal critics are correct in their contention that liberal democracy is committed only to pluralistic secularism. Is this commitment the upshot of a broadly Scotistic view about reason and existence having taken root in modernity? If thinkers such as Stout and Wolterstorff are correct, the answer to this question is also: no. Rather, both Stout and Wolterstorff suggest that liberal democracy's commitment to secularism is the result of Christians themselves recognizing that post-Reformation Christianity itself had become so fragmented that Christians could no longer appeal to scripture and tradition in public discourse under the assumption that their interlocutors would share their views regarding scripture and tradition (see Zagorin 2003).

In support of this contention, Stout appeals to the historian Christopher Hill who maintains that in 17 th century English parliamentary politics, one increasingly finds members of parliament appealing rather less to scripture when engaging in public political discourse and rather more to considerations upon which they and their interlocutors could agree. According to this counter-narrative, “secularization was not primarily brought about by the triumph of a secularist ideology….What drove the secularization of political discourse forward was the increasing need to cope with religious plurality discursively on a daily basis under circumstances where improved transportation and communication were changing the political and economic landscape” (Stout 2004, 102). To which Stout adds that secularization (in the second, pluralistic sense specified earlier) thus understood doesn't morally or pragmatically preclude citizens from voicing their religious convictions in the public square. Martin Luther King Jr.'s appeals to religious considerations, for example, were highly politically effective.

The first worry regarding the New Traditionalists' declinist narrative, then, is that it is overly intellectualized, portraying the rise of secularism as owing primarily to the influence of philosophical ideas and not to more mundane sociological facts, such as the need to cope with increasing religious pluralism. The second worry about the narrative is that the New Traditionalists misdiagnose the character of liberal democracy, attributing to its advocates commitments that they needn't accept. To better understand this worry, recall the pattern of argument that the New Traditionalists employ, which is roughly the following:

Liberalism is committed to various philosophical claims and practices that are incompatible with orthodox theism (or at least orthodox theism in its best forms, such as Thomism).

So, orthodox theists should reject liberalism.

What are some of the claims and practices that fit poorly with orthodox theism and to which liberalism is committed? If the New Traditionalists are correct, at least these two: first, liberalism tells us that political systems should be neutral regarding various notions of God and the good; they should not operate with an account of an overriding good for human beings in whose light subsidiary goods can be ordered. Second, liberalism is committed to the claim that moral and political discourse should be couched not primarily in terms of the virtues, but individual rights. This, say the New Traditionalists has rendered liberal democracies a breeding ground for citizens who are individualistic, self-focused, and whose views and behavior are destructive of community. According to the New Traditionalists, these two claims are connected. It is because liberal democracies do not operate with a thick notion of the good that the language of rights has supplanted that of virtue. For in order for the language of the virtues to be intelligible, it must be grounded in a thick account of the good.

When properly qualified, liberal critics such as Stout are willing to grant the first of these claims: liberalism does not in fact operate with a thick notion of the good. But they reject the further claim that this has rendered appeal to the virtues in a liberal democracy irrelevant or somehow deeply conceptually confused. For consider, Stout argues, champions of liberalism within the broadly pragmatist tradition, such as Walt Whitman and John Dewey. These thinkers do not fit well into the MacIntyrean paradigm. At their best, Stout maintains, Whitman and Dewey consciously theorize from the perspective of a broadly pragmatic tradition that is committed to the centrality of the virtues, albeit within a society characterized by competing and rival conceptions of God and the good.

More specifically, Stout maintains that according to pragmatist liberals such as Dewey, good citizens of a liberal democracy aspire to express not only civility and respect in public political discourse, but also to accept some measure of responsibility for the conditions of society and the political arrangements it makes for itself. And to do this, citizens must reason with one another about the ethical issues that divide them and hold each other responsible, in ways that are decent and fair, for what is done and said. If the pragmatist liberals are right, reasoning of this sort requires that citizens of liberal democracies display virtues of various sorts, such as openness to the views of others, proper respect for their positions, and so forth. In an inversion of the MacIntyrean position, Stout contends that it is at least in part because liberal democracies do not espouse some overarching, thick conception of the good that virtues such as civility and respect are especially called for. And, particularly important for our discussion is Stout's further claim that pragmatism of this variety needn't lend any support to the standard view. Expressing the virtues of civility and respect is perfectly compatible with appealing only to religious considerations when making and supporting political decisions.

So, if the liberal critics are correct, one place to press the New Traditionalists' narrative is its claim that only within a thick, overarching account of the human good are the virtues intelligible. There is, however, a second place to press the narrative, which is its skepticism about rights. As intimated earlier, MacIntyre and the New Traditionalists portray individual rights claims as both false and dangerous, indeed, as the upshot of an Enlightenment conception of morality that is inimical to a properly religious way of life (see MacIntyre 1984 and 1983). MacIntyre, for example, writes that not only are rights claims on par with belief in “witches and unicorns,” but also that:

there is no expression in any ancient or medieval language correctly translated by our expression ‘a right’ until near the close of the middle ages: the concept lacks any means of expression in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Arabic, classical or medieval, before about 1400, let alone in Old English or Japanese even as late as the mid-nineteenth century. (MacIntyre 1984, 69)

In reply, the liberal critics make two points. First, as a matter of historical fact, it is simply false that rights claims have their conceptual roots in the soil of late medieval nominalism and Enlightenment morality, as MacIntyre claims. Rather, as Wolterstorff argues, appeals to rights are ubiquitous throughout history. One can find them, for example, in the ancient Romans juridical documents such as Justinian's Digest , the writings of the church fathers, and the work of the medieval canon lawyers. [ 17 ] Indeed, according to Wolterstorff, appeals to what we call inherent or natural human rights can be traced back to the Hebrew and Christian scriptures (see Wolterstorff 2008, Pts. I-II). If Wolterstorff is correct, the scriptural tradition not only birthed our conception of inherent human rights, but also provides the conceptual soil most conducive to its survival, for it offers the most cogent account of the worth of human beings. If this is true, according to Wolterstorff, there is no incompatibility between the liberal tradition's reliance on rights and a commitment to orthodox theism. To reject liberalism because it is committed to and relies heavily on the notion of rights would be a mistake.

Second, the liberal critics contend that any connection between the appeals to rights in liberalism, on the one hand, and a tendency toward individualism in its citizens, on the other, is highly contingent. Perhaps it is true that contemporary liberal democracies have in fact had a strong tendency to promote individualism, where this is understood as a person's having a distorted focus on her rights to the exclusion of her obligations and responsibilities to others. But if we construe a liberal democracy minimally, as a political structure that effectively protects a certain schedule of individual rights (to religious freedom, speech, due process, and the like), it is plausible to suppose that exclusive focus on individual rights is itself a betrayal of liberalism. After all, claim-rights almost always have correlative obligations: if you have a right to religious freedom, then I have an obligation not to violate that right. Furthermore, I also have an obligation to take feasible measures to support political institutions that protect that right. Any understanding of a liberal democracy according to which citizens may insist on their rights without due regard for the obligations they bear to others and social institutions that protect these rights is arguably both incoherent and a betrayal of basic liberal commitments. Thinkers such as Wolterstorff add that for theists who affirm liberal democracy, it is natural to suppose that citizens who ignore their obligations to respect the rights of their compatriots thereby also violate God's rights. For, according to these thinkers, God has a right to be obeyed, and God demands that we respect the worth of each human being. If the liberal critics are correct, then, any individualism that attends liberal democracy is a corruption. Perhaps it is a corruption to which liberal democracies are prone; but individualism is neither a liberal commitment nor, if thinkers such as Stout and Wolterstorff are correct, an inevitable manifestation of liberal commitments.

The liberal critics, then, are highly suspicious of the New Traditionalists' narrative and the philosophical lessons they glean from it. But suppose, for argument's sake, that the narrative is largely compelling. Even if it is compelling, the liberal critics insist that the New Traditionalists have ignored an important option, viz., a minimalist account of liberal democracy. According to this position, liberalism is committed to the following pair of theses. First, the state is to be neutral with respect to different conceptions of the good. The neutrality in question, however, is inclusive in nature. It does not rule out the appeal to comprehensive conceptions of the good when making fundamental political decisions. Rather, it only rules out the claim that the state is committed to promoting one such conception. Second, the state is to protect a schedule of basic rights and liberties enjoyed by all its citizens. Its role is to ensure that its citizens can enjoy such goods as freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and equality before the law.

The liberal critics maintain that a view such as this deserves serious consideration by both defenders of the standard view and orthodox religious believers. The challenge that liberal critics such as Stout and Wolterstorff pose to New Traditionalists in particular is this: Given that moral and religious pluralism are here to stay, why would Christians and other people of faith want to reject minimal liberal democracy—liberal democracy shorn of its commitment to the standard view? What morally feasible alternative is there to a political order in which the state employs its coercive powers to protect the rights of each of its citizens?

Proponents of the New Traditionalism find this attempt on the part of the liberal critics to marry liberal democracy with traditional religious belief naïve. If they are right, any political system that professes neutrality with respect to conceptions of God and the good is unacceptable. At best, it will be inhospitable soil for a genuinely virtuous and religious way of life. At worst, any such system will be an attempt to conceal the fact that the deep structure of liberal democracy, with its emphasis on personal freedoms and procedural justice, fits poorly with the thick account of the good that orthodox religious believers endorse. According to these thinkers, the conflict between liberal democracy and traditional religion runs too deep for appeals to minimalist accounts of liberalism to be effective.

The theologico-political problem is one that concerns the problem of political authority. In its contemporary form, it primarily concerns the justification of authoritative political acts, such as the implementation of coercive laws. Can religious reasons justify the implementation of such laws? This is the central question with which political philosophers have been concerned. The standard view tells us that religious reasons are never sufficient to justify coercive law. It therefore champions the DRR, or the claim that, if a citizen is trying to determine whether or not she should support some coercive law, and if she believes that there is no plausible secular rationale for it, then it is impermissible for her to support that law. The main responses to the standard view divides into two types. Liberal critics of the view hold fast to the principles of liberal democracy but reject the DRR—in part for the reason that the DRR is illiberal. New Traditionalists, by contrast, reject both liberal democracy itself and the DRR, viewing the latter as more or less a component of the former. (On this latter point, they agree with advocates of the standard view.)

Is there likely to be any sort of rapprochement between these views? It is difficult to know. Sometimes, however, positions that occupy the conceptual middle-ground in a debate are the best candidates for unifying what can appear to be irreconcilable positions. In the case at hand, the liberal critics appear to occupy this conceptual middle-ground, straddling the standard view and the New Traditionalism. On the one hand, the liberal critics find themselves sympathetic with the political commitments of the standard view but not with the wariness about religion that often animates this position. On the other hand, the liberal critics find themselves sympathetic with some of the religious commitments embraced by the New Traditionalists but not with their suspicion of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, the liberal critics are vulnerable to criticisms from both sides. Advocates of the standard view will charge that they do not take seriously enough the destructive and divisive effects of religion, hard to quantify as they might be. And friends of the New Traditionalism will maintain that they fail to recognize the corrosive effects of liberal democracy on traditional religious ways of life. These are important criticisms, married to passions that deeply divide the proponents of these views. Still, members of all parties to the debate agree that the task at hand is to articulate ways in which citizens of a deeply pluralistic liberal democracy can conduct their behavior in manners that are not only faithful to whatever religious identities they may have, but are also just and contribute to the common good.

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• –––, 2007. “The Paradoxical Role of Coercion in the Theory of Political Liberalism.” Journal of Law, Philosophy and Culture , 1: 101-25. Reprinted in Wolterstorff (2009).
• –––, 2006. “Abraham Kuyper.” In John Witte, Jr. and Frank S. Alexander, eds., The Teachings of Modern Christianity on Law, Politics, and Human Nature, Vol. I. New York: Columbia University Press: 219-48. Reprinted in Wolterstorff (2009).
• –––, 2003. “An Engagement with Rorty.” Journal of Religious Ethics , 31: 129-39. Reprinted in Wolterstorff (2009).
• –––, 2001. “Do Christians Have Good Reasons for Supporting Liberal Democracy?” The Modern Schoolman , 78: 229-48. Reprinted in Wolterstorff (2009).
• –––, 2001. “A Religious Argument for the Civil Right to Freedom of Religious Exercise, Drawn from American History.” Wake Forest Law Review , 36: 535-556. Reprinted in Wolterstorff (2009).
• –––, 1997. “The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues.” In Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Religion in the Public Square , Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield: 67-120.
• –––, 1997a. “Why We Should Reject What Liberalism Tells Us about Speaking and Acting in Public for Religious Reasons.” In Weithman (1997): 162-81.
• Zagorin, Perez, 2003. How the Idea of Toleration Came to the West , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Zerilli, Linda M. G., 2012. “Value Pluralism and the Problem of Judgment: Farewell to Public Reason.” Political Theory , 40: 6-31.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Boise Center for Religion and American Public Life , at Boston College
• Center for the Study of Law and Religion , at Emory University
• The Centre of Theology and Philosophy , at the University of Nottingham
• Commonweal Magazine , a review of religion, politics, and culture
• First Things , a journal of religion, culture, and public life
• The Immanent Frame , a Social Science Research Council blog on secularism, religion, and the public sphere
• Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life , a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts
• Radical Orthodoxy Online , resources and information maintained by James K.A. Smith at Calvin College
• Religion Clause Blog , maintained by Howard Friedman, University of Toledo

authority | autonomy: in moral and political philosophy | citizenship | communitarianism | contractarianism | democracy | Habermas, Jürgen | justification, political: public | liberalism | political obligation | publicity | Rawls, John | religion: epistemology of | rights: human | sovereignty | toleration

Acknowledgments

Thanks to David Billings, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Kevin Vallier, Paul Weithman, Lori Wilson, and several anonymous referees for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this entry.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris Eberle < eberle @ usna . edu > Terence Cuneo < tcuneo @ uvm . edu >

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Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Religious Pluralism — Role of Religion in Society: Exploring its Significance and Implications

Role of Religion in Society: Exploring Its Significance and Implications

• Categories: Religious Beliefs Religious Pluralism

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Published: Sep 5, 2023

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Table of contents

Introduction, the significance of religion in society, the implications of religion in society, the debate surrounding the role of religion in society, the historical context of religion in society, the impact of religion on culture and identity, the role of religion in promoting social cohesion, the impact of religion on politics and governance, the relationship between religion and morality, the role of religion in promoting social justice and equality, the debate between secularism and religious influence in society, the impact of cultural attitudes towards religion on the debate, the potential consequences of religion's role in society.

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Three Essays on Religion

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1948 to May 31, 1951 ?

Location:  Chester, Pa. ?

Genre:  Essay

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society. In the first assignment, he calls science and religion “different though converging truths” that both “spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.” King emphasizes an awareness of God’s presence in the second document, noting that religion’s purpose “is not to perpetuate a dogma or a theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.” In the final handwritten essay King acknowledges the life-affirming nature of Christianity, observing that its adherents have consistently “looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.”

"Science and Religion"

There is widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But there is no fundamental issue between the two. While the conflict has been waged long and furiously, it has been on issues utterly unrelated either to religion or to science. The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. Hence the conflict.

But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.

The conflict was always between superstition disguised as religion and materialism disguised as science, between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. They are different though converging truths. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power. Religion is the response to the human need for hope and certitude. One is an outreaching for mastery, the other for perfection. Both are man-made, and like man himself, are hedged about with limitations. Neither science nor religion, by itself, is sufficient for man. Science is not civilization. Science is organized knowledge; but civilization which is the art of noble and progressive communal living requires much more than knowledge. It needs beauty which is art, and faith and moral aspiration which are religion. It needs artistic and spiritual values along with the intellectual.

Man cannot live by facts alone. What we know is little enough. What we are likely to know will always be little in comparison with what there is to know. But man has a wish-life which must build inverted pyramids upon the apexes of known facts. This is not logical. It is, however, psychological.

Science and religion are not rivals. It is only when one attempts to be the oracle at the others shrine that confusion arises. Whan the scientist from his laboratory, on the basis of alleged scientific knowledge presumes to issue pronouncements on God, on the origin and destiny of life, and on man's place in the scheme of things he is [ passing? ] out worthless checks. When the religionist delivers ultimatums to the scientist on the basis of certain cosomologies embedded in the sacred text then he is a sorry spectacle indeed.

When religion, however, on the strength of its own postulates, speaks to men of God and the moral order of the universe, when it utters its prophetic burden of justice and love and holiness and peace, then its voice is the voice of the eternal spiritual truth, irrefutable and invincible.,

"The Purpose of Religion"

What is the purpose of religion? 1  Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? Is it totally dependent upon revelation? What part does psychological experience play? Is religion synonymous with theology?

Harry Emerson Fosdick says that the most hopeful thing about any system of theology is that it will not last. 2  This statement will shock some. But is the purpose of religion the perpetuation of theological ideas? Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience.

This automatically raises the question of salvation. Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. Catholics would have us believe the former. For them, the church, its creeds, its popes and bishops have recited the essence of religion and that is all there is to it. On the other hand we say that each soul must make its own reconciliation to God; that no creed can take the place of that personal experience. This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature. But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” 3 Relevant religion therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand; and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand. 4  Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place.

This is the secret of our religion. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face. This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.

Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand. But the essential purpose of religion remains the same. It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.

[ signed ] M. L. King Jr. 5

"The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry"

Basically Christianity is a value philosophy. It insists that there are eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good. This value content is embodied in the life of Christ. So that Christian philosophy is first and foremost Christocentric. It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God. 6

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve? First Christianity speaks of the value of the world. In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating. Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. 7  So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God.

Christianity also insists on the value of persons. All human personality is supremely worthful. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” 8  Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point. There have been periods in Christians history that persons have been dealt with as if they were means rather than ends. But Christianity at its highest and best has always insisted that persons are intrinsically valuable. And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love. We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because  God  they are of value to God.

Christianity is also concerned about the value of life itself. Christianity is concerned about the good life for every  child,  man,  and  woman and child. This concern for the good life and the value of life is no where better expressed than in the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” 9  This emphasis has run throughout the Christian tradition. Christianity has always had a concern for the elimination of disease and pestilence. This is seen in the great interest that it has taken in the hospital movement.

Christianity is concerned about increasing value. The whole concept of the kingdom of God on earth expressing a concern for increasing value. We need not go into a dicussion of the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, only to say that Christians throughout the ages have held tenaciouly to this concept. They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.

In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture? 10

1.  King may have also considered the purpose of religion in a Morehouse paper that is no longer extant, as he began a third Morehouse paper, “Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion” (King, “The Purpose of Education,” September 1946-February 1947, in  Papers  1:122).

2.  “Harry Emerson Fosdick” in  American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits,  ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 114: “The theology of any generation cannot be understood, apart from the conditioning social matrix in which it is formulated. All systems of theology are as transient as the cultures they are patterned from.”

3.  King further developed this theme in his dissertation: “[Tillich] finds a basis for God's transcendence in the conception of God as abyss. There is a basic inconsistency in Tillich's thought at this point. On the one hand he speaks as a religious naturalist making God wholly immanent in nature. On the other hand he speaks as an extreme supernaturalist making God almost comparable to the Barthian ‘wholly other’” (King, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” 15 April 1955, in  Papers  2:535).

4.  Commas were added after the words “religion” and “salvation.”

5.  King folded this assignment lengthwise and signed his name on the verso of the last page.

6.  King also penned a brief outline with this title (King, “The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951). In the outline, King included the reference “see Enc. Of Religion p. 162.” This entry in  An Encyclopedia of Religion,  ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) contains a definition of Christianity as “Christo-centric” and as consisting “of eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good.” King kept this book in his personal library.

7.  Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563-ca. 483 BCE) was the historical Buddha.

8.  For an example of Schweitzer's use of the phrase “reverence for life,” see Albert Schweitzer, “The Ethics of Reverence for Life,”  Christendom  1 (1936): 225-239.

9.  John 10:10.

10.  In his outline for this paper, King elaborated: “The Ministry provides leadership in helping men to recognize and accept the eternal values in the Xty religion. a. The necessity of a call b. The necessity for disinterested love c. The [ necessity ] for moral uprightness” (King, “Philosophy of Life,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951).

Source:  CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file.

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There can be no precise and agreed definition of religion. The origin of the word is of little help, for it descends from the Latin religiare , to bind, which suggests the broadest possible boundaries for the territory of religious belief and encourages the acceptance of the argument, frequently put in the twentieth century, that many kinds of belief which fall outside the bounds of the recognized religions, including forms of Marxism and nationalism, have the essential characteristics of religion. It is thus genuinely difficult to define religion for the purpose, say, of teaching children about comparative religion or of formulating laws against offending people's religious beliefs. Are witchcraft and paganism a religion or set of religions? Is theosophy?

However, if the boundaries of religious belief are difficult to draw, the core territory is relatively easy to characterize. Religion is concerned with the worship of transcendent or supernatural beings whose existence is outside or above the realm of the normal, which is mortal and temporal. In its most historically important and ethically demanding form, monotheism, as exemplified in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions, the religious concern is concentrated onto a single God who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, the creator of the universe.

Religion is therefore normally of huge ethical significance. What people ought to do is derivable from the existence, nature, and will of God. It would be difficult to be seriously religious in any sense without that religion determining some of one's political beliefs. Indeed, the most natural relation between religion and politics is one in which the most important political questions have religious answers: the legitimacy or otherwise of regimes, the limits of a particular authority, and the rightness or wrongness of legislation can all be derived from religious revelation (see e.g. medieval political theory). The range of religiously justified regimes can be divided into theocracies, where divine revelation and the priests who interpret it rule directly, and those non‐theocracies where the divine will has, nevertheless, sanctioned the particular form of secular rule (the doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule being a typical form of religious, though non‐theocratic, legitimation).

However, since the seventeenth century Western Europe and the Americas have been dominated by secular views which sought successfully to separate religion from politics, so that the state's existence is not justified by theology. Secularization arose out of the tension between science and religion and the schisms between forms of Christianity. It was essential to put religion beyond the sphere of truth and refutation and to justify the authority of the state without recourse to (disputed) theological premisses. Thus in ‘Christendom’, though not in the territory of Islam, there developed an acceptance that political disputes must be resolved on secular grounds. Paradoxically, this process evolved most rapidly in England, which retained (and continues to retain) an established Church (see Church and State).

In a ‘secular’ society the principle that religion and politics are independent realms is accepted, but religion continues to influence politics in a number of ways. Although religious doctrines may be taken to be arbitrary or indeterminate on many political questions, there remain issues on which a Church must speak clearly and forcefully. Roman Catholic doctrine on abortion is one of the clearest cases. A particular form of religious belief can be strongly linked to national identity, as Catholicism has been for the Poles and the Irish, and Orthodox Christianity for the Armenians and Georgians. Where parties are freely formed, there are likely to be parties based generally on Christian social morality, like the many Christian Democratic parties of contemporary Europe, or specifically on one Christian Church. For example, the Catholic People's Party in the Netherlands and the Mouvement Républicain Populaire in France have been specifically Roman Catholic parties, though both of these parties have now merged with others and there has been, since the late twentieth century, a tendency for parties based on one Christian Church to decline.

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1 The Role of Religion in American Politics: Explanatory Theories and Associated Analytical and Measurement Issues

Corwin E. Smidt (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is the Paul B. Henry Professor of Political Science and Director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College. He is coauthor and editor of Evangelicalism: The Next Generation (2002); Religion as Social Capital: Producing the Common Good (2003); and Pews, Prayers, and Participation: The Role of Religion in Fostering Civic Responsibility (2008).

Lyman A. Kellstedt (Ph.D., University of Illinois) is Professor of Political Science (emeritus) at Wheaton College, Illinois. He has authored or coauthored numerous articles, book chapters, and books in the field of religion and politics, including Religion and the Culture Wars (1996) and The Bully Pulpit (1997). He is currently working on a series of articles on religion and political behavior.

James L. Guth is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Furman University. In addition to his work with Brent Nelsen on the European Union, he has written extensively on the role of religion in American electoral, legislative, and administrative politics. He is co-editor (with Corwin E. Smidt and Lyman A. Kellstedt) of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2009).

• Published: 02 January 2010
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This article provides an overview of the major perspectives that can explain the connection between American politics and religion. The first section contains a short discussion of how scholars have conceptualized religion and then focuses on the theories that were advanced to explain the relationship of religion to American politics. Attention is given to some basic problems with the conceptualization and measurement of the religious variables that are emphasized by each theoretical approach.

During the past three decades, there has been growing recognition that religion plays a vital role in American politics. As a result, the study of religion and politics has mushroomed from occasional analyses, largely ignored by the scholarly community, to a major subfield of study. This research has been dominated by studies of the mass public, but has included some examination of political activists and elites as well. The time has come to step back from this considerable body of work and assess what has been learned, what remains unsettled, and what important questions are still unaddressed. This volume seeks to accomplish just that, as each chapter summarizes the state of the art in a particular area of study; reviews important findings, insights, and theoretical advances; outlines current debates that engage scholarly attention; and proposes new avenues for research.

This chapter provides an overview of the major perspectives that seek to explain the linkage between religion and American politics. We begin with a brief discussion of how scholars have conceptualized religion itself and then turn to the theories advanced to explain the relationship of religion to American politics. Here we focus primarily on efforts to account for issue and electoral differences within the public—a major focus of research in American politics. 1 We then identify some basic problems with the conceptualization and measurement of the religious variables emphasized by each theoretical approach. Although our discussion focuses on the mass public, many of our observations apply to studies of activists and political elites as well, because their political attitudes and behaviors are shaped in comparable ways by religion.

What Constitutes Religion?

What is religion and how should it be defined? Most scholars have adopted a substantive, rather than a functional, approach, viewing religion as that related to the supernatural. 2 According to Stark and Finke (2000, pp. 91–92), “[r]eligion consists of very general explanations of existence…[and] religious explanations specify the fundamental meaning of life: how we got here and where we are going (if anywhere).” In a similar vein, Queen (2002, p. 91) argues that religions promote particular interpretations of “why the universe is the way it is, how it ought to function, and the individual's role and obligations in that universe.” Although the core of religion—the realm of the transcendent, supreme beings, and direct communications with the divine—is beyond the realm of social science (Wald and Smidt 1993 , pp. 31–32), research can show how the beliefs, behaviors, and organizations associated with religion shape individual political attitudes and behavior, as well as institutional structures and processes.

No matter how religion is defined, it is a multifaceted phenomenon. Scholars, however, have not always agreed on the number or nature of those dimensions. Nearly four decades ago, Stark and Glock ( 1968 ) identified five: beliefs, ritual practice, private devotionalism, religious knowledge, and a consequential or ethical dimension. 3 More recently, Stark and Finke ( 2000 , p. 103) specified that religious organization and two aspects of religious commitment—objective (behavior) and subjective (beliefs)—serve as the primary components of religion. Similarly, Layman ( 2001 , p. 55) found “three major components of religion that are potentially important for politics: believing, behaving, and belonging.” For Layman ( 2001 , p. 57), the substantive content of a faith is embodied in religious beliefs, 4 the practice of a faith is reflected in behavior, and belonging is revealed by affiliation with a religious community, reflecting “conscious recognition of membership in a social group.” Although we think that believing, behaving, and belonging provide a useful schema for analyzing the political influence of religion, theories connecting religion to American political life put varying emphases on these three dimensions.

Perspectives on the Relationship of Religion to American Politics

How does religion relate to American politics? Historically, two competing theoretical perspectives have sought to explain that linkage: the ethnoreligious perspective and the theological restructuring perspective. The ethnoreligious perspective adopts Emile Durkheim's ( 1915 ) focus on religion as a social phenomenon, emphasizing affiliation with religious groups as the means by which religion shapes political responses. The restructuring perspective traces its roots to Max Weber ([ 1930 ] 1992 ), who saw religion embodied in beliefs, emphasizing their role in shaping political attitudes and behavior. More recently, something of a synthesis has emerged—a perspective that views religion as embodying belonging, beliefs, and behavior, with all three influencing political life. We will consider each in turn.

The Ethnoreligious Perspective: The Centrality of Religious Belonging

Pollsters, pundits, and politicians have relied implicitly on an ethnoreligious interpretation of American politics. As developed by historians, this theory identifies the key religious groups as the historic denominations born in Europe and later multiplying on America's shores. Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and a myriad of other Protestants combined distinct religious worldviews with other cultural attributes, such as ethnicity, race, or regional location. They were soon joined by other traditions, including Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox, and other religious “minorities.” All these religious groups developed their own political cultures (often in conflict with neighboring groups), cultures fostered by religious leaders, houses of worship, and ethnic communities. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, American party politics involved competing alliances of ethnoreligious groups (Kleppner 1970 ; Jensen 1971 ; Kleppner 1979 ; Formisano 1983 ; Swierenga 1990 ).

For these historians, religion shaped American politics primarily through religious belonging, with partisan affiliations and voting behavior reflecting “political expressions of shared values derived from the voter's membership in, and commitment to, ethnic and religious groups” (Kleppner 1970 , p. 35). Given a two‐party system and great religious diversity, specific religious groups naturally sought like‐minded allies to influence American politics, as each group, no matter how large, needed allies if it wished to affect electoral politics. During the 19th century, a coalition of “pietists” (primarily Whig and Republican) faced an alliance of “liturgicals” (primarily Democratic), later joined by southern white Protestants as a result of the Civil War (Kleppner 1970 ; Jensen 1971 ; Kleppner 1979 ). By the mid 20th century, these coalitions had reorganized, but ethnoreligious loyalties remained at their base. Mainline Protestants provided much of the leadership for the Republican Party as well as its most faithful voters, whereas Catholics, Jews, black Protestants and other religious minorities—including out‐groups such as southern evangelicals—constituted the bedrock of the Democratic Party. As a result, early social science research in the 1940s found substantial partisan differences pitting most Protestants against Catholics, Jews and southern evangelical Protestants, even in the context of the supposed dominance of class‐based New Deal politics (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944 ; Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee 1954 ). 5

Despite the historical value of the ethnoreligious model, many observers argue that it has lost relevance in contemporary politics. The underlying bases for ethnoreligious politics have largely vanished: the powerful social integration within religious traditions, the social isolation of those traditions, and the strong tensions among traditions (Kleppner 1979 ). Nevertheless, the political behavior of certain close‐knit religious groups like black Protestants, Latino Catholics, Jews, and Latter‐day Saints suggests that the model may still have relevance. 6 Indeed, even affiliation with a church in the historic evangelical, mainline Protestant or Catholic traditions may still matter politically, in part because such membership is elective today, allowing believers to choose a congenial religious—and political—environment (Green and Guth 1993 ).

Religious Restructuring and “Traditionalism–Modernism”

Although many analysts still focus on religious tradition, variously defined (Manza and Brooks 1999 ; Steensland, Park, Regnerus, Robinson, Wilcox, and Woodberry 2000 ; Layman 2001 ; Leege, Wald, Krueger, and Mueller 2002 ), some sociologists argue that the ethnoreligious description of religious life and its implications for politics has less utility than previously. As ascriptive affiliations break down and geographic mobility increases, Americans move freely among religious settings, ignoring historical ties of doctrine, denomination, ethnicity, region, and even family (Ammerman 1997 ; Pew Forum, 2008 ). As people re‐sort themselves into congenial theological environments, religion has been restructured into two camps with opposing worldviews, fostered by competing religious institutions and leaders. As Robert Wuthnow ( 1988 ) and James Davison Hunter ( 1991 ) have argued, old religious traditions have been polarized by theological, social, and cultural conflicts into a conservative, orthodox, or traditionalist faction on one side, and a liberal, progressive, or modernist one on the other. And for some theorists, the growing number of secular Americans represents a natural extension of the liberal or progressive side—and perhaps the product of struggles over restructuring (Hout and Fischer 2002 ). Wuthnow ( 1988 ) saw such developments splitting religious institutions, but Hunter's ( 1991 ) apocalyptic title, Culture Wars, projected the divisions into the polity as a threat to social stability.

Although scholarly reaction to the “culture wars” thesis has often focused on these purported political manifestations (Williams 1997 ; Fiorina 2005 ; Nivoli and Brady 2006 ), Wuthnow and Hunter's original formulations were rooted in theological developments, especially the emergence of opposing worldviews: The competing camps were characterized by alternative belief systems, different religious practices, and adherence to rival religious movements. Indeed, identification of these competing forces probably constitutes the most valuable insight of the restructuring perspective.

Although critics are rightly skeptical about extreme statements of the restructuring theory, evidence for a milder version is convincing, especially in “old‐line” American religious institutions. The religious press reports continual battles between traditionalists and modernists in almost every major Protestant body, as well as in the American Catholic church. Although rooted in theology and practice, these struggles also produce opposing moral, social, economic, and political perspectives. True, culture war theorists do overstate the consequent polarization, both within religious institutions and the mass public: There are centrists in the religious wars, and moderates in the political wars. However, the religious divisions they identify may well influence politics, if only because both religious and political elites are polarized, thus shaping the cues presented to the public (Guth, Green, Smidt, Kellstedt, and Poloma 1997 ; Fiorina 2005 ).

Religious Classification: Religion as Belonging, Belief, and Behavior

A third formulation builds on the insights of the two previous explanations, arguing that both religious affiliation and religious beliefs, along with religious behavior, help to explain how religion shapes American politics (Layman 1997 , 2001 ; Guth, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt 1999 ; Kohut, Green, Keeter, and Toth 2000 ; Guth, Kellstedt, Smidt, and Green 2006 b; Green 2007 ; Green, Kellstedt, Smidt, and Guth 2007 ). According to this perspective, some groups behave as the ethnoreligious model would suggest, whereas others respond on the basis of contemporary divisions over beliefs, perhaps with religious behavior added to the mix. Accordingly, a hybrid model is appropriate, emphasizing the study of belonging, believing, and behaving, as well as their interactions, as the best means to understand the relationship between religion and American politics.

For the three largest religious traditions—evangelical and mainline Protestantism and Catholicism—the interaction of these three components of religion provides the best explanation for adherents' political choices and behavior. These historical traditions have not only had the longest experience in American politics, but also are the primary battlegrounds for the theological quarrels identified by restructuring theorists. Each includes many traditionalists, an apt term for believers who self‐consciously seek to preserve their tradition against encroachments of the modern world. On the other side are modernists, who want to adapt beliefs and behaviors to modernity. Still other members ( centrists ) retain the beliefs and practices central to their tradition, but with less consistency and commitment than traditionalists, and are often puzzled by the conflicts between traditionalists and modernists. Finally, each tradition has nominal members who claim to belong but place little importance on their faith tradition. As a result, they seldom behave politically according to tradition norms, more often resembling the religiously unaffiliated or secular population.

Both religious affiliation (or its absence) and the traditionalism of one's beliefs and practices connect people to politics (Layman and Green 2005 ). The evidence suggests that religious belonging is still a potent influence on the American public: In recent years, evangelicals have trended strongly in a Republican direction, whereas mainline Protestants, the former centerpiece of the Grand Old Party (GOP) coalition, have moved toward the center. Meanwhile, white Catholics have abandoned their old Democratic ties, and have become a swing group (Guth et al. 2006 ; Green 2007 ; Green et al. 2007 ; Kellstedt, Smidt, Green, and Guth 2007 ).

Such trends, however, are not the end of the story. In each of the largest religious traditions, traditionalist beliefs push individuals toward the Republican Party, whereas modernist beliefs work in the opposite direction. Moreover, faithful church attendance also moves people toward the GOP, whereas the less observant tend to be Democratic (Green 2007 ). Other religious practices have the same effect. 7 How belief and behavior dimensions of religion interact remains to be examined, but a hybrid model—combining affiliation, belief, and practice—has some resonance with contemporary political developments.

This quick review suggests that scholars must consider several dimensions of religion to determine its impact on political behavior of the mass public, activists, and elites. Ethnoreligious theory focuses on religious affiliation or belonging almost exclusively, although it often carries the assumption that denominations or traditions share fundamental theological worldviews and, often, social and political values (McCormick 1974 ). In addition, the American religious traditions extant today have been powerfully shaped by past religious movements, which may have continued relevance. For example, contemporary evangelical Protestantism reflects the confluence of fundamentalist, holiness, Pentecostal, and neo‐evangelical movements of the past. On the other hand, the restructuring perspective assumes that old ethnoreligious alignments have yielded to new religious formations, characterized by distinctive beliefs and practices, and expressed in contemporary religious movements.

In the following pages we examine the theoretical bases for emphasizing religious belonging, religious beliefs, and religious behavior, and then suggest strategies best suited to capturing the political impact of these concepts. The goal is to provide some guidance through the minefields of measurement, considering problems faced by researchers and possible solutions to them. Still, most analysts must rely on surveys that use a small and haphazard selection of religious measures. Therefore, the discussion is geared toward scholars thinking about generating their own surveys as well as those doing secondary analysis of existing data; in other words, we will be shifting between the ideal and real worlds, trying to make the best use of available data.

Religion as Belonging: Denominations, Traditions, and Movements

As a social phenomenon, religion is expressed through affiliation with a local church, a specific denomination, or a religious tradition. Individuals thereby share experiences that derive from their group affiliations. Through patterns of association and interaction, as well as exposure to varied teachings about the way religion is linked to politics, members of different religious groups exhibit divergent political traits. They may experience distinctive patterns of communication, receive different kinds of information, be exposed to varying interpretations of political events, and be subject to different patterns of political recruitment and mobilization. As a result, citizens respond to political stimuli as a function of differences in religious affiliation. As one analysis has it, “[b]elonging can matter in politics by providing a forum in which religion can be linked to political issues, parties, candidates and activities” (Kohut et al. 2000 , p. 13). In this sense, religious groups function like other social groups.

The key question, then, is what is the most useful way to classify religious affiliation? There are many types of religious groups to which a person can claim attachment: a local church, a denomination (the Southern Baptist Convention, the Disciples of Christ), a religious family (Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist), or a religious movement (charismatic renewal or the fundamentalist movement). Moreover, affiliation has both objective and subjective components; one can be a formal member of a religious congregation and a denomination, but can also claim affiliation with, or identify with, such organizations without actually “joining.”

Thus, scholars have classified religious affiliations in various ways, usually based on assumptions about the critical unit of analysis—and the availability of data. For example, early surveys focused on broad faith traditions, asking respondents whether they were “Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, something else, or nothing in particular.” This formulation may have reflected pollsters' frustration with the complexity of American religion—or perhaps acceptance of Will Herberg's ( 1955 ) arguments about the relevant faith groupings. Even if one ignores the growing pluralism of faith traditions, the great diversity of Protestantism itself argues against this approach. As Stark and Glock ( 1968 , p. 56) noted years ago, “when we speak of ‘Protestants,’ as we often do in the social sciences, we spin statistical fiction.” 8

Other scholars (Gaustad 1976 ) have used “religious families” (e.g., Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans) as the unit of analysis. Although an improvement on more global classifications—and perhaps useful for a few theoretical purposes—the utilization of religious families is rarely justified in survey research, given the major theological, cultural, social, and racial differences that separate specific denominations within the same family. Indeed, significant theological and political differences often divide denominational “kin”: Members of the Presbyterian Church in America, the Free Methodist Church, and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod tend to be theologically traditionalist, politically conservative and Republican, whereas adherents to the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are theologically modernist and more centrist or even liberal politically. Such vital differences are obscured by family classifications.

As a result, other scholars prefer the concept of religious tradition to classify adherents. A religious tradition comprises religious denominations, movements, and congregations with similar beliefs and behaviors, all interrelated in some historical and organizational fashion (Kellstedt and Green 1993 ; Kellstedt, Green, Guth, and Smidt 1996 ). Such traditions exhibit several defining characteristics (Smidt 2007 ). First, they have a legacy rooted in specific histories, and they develop and change slowly. 9 They “place limits on what any given individual or groups of individuals can do within the tradition and still remain within it,” and, as a result, religious traditions “shape and construct individuals and cultures” and “are not merely constructed by them” (Queen 2002 , p. 91). Members of a religious tradition exhibit a characteristic way of interpreting the world, based on common beliefs and practices, although not all members necessarily hold these beliefs or exhibit these behaviors. 10 Conscious identification with a tradition is not necessary for inclusion. Many Southern Baptists, for example, do not identify as “evangelical,” although they share religious beliefs and practices with members of denominations more comfortable with the label. 11 As Geoffrey Layman ( 2001 , p. 60) has observed, religious traditions constitute “a useful and increasingly popular conceptualization of religious belonging.” The concept has proved to be to be a powerful predictor of political attitudes and behavior (Kellstedt and Green 1993 ; Green, Guth, Smidt, and Kellstedt 1996 ; Kellstedt, Green, Guth, and Smidt 1997 ; Kohut et al. 2000 ; Layman and Green 2005 ; Guth et al. 2006 b; Green 2007 ; Green et al. 2007 ; Kellstedt et al. 2007 ).

Which specific denominations and faiths should then be included in particular religious traditions? Within America's overwhelmingly Christian population, one can differentiate among evangelical, mainline, and black Protestant 12 traditions; the Roman Catholic tradition; and the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Adding in ethnoreligious factors, one should also consider Latino Protestants and Latino Catholics as distinct traditions, or at least subtraditions. In addition, there are other “conservative” religious groups (Latter‐day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses) and other “liberal” religious groups (Unitarians and New Age groups). And, with growing religious pluralism, surveys discover Americans of non‐Christian traditions (Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism), although usually in numbers too small for extensive analysis (Pew Forum 2008 ). Finally, the unaffiliated population (Hout and Fischer 2002 ) can be regarded as a tradition in its own right, although it includes several types, such as unaffiliated believers (unattached to a church or denomination but exhibiting at least modest levels of religiosity), the nonreligious unaffiliated , and finally, the antireligious —agnostics and atheists. Each unaffiliated group differs in political attitudes and behavior (Green et al. 2007 ; Kellstedt 2008 ).

Some analysts use “conservative Protestantism” (Woodberry and Smith 1998 ; Greeley and Hout 2006 ) to designate a religious tradition (usually instead of “evangelical” Protestantism). Woodberry and Smith ( 1998 , p. 26) argue that “evangelical” should not be used because many “conservative” Protestants do not identify with that label. However, affiliation and identification are analytically distinct phenomena; we should not expect that all, or even most, affiliates of an “evangelical” tradition (a sociological phenomenon) would identify with a religious movement label (a psychological phenomenon), just as most members of mainline Protestant denominations do not identify as “mainliners” despite scholarly use of that designation. In addition, Woodberry and Smith ( 1998 ) argue that “evangelical” itself is confusing, and we agree. The problem emerges because evangelicalism is both an ongoing religious tradition with historical roots and organizational ties, and a religious movement that can be traced to the creation of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. Rather than dropping “evangelical,” it might be better to use “neo‐evangelical” to describe the religious movement. What does seem clear, however, is that “conservative Protestantism” is even more problematic. Not only is it uncertain whether “conservative” is a theological or a political designation (the two are often conflated), but the term is ahistorical, suggesting current characteristics rather than a historical religious tradition. Moreover, “conservative Protestant” too easily encompasses groups such as Latter‐day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses who, although conservative in some sense, fall outside the evangelical Protestant tradition on almost every social, theological, and organizational indicator.

Another questionable analytical strategy is to assign denominations along a continuum comprising “fundamentalist,” “moderate,” and “liberal” categories (Smith 1990 ). This approach has neither a clear theological rationale nor any historical or organizational foundation. Not only does such classification fail to distinguish between black Protestants and other traditions, but it places a distinct religious tradition, Roman Catholicism, in the moderate category, and inappropriately classifies the growing number of nondenominational Protestants as “fundamentalist” (Kellstedt et al. 1996 , p. 176; Steensland et al. 2000 ). As a result, this procedure classifies about one third of Americans as “fundamentalists,” far more than warranted by any historical approach. Even more problematic is the assumption that “all respondents can be categorized along a single continuum based on the fundamentalist/modernist split of the 1920s, which is questionable even among Protestants and Catholics, let alone Buddhists and Hindus” (Woodberry and Smith 1998 , pp. 34–35). Despite a strong critique by Steensland et al. ( 2000 ), assignment of denominations into fundamentalist, moderate, and liberal categories continues in the General Social Survey (GSS) time series and is used in study after study. 13

Assignment to Religious Traditions

If affiliation is as important as we claim, it must be measured much more precisely than most surveys do. Identifying the respondent's basic faith tradition (Christian, Jew, Muslim) is the first step: Do you think of yourself as part of a religious tradition? For example, do you consider yourself as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, other non‐Christian, agnostic or atheist, nothing in particular, or something else? Options such as “agnostic or atheist” and “nothing in particular” legitimize these choices, making them more acceptable to individuals in a highly religious society and avoiding “false positives” in religious affiliation. Indeed, many surveys simply assume a religious affiliation; for instance, the GSS asks: “What is your religious preference?” This may encourage respondents to give a religious preference when they have none.

After ascertaining respondents' broad faith tradition (Christianity, Judaism, and so forth), the researcher should probe for a more specific affiliation. 14 For example, Christians should be asked: “Which specific church or denomination is that?” Respondents may name a religious tradition (Roman Catholic), a denominational family (Baptist), a denomination (the Southern Baptist Convention), some nondenominational affiliation (“I attend a nondenominational evangelical church”), an identification with a religious movement (“I'm a fundamentalist”), a generic response (“I'm just a Christian”), or no affiliation at all. Depending on the response, follow‐up questions should be added. For example, a “Baptist” can be given the choice of major (and minor) Baptist denominations, or simply asked to name a specific denomination. At the end of a series of probes, about 70 percent of respondents provide specific denominational affiliations. 15

Precise affiliation data, then, are essential to accurate assignment of respondents to religious traditions. We recommend the following procedures for classification. At the outset, black and Latino Protestants and Catholics should be placed into four separate categories based on race and ethnicity. 16 This strategy reflects the ethnoreligious approach to religious belonging, as most black and many Latino Protestants attend churches with little or no racial diversity, 17 and the exceptions generally express political attitudes and display voting patterns like those who attend racially exclusive churches. In addition, this strategy obviates some chronic problems of measurement error. For example, many African American Baptists living in southern states report that they are “Southern Baptists.” This is true geographically, but is only rarely the case in denominational affiliation. Hence, the ethnic assignment procedure recommended here makes sense empirically and avoids serious—and frequently made—errors.

The next major task is allocating white Protestants to either the evangelical or mainline tradition. As a starting point, those affiliated with denominations belonging to the National Council of Churches are classified as mainline, whereas those linked to the National Association of Evangelicals are placed in the evangelical category. 18 Not all Protestant denominations, however, belong to one of these organizations, necessitating assignment on another basis. 19 The analyst can usually make the appropriate choice after consulting religious encyclopedias (Mead and Hill 2005 ; Melton 2005 ) or examining a denomination's Web site to learn about its history and doctrinal stands. Although these resources usually provide information needed for classification, for some denominations they may provide mixed messages. Familiarity with American religious history—not always common among social scientists—is a great asset in making “close calls.”

Three additional problems remain. First, if surveys do not probe beyond denominational family responses (Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian), classification options are less than optimal. Under such circumstances, all white Baptists would have to be assigned to the evangelical tradition, because most Baptists belong to evangelical denominations. On the other hand, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian respondents would all count as mainline, because the largest denominations in these families are affiliates of the National Council of Churches. 20

Second, the growing number of “nondenominational” respondents must be assigned. 21 Success here is dependent on clear understanding—and additional data. Assignment choices can be critical. For example, working with the GSS, Greeley and Hout ( 2006 , p. 8) classify all Protestant “no denomination” respondents as mainline Protestants, artificially increasing the number of mainliners. In contrast, Steensland et al. ( 2000 ) classify frequent church attenders in the non‐denominational group as evangelicals, with the less observant assigned elsewhere, 22 thereby arbitrarily increasing the religiosity of the evangelical tradition. Fortunately, when other religious questions are available, such assign difficulties can be mitigated, because belief items and religious identifications can be used to assign the nondenominationals to the evangelical and mainline traditions, and “closet” seculars to the appropriate location (see our discussion in the last section of this chapter).

We can illustrate the importance of detailed affiliation measures and accurate placement in religious traditions by drawing on the fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics (NSRP), conducted in 2004. The 2004 NSRP had a large sample (4000 preelection and 2730 postelection respondents), and a series of affiliation questions and probes that permit precise assignments. Table 1.1 compares this classification with several cruder affiliation schemes often used by pollsters and even some academic studies, using four political variables: the Bush vote in 2004, party identification, pro‐life attitudes, and ideological self‐identification. A quick perusal table confirms the superiority of detailed religious tradition classification over the “Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or Something Else” approach. Although “Protestants” are solidly Republican in vote and identification in 2004 and on the pro‐life side, there are massive differences among evangelical, mainline, black, and Latino Protestants on almost all the political variables, with evangelicals much more Republican and conservative, and black Protestants very Democratic. A similar large gap appears between white and Latino Catholics. Even detailed breakdowns of the “Other” and “None” categories produce advances in predicting political choices, despite the general Democratic and liberal leanings of these groups. Note also that “nominals” (individuals who gave an affiliation but showed few or no signs of religiosity) closely resemble the “unaffiliated,” and that atheists and agnostics take the most liberal political positions in the latter category.

The groups in parentheses do not count toward the 100 percent total in the column.

Source: National Survey of Religion and Politics 2004.

One other comparison is especially telling. Table 1.1 shows that classification into evangelical and mainline Protestant traditions using precise denominational affiliation reveals far more political distinctions than other expedients. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, some exit polls, and many other surveys define evangelicals as “born‐again” white Protestants, and mainliners as “nonborn‐again.” The precise affiliation strategy used by the NSRP reveals a 28 percent gap between evangelical and mainline Protestants in the Bush vote in 2004 (78 percent to 50 percent), whereas the Pew research group's strategy shows a 16 percent margin (66 percent to 50 percent). Clearly, measurement shortcuts sacrifice explanatory power. No doubt future research will refine strategies for determining precise affiliations and how to use this information in religious classification, but such procedures are clearly vital to understanding religion's influence on American politics. (For the assignment of denominations and religious groups to religious traditions, and their relative proportions within each, see   Appendix A .)

Born Again: Conceptual and Measurement Pitfalls

We noted earlier that scholars often use a “born‐again” measure to identify evangelicals. The strategy is tempting, because it is so simple. Instead of employing time‐consuming probes of affiliation, the researcher simply asks Protestants, and perhaps others, if they identify as “born‐again Christians” or if they have had such an experience. In this section we assess the conceptual status of the born‐again phenomenon and conclude with tentative recommendations about the use of such measures.

Conceptually, “born again” could connote an identification , an experience , or both. 23 The born‐again experience can be of two types: an identifiable point in time when an individual recognized his or her shortcomings and asked Jesus for forgiveness and future direction, or a gradual change in which the individual is unable to point to a specific time for the transformation. Still, both specific and gradual born‐again experiences can signify an important transformation. 24 In contrast, “born again” could connote an identification with a religious movement or with a group of people—the “born‐again crowd.” Whether this term reflects an experience or an identification has not been addressed by scholars, although it should be, because the choice will determine the manner in which a born‐again question is asked.

The GSS, following the approach of Gallup, has asked a born‐again question on three occasions (1988, 1991, and 1998): “Would you say you have been ‘born again’ or have had a ‘born‐again’ experience—that is, a turning point in your life when you committed yourself to Christ?” Evangelical, black, and Latino Protestants tend to respond similarly, with about two thirds of each group answering in the affirmative. In contrast, only about one third of mainline Protestants and one sixth of Catholics (Anglo and Latino) claim a born‐again experience.

The NSRP has used an identification question: “Do you consider yourself a ‘born‐again’ Christian?” Despite the different question wordings, responses in the 1992 and 1996 NSRP surveys are similar to those of the GSS. However, for all four Protestant groups (evangelical, mainline, black, and Latino), the percent claiming a born‐again identification jumped to between 75 percent to 85 percent in 2000 and 2004 in the NSRP. In both GSS and NSRP surveys, the born‐again variable was related to partisan identification and presidential voting—in particular for evangelical Protestants, but also, to a lesser extent, for mainline Protestants. The born again were more likely to identify as Republicans and to vote accordingly.

Finally, it should be noted that born‐again questions are poor measures even for capturing evangelical respondents. Although many (although not all) evangelical Protestants claim to be born again, so do some members of other faith traditions (regardless of whether the variable is assessed in terms of an experience or an identity). Sometimes in an effort to identify evangelical respondents, the question is posed as: “Do you consider yourself to be a born‐again or evangelical Christian?” But this too is problematic, for two distinct phenomena are being assessed in one question. 25

Several conclusions can be drawn from these reflections. First, from a theoretical perspective, group identities (regardless of whether they are based in religion) are more likely to have greater political relevance than religious experiences. Second, given the similar findings regardless of the measurement strategy, it is likely that people who report a born‐again experience also claim it as an identity. And, finally, born‐again questions constitute a poor measurement approach to capturing evangelical respondents.

Thus, this brief discussion reveals that both the conceptual status and the measurement status of the widely used born‐again variable are unclear. Moreover, when measures of religious affiliation, belief, and practice are included, the born‐again question exhibits little independent impact in multivariate analyses. 26 Despite these findings, the survey research community is likely to continue asking such questions. The problem then for scholars is to provide explanations for their findings related to the born‐again variable, taking us right back to the conceptual and measurement concerns just discussed.

Religious Movement Affiliation

In addition to affiliation with local churches, denominations, and religious traditions, some individuals identify with religious movements. Sociologists have been preoccupied with religious movements almost from the origins of their discipline, as they sought to distinguish and characterize church and sect (Troeltsch [ 1912 ] 1931; Niebuhr 1929 ). Modern sociologists have argued that movements are generally of two types—those calling for a return to traditional elements of religion ( sectarian or traditionalist ) versus those favoring adjustments or adaptations to modernity ( nonsectarian or modernist ). Examples of traditionalist movements include evangelicalism (or neo‐evangelicalism), fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, and the charismatic movement. 27 Modernist movements are harder to pinpoint, although a liberal–progressive movement, neo‐orthodoxy, ecumenism, the social gospel movement, and even a mainline movement may fit. Precise identification of modernist movements is difficult, in part, because they often originate in seminaries and have been the province of elites, rather than being mass based, like most sectarian movements. As we noted earlier, religious movements during the late 19th and early 20th centuries shaped the modern evangelical and mainline Protestant traditions, and contemporary movements have helped to restructure American religion along theological lines. Religious movements often cross denominational boundaries and, on occasion, even cross religious traditions (the charismatic movement, for example, includes both Protestants and Catholics). For Catholics, some Protestant movement terms may apply (Welch and Leege 1991 ), but other language may be better suited to capture the ebb and flow of Catholic movements. 28

Historians (e.g., Marsden 1980 ; Carpenter 1997 ) and political scientists (e.g., Wilcox, Jelen, and Leege 1993 ) have paid some attention to religious movements. And sociologist Christian Smith ( 1998 ) used identification with religious movements as the conceptual and measurement centerpiece for his work on contemporary evangelicalism. The efforts of political scientists followed the insights of Pamela Conover ( 1984 ), who showed that group identifications were significant predictors of political behavior. Still, the work of political scientists has been sporadic, for the most part, and not well grounded in the theoretical work of sociologists and psychologists.

Religious movement identification is primarily a psychological phenomenon, whereas religious affiliation is primarily sociological, as affiliation has a much more objective foundation and social basis undergirding the concept. At times, both affiliation and movement identification are conceptualized as religious identities (Alwin, Felson, Walker, and Tufis 2006 ), and it is certainly possible that some claims of affiliation may reflect little more than identification. Nevertheless, most respondents who claim an affiliation also report some worship attendance. Hence, we believe that it is better to conceptualize affiliation as a sociological phenomenon, similar to gender or race, rather than a psychological one (although obviously there are psychological aspects related to these types of variables).

Assessing Religious Movement Identification Measures

The lack of a clear theoretical basis for using movement identifications has resulted in a confusing variety of measurement approaches and specific items. The American National Election Studies (ANES) arguably mixed Protestant movement identifications with theological postures in a forced‐choice question asked of all Christians from 1990 to 1998: “Which one of these words BEST describes your kind of Christianity: Fundamentalist, Evangelical, Charismatic or Spirit‐Filled, Moderate to Liberal.” This wording implies that at least one term fits. In contrast, in 1996 and 1998 the GSS asked: “When it comes to your religious identity, would you say you are a fundamentalist, evangelical, mainline, or liberal Protestant, or do none of these describe you? 29 Thus, the GSS item acknowledges the possibility that none of the terms fits.

Other formats have also been used. For example, Christian Smith ( 1998 ) proceeds very differently, asking: “Thinking about your religious faith, would you describe yourself as: a fundamentalist, an evangelical, a mainline Protestant, a theologically liberal Christian,” followed by the inquiry: “Which of those would you say best describes your religious identity?” If a respondent could not choose, another question was posed: “If you had to choose, would any of these describe you at all? ” 30 However, Smith's religious identification questions were asked only of churchgoing Protestants (attending two or three times per month or more) or of those Protestants for whom religion was highly salient.

This diversity in format reveals little agreement on how to proceed in measurement. As a result, there are several problems in using movement identifications. First, the diversity of question format and wording noted earlier means that findings are likely to be method dependent—“what you get depends entirely on what you ask” (Alwin et al. 2006 , p. 543), or, we might add, to whom you ask the questions. For example, churchgoing Protestants should have greater recognition of the terms than Protestants who rarely attend church or those from other traditions. 31

Second, religious movements do not have formal memberships per se. 32 As a result, individuals can identify with these movements, but many do not, and, when asked, some are unaware of them, and others give confused responses. 33 Why do these difficulties emerge? It may be because the meaning of movement identities to respondents is less clear than a denominational response (for example, “charismatic” is less concrete than “Southern Baptist” or “Bethel United Methodist Church”). As a result, there is greater potential for measurement error in responses to movement labels than to denominational affiliation.

Third, when respondents are given the option to choose multiple identities, and do so, ranking them becomes a problem. One approach is to group all respondents who choose only sectarian or traditionalist religious labels and then combine those who choose only nonsectarian or modernist ones, leaving in the middle all who select mixed identities or none at all. Even though some studies attempt to solve this problem by asking respondents to choose the “best” identification, difficulties still arise: How do you classify two individuals who choose “evangelical” as their primary identity, but select very different secondary identities (e.g., “liberal” or “progressive”)?

Fourth, the identities used in the ANES, GSS, and Smith surveys apply to Protestants only, and may not fit minority Protestants. Trying to apply Protestant movement terms to Catholics and other religious traditions ignores the movements within these other traditions that have little or nothing to do with fundamentalism, neo‐evangelicalism, or liberal–progressive movements among Protestants. Clearly, much greater effort is needed to explore movement identifications for non‐Protestant traditions.

Despite the pitfalls to using movement identifications, some results suggest their utility. For example, identification with Protestant and Catholic sectarian (or traditionalist) movements pushes individuals toward political conservatism and the Republican Party, whereas identification with nonsectarian (or modernist) movements is linked with political liberalism and the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, religious identifications are more meaningful predictors of political attitudes and behaviors when religious traditions and movement identifications are congruent. 34 Thus, members of the evangelical tradition who identify with a sectarian movement exhibit more conservative political attitudes than those who do not. In contrast, mainline Protestants who accept a nonsectarian label hold more liberal attitudes. Consequently, scholars using movement identifications should regard them as supplements to religious tradition and not replacements. They provide valuable information on evangelical and mainline Protestants who are familiar with movement terms.

There may be a more efficient way in future research to tap respondents' preferences for sectarian and modernizing movements. In the 2004 NSRP, respondents were asked whether their church or denomination should preserve traditional beliefs and practices, adjust these selectively, or modernize, with a second question asking if the respondent took sides in such arguments, and, if so, which side. The responses formed a reliable scale that behaved in much the same way across religious traditions, correlated quite well with existing Protestant and Catholic movement identifications, and often worked as well or better in predicting political variables. This approach has several advantages over traditional measurements of movement identifications: (1) the questions can be asked of respondents in every religious tradition (leaving out the “unaffiliated”) and (2) it avoids using movement identifications that really apply to white Protestants only. In sum, religious movement identifications lead to complicated data analysis, and this explain in part why so little progress has been made in linking these measures to political behavior. Future research might experiment further in attempting to measure directly believers' location on the traditionalist–modernist movement dimension. 35

Approaches to Religious Beliefs

Beliefs are central to any understanding of religion. As Stark and Glock ( 1968 , p. 16) put it, “theology, or religious belief, is at the heart of the faith.” Such emphasis assumes that human behavior is governed by cognitive processes and that individuals relate to the world in atomistic rather than organic fashion. Thus, religion embodies the “fundamental beliefs, ideas, ethical codes, and symbols associated with a religious tradition, including what others call a theology or belief system” (Wald and Calhoun‐Brown 2007 , p. 26). These beliefs have social consequences, as “people act politically, economically, and socially in keeping with their ultimate beliefs,” in that “their values, mores, and actions…are an outgrowth of the god or gods they hold at the center of their being” (Swierenga 1990 , p. 154). As a result, religious beliefs should serve either as a constraint on, or a generator of, political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior.

Because beliefs are viewed as the critical link between religion and political variables, their effects are understood to be more “immediate” and direct, the product of internal psychology (Wald and Smidt 1993 , p. 32). According to theories of cognitive consistency, those for whom religious beliefs are highly salient should feel greater pressure to bring their political attitudes into congruence with their religious convictions than those for whom such beliefs are less salient (Hoge and de Zulueta 1985 ).

If beliefs provide the critical link between religion and politics, which beliefs are central? Analysts have relied on a bewildering array of concepts and measures, but neither of the most popular social science data sources (i.e., the GSS and ANES) has asked many belief questions. The most commonly used measure taps beliefs about biblical authority (Jelen 1989 ; Kellstedt and Smidt 1993 ; Clydesdale 1999 ). Unfortunately, most Bible items are plagued by response options that put Americans into a very few categories, often suggesting very high views of biblical authority. 36 Although highly skewed distributions may reveal the high regard that Americans have for the Bible, they also limit the use of such items for explanatory purposes.

When several belief measures are available, scholars frequently combine them in a scale tapping religious traditionalism. For example, the Christian faith has historically held that Jesus was born of a virgin, rose from the dead, and will return to earth someday; such items can be used to create an index of Christian traditionalism. This illustration reveals, of course, that such measures are tied to particular faith traditions—what constitutes Jewish or Muslim traditionalism will differ from that for Christians. Nevertheless, because Christianity is the dominant American faith, most items assessing traditionalism draw from Christian tenets (Stark and Foster 1970 ; Driedger 1974 ; Davis and Robinson 1996 ).

This raises the thorny issue of whether traditionalism should be measured by items that are tradition specific or ones that apply to all or most traditions. Religious traditions have different foundational beliefs and normative practices that constitute traditional belief and behavior for their members (Green 2000 ). Catholic and Jewish traditionalists should exhibit some beliefs and practices distinct from those of evangelical or mainline Protestant traditionalists. Indeed, there are even facets of traditionalism that may be unique, whether beliefs (e.g., that priests should not marry, that females should not be permitted to be rabbis) or behavior (e.g., going to confession, keeping kosher).

If restructuring theorists are correct, however, current theological disputes cross the lines of religious traditions. Thus, in principle, it may be possible to identify certain beliefs and behaviors that are characteristic of most, if not all, religious traditionalists. For example, one might expect that traditionalists, regardless of specific location, would hold that there is a God and believe in an afterlife. In addition, traditionalists should agree that “there are absolute standards of right and wrong” determined by transcendent authority, not by human convention (Hunter 1991 ). Finding such commonalities may be important to ascertaining whether traditionalists from various religious faiths are coalescing politically, as the restructuring model predicts. Much more conceptual and measurement work will be required to identify and tap such pan‐tradition beliefs.

Although scholars often focus on beliefs located on the religious dimension that we have called traditionalism–modernism (and we will show later that such measures have powerful predictive ability), other kinds of religious beliefs have been used as well, as dictated by theoretical interests or a particular research problem. For example, scholars have examined eschatological beliefs (about the “end times”), which are important facets of some evangelical theologies and a growing presence in popular writings. These beliefs influence public attitudes about conflict in the Middle East (Guth, Fraser, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt 1996 ), but also affect environmental attitudes (Guth, Kellstedt, Green, and Smidt 1993 ; Guth, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt 1995 ).

Other approaches have shown some promise in connecting religious beliefs to political behavior. Some researchers have examined social theology , or views on how one's religious faith relates to politics. Such analysts see specific faith traditions and religious beliefs fostering broader social perspectives, incorporating individualistic or communitarian worldviews that provide responses to core human questions and shape political values (Leege 1988 ; Leege and Kellstedt 1993 , pp. 216–231; Guth et al. 1997 ), although other researchers use somewhat different language. Finally, conceptually, social theology can also entail attitudes toward church–state separation, the role of religion in election campaigns, and the role of the church in civic life (Guth 2007 ).

In addition, some social scientists have examined how images of God may influence social and political attitudes and behavior (Welch and Leege 1988 ). People not only differ about the existence of a transcendent being, but have vastly different understandings of the nature of such an authority—and such differences can have political consequences. During the early 1980s, sociologist Andrew Greeley helped develop GSS items to tap different images of God using paired comparisons. 37 He found Americans with “maternal” and “gracious” conceptions of God tended to be political liberals and Democrats (Greeley 1988 ), support environmental protection (Greeley 1993 ), and oppose the death penalty (Greeley 1989 , p. 98). 38 Similarly, Stark ( 2001 ) has argued that conceptions of God will affect moral attitudes but only to the extent that God is seen to judge human activities.

Recent efforts have built on the earlier work, using multivariate analyses, controlling for sociodemographic variables as well as other religious factors (church attendance, affiliation, and beliefs about biblical authority). Even with controls, the image‐of‐God variable 39 was a significant predictor of attitudes on sexual morality, abortion, and partisan identification. Moreover, images of God differ among religious groups, and such differences serve as a significant predictor of political attitudes among their members (Bader and Froese 2005 ). Finally, the Baylor Religion Survey of 2005 ( www.baylor.edu/isreligion.org ), using a somewhat different battery, found four conceptions of God (authoritarian, benevolent, critical, and distant) that explained variation in attitudes on social issues and the role of government.

Other scholars have attempted to measure American civil religion. Although civil religion can assume different meanings, it frequently is viewed as “an attempt by citizens to imbue their nation with a transcendent value” (Wald and Calhoun‐Brown 2007 , p. 54). Although some have examined civil religion through content analyses of public rhetoric (Bellah 1974 ; Hart 1977 ; Hart and Pauley 2004 ), there have also been a few surveys examining such perspectives among the mass public and among clergy (Wimberley 1976 , 1979 ; Smidt 1980 , 1982 ; see also Guth, chapter 9 , in this volume).

Thus, scholars have explored a varied range of religious belief items in surveys. Even when defensible belief items are included, however, they are often used in problematic ways. Sometimes beliefs are mistakenly used as surrogates for religious group membership. For example, analysts may classify those with a literal view of scripture as “fundamentalists.” In this case, a Bible item could be used more legitimately either (1) to tap fundamentalism as a belief system and its effects on other attitudes or behavior, or (2) as a means of discriminating among those in a religious group (to what extent do evangelical Protestants subscribe to biblical literalism?). 40

In this vein, some widely publicized surveys produce findings for “religious groups” that are really categorical groups produced by arbitrary definitions. Thus, when the Barna Research Group specifies that “evangelicals” must be born again, 41 state that their faith is very important, and adhere to six additional beliefs, 42 it creates a categorical group without clear historical or conceptual meaning. All respondents (including Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or Latter‐day Saints) who meet such criteria are placed in an “evangelical” subgroup. However, religious groups are not defined by all members holding the same beliefs; rather, they are defined by patterns of affiliation and social interaction. In this instance, Barna's “evangelicals” are unlikely to recognize each other as fellow believers, or exhibit any social cohesion. Religious beliefs should be analyzed for what they represent (beliefs)—and not as surrogates for religious affiliation.

A similar problem arises in reverse when analysts use denominational affiliation as a surrogate for religious beliefs, ordering affiliation with denominations or religious traditions along some hypothetical “high” to “low” traditionalism belief score (see, for example, Layman 2001 , pp. 78–87). This expedient is particularly tempting when belief items are unavailable. Such an ordinal scale may seem to have advantages over nominal measures in multivariate analyses, producing a single measure rather than numerous dummy variables for traditions. However, such a surrogate will be correlated with various other religious measures (e.g., church attendance and religious salience), and therefore any statistical results using such a measure will be difficult to interpret, because one cannot be certain whether belief, belonging, or behavior drives the findings. 43

Scholars have just begun to explore the political impact of religious belief. The relative utility of these (and other) belief items can be determined only through further research and analytical comparisons. Unfortunately, relatively few surveys include enough belief items to allow a thorough comparative examination of how different kinds of beliefs influence political attitudes and choices. Given the paucity of belief questions in the large surveys like ANES and GSS, smaller surveys may be necessary to ascertain the type of belief items needed for political behavior research. Special attention should be given to beliefs that are central to the many religious traditions that make up the American religious landscape. What evidence we have suggests that deeply held theological beliefs are often related to political attitudes and behavior, either directly or indirectly. Indeed, because religious beliefs are central to many Americans and are at the core of their worldviews, it would be surprising if this were not the case.

Approaches to Religious Behavior and Salience

All religions assume the importance of religious practice or behavior. Two aspects of religious practice can be distinguished: public ritual observance (such as attendance at worship services) and private devotional practices (such as prayer or Bible reading) (Stark and Glock 1968 ). Like beliefs, religious practices vary by tradition. Although attendance at worship services is usually normative, some traditions put a greater emphasis on such participation, and expectations on the conduct of corporate worship may vary as well. 44 Some religious practices are tradition specific: The rite of confession is not normative for Protestants, but once was and still may be for Catholics. 45 Just as variation in beliefs causes problems for researchers, so, too, does the variety in normative religious practices. Limited survey space precludes asking many questions about religious practice, and structuring surveys to tap tradition‐specific religious practices may be technically difficult and costly. Nevertheless, at a minimum, items on ritual observance and private devotionalism should be asked, because both help ascertain the way in which an individual is religious. 46

In addition, the salience or importance of religion to the individual is frequently used as a measure of “religiosity,” although it is technically not a religious practice item. Many surveys allow respondents to choose a point on an ordinal scale to reflect how important religion is in their lives. The ANES uses a two‐part question, asking first whether religion is important to the individual, and if so, whether religion provides “some,” “quite a lot,” or “a great deal” of guidance, producing a four‐point scale. Although salience is technically attitudinal, it provides a good indication of an individual's religious commitment, and thus the likelihood of engaging in religious activities. Empirically, religious salience is highly correlated with measures of both public and private religious behavior. 47 Consequently, many scholars conceptualize religious behavior in terms of religious commitment (Layman 2001 , p. 57), combining the frequency of public ritual practice, private devotionalism, and religious salience in a scale (Kellstedt et al. 1996 ). With a paucity of religious measures, this approach makes sense, but it does mask the individual impact that conceptually distinct religious measures—practice versus salience—have on political variables.

When not used as a component of a religiosity measure, salience may serve other purposes. For example, it can be used to weed out the nominally affiliated—in other words, those who claim a religious affiliation, but say that religion is not important in their lives. In the same vein, it may be used to differentiate among the religiously unaffiliated. Unaffiliated believers have no affiliation, but exhibit at least a modicum of religious belief and practice, suggesting that religion is of some importance to them. Unaffiliated nonbelievers have no religious affiliation and say religion is unimportant in their lives. Among them is a subset of the antireligious: the agnostics or atheists. Each group is different politically (Kellstedt 2008 ). Despite the growth in the unaffiliated population, such differences are usually ignored in social science research (see, for example, Hout and Fischer 2002 ). Salience measures may help sort out these subgroups.

Assigning Respondents on the Basis of the Three Bs

After this review of the religious variables used by social scientists, we can now combine the insights of the ethnoreligious and restructuring perspectives. As we have seen, the evidence suggests that religious traditions still matter. In particular, evangelicals are more conservative and Republican than either mainline Protestants or white Catholics, whereas black Protestants remain firmly Democratic, as do Jews and Latino Catholics. However, restructuring theorists also have a point: The old disputes between religious traditions are now overlain by divisions within them, making it important to assess differences within religious traditions and alliances across them. Some research has used church attendance to tap these divisions, by dividing active adherents within traditions from those less involved. However, this fails to get at the belief distinctions between traditionalists and modernists that are central to the restructuring model. To produce the most useful classification of American religious groups, we must draw from both theoretical perspectives.

In the following illustrative procedure we use the 2004 NSRP. As mentioned earlier, the NSRP has a large sample (4,000 preelection and 2,730 postelection), a precise affiliation measure, and includes multiple religious belief and behavior items. Some measures, such as church attendance, are similar to items in other surveys, but some, like belief in God, life after death, and biblical authority, have been improved by expanding response options. 48 All told, the religious batteries permit construction of a classification combining the ethnoreligious and restructuring perspectives with much greater confidence than is possible using the ANES or GSS.

As we argued earlier, the most difficult problems in assigning individuals to religious traditions include differentiating evangelical and mainline Protestants (see   Appendix A ), assigning nondenominational respondents, and classifying those who name a religious family but can give no further specifics. Some nondenominational respondents provide some information on the type of church they attend (fundamentalist, Pentecostal, charismatic, or evangelical) 49 and can be assigned to the evangelical tradition with some confidence. We allocated other nondenominational respondents to the evangelical tradition if they identified as sectarian Christians or claimed a born‐again identification, and assigned those identifying as nonsectarian (liberal–progressive, mainline, or ecumenical) Christians or not born again to the mainline tradition. Nonattenders and those with low religious salience are placed in the “nominally religious” category. These procedures produced satisfying results: For nondenominational respondents, those assigned as evangelicals gave Bush 79 percent of the vote in 2004, compared with 40 percent of those assigned to the mainline and 31 percent for the nominally religious. Respondents in denominational families who name an unknown denomination or give no further specific information beyond “Lutheran” or “Presbyterian” were assigned to Protestant traditions using the same criteria as for nondenominationals. 50

The second step in creating our combined classification is to calculate a composite measure of religious beliefs, because the theological or restructuring model argues that traditionalist and modernist factions will differ dramatically in political choices. Restructuring theory suggests that these divisions will be most developed and politically potent among members of the three largest American religious traditions: white evangelical and mainline Protestants, and white Catholics. We used five beliefs relevant to the religious traditions of most Americans: in God, life after death, the Bible, the devil, and the theory of evolution. The average inter‐item correlation is a very healthy .54, demonstrating that such beliefs are highly constrained. For operational purposes, we used a factor score of these items. 51 Again, we stress that other beliefs could be used. Experimentation shows that alternative specifications are almost equally powerful, suggesting that many belief items are highly correlated with traditionalism–modernism, although this may vary somewhat by religious tradition.

Next we add a “behavior” measure to the restructuring analysis, as traditionalists should be more active in traditional religious practices than modernists are. Ideally, multiple indicators of religious behavior should be chosen, including both public ritual and private devotional items. We included items on church attendance, Bible reading, prayer, financial giving to religious causes, and small‐group involvement. The average intercorrelation among these items was .55—again, very high. 52 Once again, we used a factor score to tap the underlying religious behavior dimension.

Finally, a second‐order factor analysis of the belief and behavior factor scores produced a “traditionalism” score. We divided this measure into four categories for each of the three large white religious traditions, using religious salience to determine the size of the traditionalist, centrist, modernist, and nominal categories for evangelicals, the mainline, and white Catholics. 53 Although it is also possible to divide members of the smaller religious traditions in this way, we do not typically report findings for such divisions. In most instances, the respondents are too few, and our theory suggests—usually correctly—that the ethnoreligious model still provides a better description of their political behavior. Nevertheless, there is tantalizing evidence that restructuring has begun in some of these traditions (Guth et al. 2005 ).

Does our combined scheme have merit empirically? Table 1.2 examines the nation's three largest religious traditions on several political variables: presidential vote in 2004, party identification, abortion attitudes, and self‐identification as a liberal or conservative. The table reveals massive internal variations for the evangelical, mainline, and white Catholic traditions based on traditionalism. Although differences continue to exist across the three largest traditions (see table 1.1), within‐group variation by theological division is even greater. For example, the range for the Bush vote between evangelical traditionalists and nominals is from 88 percent to 55 percent; among mainline Protestants, from 65 percent to 31 percent; and among white Catholics, from 74 percent to 28 percent. Theological restructuring is obviously a vital political force.

In sum, this “Three Bs” measure not only captures the reality of contemporary links between religion and presidential voting, but also those between religion and party identification, abortion attitudes, and political ideology (Guth et al. 2006 ; Green et al. 2007 ). 54 Differences within the three largest white religious traditions are truly impressive. The results comport nicely with media reports of conflicts raging within many denominations and religious traditions today. The differences between traditionalists and the modernists and their “nominal” allies seem so pervasive that conflict within religious traditions is likely for years to come. The task for social scientists is to capture these differences with more sophisticated measurement strategies than have been the norm in the past. 55

Future research can be planned using appropriate items, but is it possible to examine within‐tradition differences in the past using available data sources? The answer is yes, but with some limitations. In the ANES, the standard three‐option Bible item was asked in both 1964 and 1968, and again in 1980 through 2004; a church attendance item has been asked regularly. Assignments to the Three Bs categories can be made as follows: traditionalists are biblical literalists who attend church regularly, modernists hold a “low” view of the Bible and rarely or never attend, and centrists fall in the middle on one or both measures. Using this strategy shows that the traditionalist–modernist split had no effect in the 1960s, a modest influence on evangelicals only in the 1980s (when traditionalists became more Republican), and a strong impact on evangelicals, mainliners, and white Catholics from 1992 through 2004 (Kellstedt et al. 2007 ; McTague and Layman, chapter 12 , this volume). A similar procedure using GSS data produces similar findings: Presidential voting was largely unrelated to traditionalism–modernism in the 1980s, but was clearly affected in the 1990s.

Source: National Survey of Religion and Politics 2004.Numbers in bold italics represent findings for the entire sample, and for all members of the three religious traditions.

A final important point should be made about the religious variables in our conceptual scheme. Although we have illustrated the impact of belonging, believing, and behaving variables in combination, each can be used individually in multivariate analyses. It may well be that religious tradition is what really matters for some dependent variables, whereas religious beliefs are the best predictor of others, and religious practice may influence yet other aspects of politics. For example, traditionalism in belief seems to have a powerful impact on political attitudes and ideology, whereas religious behavior is a much better predictor of political behaviors, such as voting. Carefully specified multivariate models can often disentangle the distinct influence of each type of religious influence.

Conclusions

This chapter has argued that neither the ethnoreligious nor the restructuring model is a complete explanation for the links between religion and American politics. The ethnoreligious model focuses on religious affiliation as the driving force in the political behavior of the American public. This explanation is the impetus behind the historical argument that religious affiliation was (and is) central to understanding the pietist/liturgical differences during the 19th century, the Protestant–Catholic divide during the 20th century, and the evangelical/mainline/Catholic divisions today. The model also accounts for the contemporary political behavior of Latino Catholics, black Protestants, Jews, and assorted minority religions. At the same time, the restructuring model seems to explain newer divisions within the large white traditions, and increasingly, some other groups as well. Currently, then, our argument suggests that the restructuring model fits best the largest white traditions, whereas the ethnoreligious model continues to hold sway among most minority traditions. In sum, both explanations have at least a degree of empirical validity. Belonging, believing, and behaving all matter in understanding American political behavior.

Clear theory and quality measurements are central to adequate tests of these models. This means that each dimension of religion should be carefully measured. Progress has been made during the past two decades in measuring religious belonging, but the investigation of religious beliefs lags seriously behind, and that of religious behavior is not much further advanced. In the case of the former, scholarship is uncertain about which beliefs are central to understanding political behavior. Our argument is that the conceptualization and measurement of traditionalist–modernist beliefs, couched within the context of religious traditions, is the direction in which research should go. In the case of religious practices, again, research should focus on behaviors central to religious traditions, including both ritual practice and private devotion. As for religious movement affiliations, a focus on the church–sect distinction in the sociology of religion may prove to be a fruitful conceptual starting point from which careful measurement strategies can follow. As the chapters in this volume show, much has been learned about religion and American politics during the past three decades. We are optimistic that the best is yet to come.

Includes numerous small denominations associated with the Holiness and Pentecostal families with Church of God in their denominational name. Percents in each column add up to 100, with deviations resulting from rounding.

Consequently, the theoretical approaches discussed here should not be viewed as the only ways to analyze the linkage between religion and public life.

The substantive approach views religion in terms of beliefs concerning the supernatural or in “those systems of thought embodied in social organizations that posit the existence of the supernatural” (Stark and Bainbridge 1985 , p. 3). However, other analysts contend that it is the function that beliefs play in the life of the individual (or society) that is important, regardless of whether they embody supernatural beliefs.

Although these authors were cognizant of the belonging component of religion, their efforts in this study focused on religious commitment or religiosity.

Religious beliefs not only capture the basic worldview of adherents, but provide a basis for both religious belonging and behaving.

The ethnoreligious pattern was captured well in the famous book by Will Herberg ( 1955 ) titled Protestant–Catholic–Jew .

It is possible for religious subcultures to form in an increasingly urban setting that foster distinct patterns of association and social interaction, that create alternative educational institutions, and that are attentive to different media of communication (see, for example, Smith [ 1998 , chap. 4]).

Drawing from data in the Fourth National Survey of Religion and Politics (NSRP), this finding also holds for Bible reading, frequency of prayer, small‐group involvement, and financial giving to the church.

As Stark and Glock ( 1968 , p. 56) note, “Protestantism [in contrast to Catholicism] includes many separately constituted groups and the only possible ground for treating them collectively would be if they shared in a common vision. [But] this is clearly not the case.”

Despite the relatively static nature of religious traditions, it is possible for denominations and local churches to move from one tradition to another, although such changes are rare and occur very gradually. For example, during the past several decades, the American Baptist Churches USA appear to have moved from their evangelical roots into the American mainline, although not without internal dissent. The membership of this denomination in the National Council of Churches is evidence that mainline Protestantism is the appropriate location.

For example, although evangelical Protestants are more prone than members of other Christian traditions to hold that believers should share their religious faith with others, not all evangelicals necessarily hold this position. And many in other traditions believe strongly in evangelism efforts.

For example, in Christian Smith's study of churchgoing evangelicals (1998, p. 241), only 19 percent of Southern Baptists chose to identify as “evangelical,” another 22 percent chose “fundamentalist,” whereas a larger 28 percent selected “mainline” and another 22 percent opted for “liberal” in describing their primary identification. In fact, many Baptists do not even claim the label “Protestant,” applying that label only to denominations more closely linked in time to the Reformation.

Given the historical experience of African Americans, and the unique theological interpretation of that experience, black Protestantism should be viewed as a distinct religious tradition (Sernett 1991 ).

The fundamentalist, moderate, liberal classification also has empirical difficulties. If you create a religious tradition variable using the GSS, following the suggestions of Green, Guth, Smidt, and Kellstedt ( 1996 , pp. 188–189) and Steensland et al. ( 2000 ), and then cross‐tabulate that variable with the GSS classification, you find that 90 percent of evangelical Protestants are placed in the fundamentalist category with all but one of the remaining evangelicals classified as moderate. Yet those moderates were more likely than the fundamentalists to vote for Bush in 2000 (69 percent to 57 percent) and to identify as Republicans (52 percent to 42 percent). Mainline Protestants, classified by religious tradition, fell into moderate and liberal categories using the GSS classification (26 percent were moderate and 74 percent were liberal). The “liberals” gave Bush 60 percent of their votes, the “moderates,” 55 percent. In addition, the liberals were more likely to identify as Republican than the moderates. As these results are for whites only, they are not a function of race. These findings are counterintuitive and suggest great caution in the use of the GSS classification.

In the 2004 NSRP survey, 74 percent claimed a “Christian” affiliation.

This figure is based on responses to questions across NSRP studies over the past four presidential elections (1992–2004).

Black Catholics are few in most surveys; the limited evidence suggests that they resemble other blacks politically.

We estimate that 75 percent of black Protestants and 43 percent of Latino Protestants attend churches predominantly of their ethnic group. These estimates are based on questions in the NSRP about the racial composition of the congregation one attends, asked during presidential elections from 1992 to 2004.

The Web site for the National Association of Evangelicals is www.nae.net ; for the National Council of Churches, the Web site is www.ncccusa.org .

The following distinctions may be helpful in making these assignments. Generally speaking, evangelicals take a particularistic approach to how life after death is obtained (belief in Jesus as savior is the only way to salvation), whereas mainliners tend to be more universalistic (belief in Jesus is one way to salvation, but there may be other ways). For evangelicals, the Bible is inspired by God, often to be interpreted literally, and is viewed as the ultimate source of authority, whereas mainline Protestants, in contrast, are more likely to view the Bible as a book inspired by God, but not to be taken literally, as a source of authority, but not necessarily more important than human reason. “Membership” in an evangelical context occurs more frequently by means of personal conversion (in other words, being born again), whereas in mainline circles membership usually comes through infant baptism and participation in traditional faith communities. Evangelism and missions tend to be more important for evangelicals than for mainliners. Relationships with the world outside the church also differ, with evangelicals favoring strategies of personal conversion and mainliners favoring programs of social justice. Worship styles also tend to differ, with evangelicals favoring the informal and experiential, and mainliners leaning toward the formal and liturgical.

These assignments have serious political implications. American Baptists, the mainline group, gave Bush 64 percent of their votes, whereas evangelical Southern Baptists gave him 80 percent. Members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the mainline denomination, supported Bush with 59 percent, whereas Missouri Synod Lutherans gave him 71 percent. The mainline Presbyterian Church USA supported Bush with 55 percent, whereas the evangelical Presbyterian Church in America gave him 83 percent. The moral of the story: Specificity in responses is essential. These data are drawn from the 2004 NSRP.

In the 2004 NSRP, 16 percent of the national sample did not provide a specific denominational response.

Low‐attending “nondenominational” and “no‐denominational” respondents were assigned to “missing values.”

Analytically, “born again” could also be viewed as a status—in other words, that I am born again in the sight of God. Such recognition of one's standing before God need not reflect some religious experience nor constitute some broader social identity with others. However, we are unaware of any research effort that measures being born again in this fashion.

Analysis reveals that when examining answers to questions as to whether one has had a powerful religious experience, whether one has had an identifiable religious turning point, and whether one has made a commitment to Jesus Christ, it is having made a commitment to Christ, rather than some powerful religious experience per se, that characterizes the “born again” (see Smidt 1989 ). In the 1992 and 1996 NSRP surveys, those who identified themselves as born again were asked: “By ‘born again’ do you mean a specific, one‐time conversion experience or a gradual development of faith over time?” Most Protestants said that the experience had been “gradual,” except for evangelicals, who were evenly divided. Among evangelicals, those who gave a “sudden” response were much more likely to identify as Republicans and to vote for GOP presidential candidates than those who chose the “gradual” alternative.

Although related, these two movement identification labels should not be equated, because many Americans understand these terms differently. For example, the Exploring Religious America Survey (PBS/U.S. News & World Report 2002) asked Christians in two separate questions whether they would describe themselves as evangelicals and as born again. Among those who labeled themselves born again, less than half (38 percent) also described themselves as “evangelical Christians.” And, although “evangelical” and “born again” are frequently treated as identical concepts, more than one in four (27 percent) self‐identified evangelical Christians did not describe themselves as born again. The comparable figure from the 2004 NSRP survey was 16 percent.

In the 2004 NSRP survey, for example, Protestants were asked a born‐again item. At the bivariate level, born‐again respondents (whether evangelical, mainline, black, or Latino) were more likely to identify as Republicans and to vote for Bush, to hold pro‐life positions on abortion, and to identify themselves as “conservative” than nonborn‐again religionists. Nonetheless, in a logistic regression model predicting the 2004 vote for Bush, the born‐again variable washed out completely, whereas the religious belief, religious practice, religious movement, and religious affiliation measures all were significant predictors of the Bush vote (data not shown). This analysis does not suggest that a born‐again item should be dropped from future surveys, but does imply that there is likely to be greater payoff in the alternative religious measures just noted.

One might also treat born‐again identifications as a possible measure of identification with a sectarian movement.

“Traditional” versus “progressive” may also work for Catholics, with traditionalists believing in papal infallibility, going to confession, and praying the rosary, whereas progressives are less attached to traditional Catholic doctrines and practices. In NSRP data, the “traditional” versus “progressive” distinction among Catholics also has political implications. Traditional Catholics tend to identify as Republican and vote for the GOP, whereas progressives tend to support Democrats.

In 2000, the GSS added “Pentecostal” to the list of religious identities.

Smith ( 1998 ) also asked: “Do you consider yourself a charismatic Christian or involved in the charismatic movement, or not?” This item was not used much in the subsequent analysis, however.

Thus, it is not surprising that Smith ( 1998 , p. 234) found that his respondents were able “to locate themselves accurately on a Protestant identity map.”

Many who see themselves as a part of a movement are not formal members of any particular movement organization, whereas others may be members. Movements, however, are made up of many individuals and organizations; no single organization can encapsulate a movement.

For an example that illustrates some of the confusion in response to these identity questions, Gallup asked respondents in a 1979 national survey whether they were a “Pentecostal or charismatic Christian.” Among those who responded affirmatively, approximately 3 percent said they did not believe in God, 6 percent reported that they did not believe that Jesus was God or the Son of God, and 13 percent said they did not believe in the devil (Smidt 1989 ). As an illustration of the nonresponse given to movement items asked in a forced‐choice format, Alwin et al. ( 2006 ) found, using GSS religious identity measures, that significant percentages of respondents failed to identify with any of the options presented: One third of Protestants failed to identify with any of the movement terms (fundamentalist, evangelical, mainline, and liberal) in 1996 and 1998, with the percentage reaching 45 percent in 2000 (even with Pentecostal added to the list in 2000). Additional Protestants gave “other,” “don't know,” or “no answer” responses that brought the percentages of “nonresponse” among Protestants to about half.

Evangelicals by religious tradition gave Bush 78 percent of their votes in 2004, but evangelicals who identified with sectarian movements gave him 88 percent. The mainliners gave Bush 50 percent of their votes, but nonsectarian mainliners gave him 37 percent. Source: 2004 National Survey of Religion and Politics.

For a detailed discussion of this new religious movement measure, see Guth, Kellstedt, Smidt, and Green ( 2005 ); Guth et al. ( 2006 b); and chapter 9 , this volume The new measure had higher interitem correlations with religious measures (beliefs, behaviors, and salience) than a five‐point sectarian/nonsectarian measure using religious movement identifications, and that included a traditionalist/liberal–progressive distinction for Catholics. We think the reason for this is that respondents have difficulty comprehending movement identification terms. There is almost no nonresponse on this new measure, and it can be asked of respondents in every religious tradition.

For example, the ANES Bible question provides the response options of “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally word for word,” “The Bible is the word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally,” and “The Bible is a book written by men.” In 1964, only 15 percent of the American people chose the last option; in 2004, 16 percent did so. “Literal” beliefs decline over time from approximately 50 percent during the 1960s to about 35 percent during the 21st century.

Respondents were asked to place themselves along a continuum in which the following four pairings served as the end points: (1) friend and king, (2) judge and lover, (3) master and spouse, and (4) mother and father.

These God–image items were later included in the 1998 International Social Survey Program in which nearly 40,000 respondents across 32 countries were surveyed. Using these data, Froese and Bader ( 2008 ) differentiate between an active and authoritarian image of God, and find that both images of God have a powerful effect on moral attitudes in the United States, whereas only those with active images of God are more likely to support policies of greater economic equality.

Based on six GSS items, the image‐of‐God variable is scored along a single dimension where, at the one end, God is viewed as a partner or friend who is relatively distant from earthly affairs and, at the other end, God is viewed in more authoritarian terms and as one who takes an active interest in the world and in people personally.

Evangelicals as a social group do not, by definition, subscribe to biblical literalism. Empirically, in the 2004 NSRP, two thirds of evangelicals do so compared with just more than one third of the sample as a whole.

The Barna Research Group defines a born‐again Christian in terms of two criteria. First, the respondent must have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that continues to be important in his or her life today. Second, the individual must acknowledge that, after death, he or she will go to heaven because sins have been confessed and Jesus Christ has been accepted as savior (see Hackett and Lindsay 2008 ).

Individuals must believe that (1) they have a responsibility to share their faith in Christ with non‐Christians; (2) Satan really exists; (3) eternal salvation is gained through God's grace alone, not through human efforts; (4) Jesus Christ lived a sinless life while on earth; (5) the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and (6) God is an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today. Such a definition has no relationship to affiliation or belonging.

Using the 2004 NSRP, we created a surrogate “traditionalist belief” measure by ordering religious traditions as follows: evangelical Protestant, black Protestant, Latino Protestant, other Christian traditions (Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Eastern Orthodox), unaffiliated believers, Latino Catholic, mainline Protestants, Anglo‐Catholics, other non‐Christians (Muslims, Buddhists, and so forth), liberal faiths (Unitarians, New Age groups), Jews, unaffiliated nonbelievers, and atheists/agnostics. The order was based on factor scores of five religious belief items with the mean factor score for each group assigned to the surrogate measure. The measure was highly correlated with a religious behavior factor (.57), with religious salience (.52), and with a sectarian/nonsectarian movement measure (.64). Yet, in a logistic regression, it predicted only 58.5 percent of the Bush vote correctly, whereas dummy variables for the religious traditions predicted 67.6 percent accurately. (The dummy variables for religious traditions also had more than double the pseudo R 2 value of the surrogate belief measure.)

For example, in white Protestant churches, services rarely go beyond an hour, whereas in the black Protestant tradition, services may simply be getting started at that point. In addition, the style of service differs dramatically from tradition to tradition. Some follow a set liturgy or order of worship, whereas others are much more experiential and change “as the Spirit leads.”

Thus, tradition‐specific behaviors need only be asked of those affiliated with that religious tradition.

Using a measure that taps the public religiosity (e.g., church attendance) and a private religiosity (e.g., private prayer), one can ascertain four distinct ways in which religiosity might be expressed: diminished (low in terms of both), privatized (high in terms of private, low in terms of public), public (low in terms of private, high in terms of public), and integrated (high in terms of both) (see, for example, Smidt [2006]). One's form of religious expression shapes civic and political engagement even when controlling for standard sociodemographic variables as well as religious tradition (see also Smidt, den Dulk, Penning, Monsma, and Koopman 2008 ).

Guth and Green ( 1993 , p. 158) note that scholars have used the concept of religious salience in two distinct ways: general salience, the importance that religion has in a person's life, and religious relevance, “the perceived relevance of faith to an individual's specific attitudes or decisions.”

For example, our Bible measure has five categories rather than the usual three: the Bible is (1) inspired by God and interpreted literally, (2) inspired by God but not to be interpreted literally, (3) inspired by God but with human error, (4) a great book of wisdom and history, or a (5) book of myths and legends. The Bush vote in 2004 varied in linear fashion from 20 percent for the “myths and legends” response category to 71 percent for the “literalists.” Using the standard threefold categorization, the Bush vote ranged from 37 percent for the least orthodox response to 71 percent for the literalists.

We think it is a good idea to ask these respondents for the name and address of their church, allowing the researcher to get at specific denominational affiliations. This procedure is followed by the Baylor researchers (Dougherty, Johnson, and Polson 2007 ).

Using these assignment criteria in NSRP 2004 data, respondents were divided into sectarian and nonsectarian categories. Sectarian Baptists, for example, were much more likely to vote for Bush than their nonsectarian counterparts (67 percent to 19 percent). For Lutherans, the figure for sectarians was 92 percent versus 49 percent for nonsectarians. Sample numbers were not large in all cases.

Factor loadings range from .73 to .84, with one factor explaining 61 percent of the variance, whereas the coefficient alpha for the five items is .84.

The items loaded on a single factor (variance explained 64 percent) and had a coefficient alpha of .86.

In the sample as a whole, salience percentages varied from the highest to lowest as follows: 41 percent, 18 percent, 21 percent, and 21 percent. These percentages were used as the cut points in the belief‐behavior factor to determine traditionalist, centrist, modernist, and nominal subgroups among evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, and white Roman Catholics.

We have found that the measure works for numerous measures of political behavior, including foreign policy, church–state questions, and “moral” issues (Guth 2006 , 2007 ).

In previous work (Guth et al. 2005 , 2006 ), we used a measure of religious movement identification, in addition to the religious belief and behavior measures, in producing the traditionalism score. This involved two questions tapping directly respondents' preference for traditionalist or modernist movements within their denominations. Elaborating the traditionalism measure in this way only enhances the explanatory power of our classification. We have not used this measure here because the requisite questions are not available in other data sets in the 1992 to 2004 time series.

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Green, John C. , James L. Guth , Corwin E. Smidt , and Lyman A. Kellstedt , eds. 1996 . Religion and the Culture Wars. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

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Religion in American Politics: A Short History

2009, Journal of Church and State

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Religious Studies Review

James L . Guth

Thomas Varacalli

The objective of this course is to help students understand the historical significance and continued relevance of religion in American political life. Students will be asked to critically examine the interplay of religion and politics through class discussion and the writing of four papers rooted in close textual analysis of the required reading. The course is divided into four units. The first section will explore the contemporary debates concerning the First Amendment through the lens of the Founding Fathers. The second part will examine one of the classics of American political thought, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The third section will survey how religion has affected American political life during three particular historical moments (the Civil War, the immigration of Catholics and Jews in the late nineteenth century, and the Civil Rights Movement). The course concludes with contemporary reflections on the state of the so-called culture wars.

The intersection of religion with politics remains an important topic in political science from the earliest times. Some observers argue that there is a wall of separation between these two entities, others say that separation is impossible since religion is a part of human life and believing in something is what differentiates us from other creatures. It is hard to decide who is right but it is obvious that there must be some boundaries defining what role religion and politics should play in each other’s realms and what influence they can make on each other.

Daniel Silliman

Religion and Politics in the United States examines the relationships between Americans' ultimate values, beliefs, and practices and Americans' involvement in public affairs. We will look at different ways that relationship has been conceptualized, historically. We will look at different ways it has been lived, too. The class will explore the historical conflicts and complications of that relationship, the interactions, intersections, and inter-connections. This is not a survey course, but will instead focus on four specific areas. First, we will look at how some of America's Founding Fathers thought about the role of religion in public affairs. Second, we will examine a range of political theology, considering how mainline Protestants, Catholics, evangelicals, and anabaptists have thought about politics in the context of the Christian life. Third, we will look at the U.S. Presidency, and the place of religion in the Oval Office. Finally, we will look at one historical movement, where a religious group, white evangelicals, transformed into a political bloc, the religious right.

Although there has been much speculation about the way that religion shapes American attitudes on foreign policy, there are few empirical analyses of that influence. This paper draws on a large national sample of the public in 2008 to classify religious groups on Eugene Wittkopf&#39;s (1990) classic dimensions of foreign policy attitudes, militant internationalism and cooperative internationalism. We find rather different religious constituencies for each dimension and demonstrate the influence of ethnoreligious and theological factors on both. Combining the two dimensions, we show that American religious groups occupy different locations in Wittkopf&#39;s hardliner, internationalist, accommodationist, and isolation-ist camps.

Minhas Majeed M A J E E D Khan

The study attempts to examine the role of religion in US politics and explains the origin and history of Evangelicals (a Protestant Christian Movement) and their influence on US domestic and foreign policy with particular emphasis on Evangelicalism in the post 9/11 period. One There is no shortage of disagreement in scholarship negating the impact of religion on US policymaking. Nevertheless, the acknowledgment of influence of religion in politics remains largely undiminished. To begin with, the US history reveals that religion has had a significant influence on US public and political life since the early colonial times when German and English settlers came to America in search of religious freedom. Scholars have responded in a number of ways about religion's role in US politics. It is important to note that American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an increasingly changing mix of the two. History shows that trouble tended to come when one of these forces grew too powerful in proportion to the other, 1 and the trends in US foreign policy, on most occasions, clearly show this tendency. Patrick Henry presents the counter argument; 'it cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not only by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ'. 2 This point is also sustained by James Bryce, an intellectual of the British Liberal Party in 1880 that clergymen were the first influential citizens in the US. They not only had authority in churches but also emphasized on the moral reformation of the society. They slowly enlarged their sphere of influence beyond their churches; so much that in 1900, around 650 full-time and 2200 part-time Evangelists were touring the country. 3 Other scholars, claiming that American religiosity was too vigorous a force to be kept within its limits, support the above arguments. The US foreign policy was never beyond the reach of religious influence. 4

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Essay on What is Religion for Students and Children

500+ words essay on what is religion.

Religion refers to a belief in a divine entity or deity. Moreover, religion is about the presence of God who is controlling the entire world. Different people have different beliefs. And due to this belief, many different cultures exist.

Further, there are a series of rituals performed by each religion. This is done to please Gods of their particular religion. Religion creates an emotional factor in our country. The Constitution of our country is secular . This means that we have the freedom of following any religion. As our country is the most diverse in religions, religion has two main sub broad categories:

Monotheistic Religion

Monotheistic religions believe in the existence of one God. Some of the monotheistic religions are:

Islam: The people who follow are Muslims . Moreover, Islam means to ‘ surrender’ and the people who follow this religion surrender themselves to ‘Allah’.

Furthermore, the holy book of Islam is ‘ QURAN’, Muslims believe that Allah revealed this book to Muhammad. Muhammad was the last prophet. Above all, Islam has the second most popular religion in the entire world. The most important festivals in this religion are Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

Christianity: Christian also believes in the existence of only one God. Moreover, the Christians believe that God sent his only Jesus Christ for our Salvation. The Holy book of Christians is the Bible .

Furthermore, the bible is subdivided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. Most Importantly, Jesus Christ died on the cross to free us from our sins. The people celebrate Easter on the third day. Because Jesus Christ resurrected on the third day of his death.

However, the celebration of Christmas signifies the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Above all Christianity has the most following in the entire world.

Judaism: Judaism also believes in the existence of one God. Who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses and the Hebrew prophets. Furthermore, Abraham is the father of the Jewish Faith. Most Noteworthy the holy book of the Jewish people is Torah.

Above all, some of the festivals that Jewish celebrate are Passover, Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, Hanukkah, etc.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Polytheistic Religion

Polytheistic religions are those that believe in the worship of many gods. One of the most believed polytheistic religion is:

Hinduism: Hinduism has the most popularity in India and South-east Asian sub-continent. Moreover, Hindus believe that our rewards in the present life are the result of our deeds in previous lives. This signifies their belief in Karma. Above all the holy book of Hindus is ‘Geeta’. Also, Hindus celebrate many festivals. Some of the important ones are Holi-The festival of colors and Diwali- the festival of lights.

Last, there is one religion that is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic.

Buddhism: Buddhism religion followers do not believe in the existence of God. However, that does not mean that they are an atheist. Moreover, Buddhism believes that God is not at all the one who controls the masses. Also, Buddhism is much different from many other religions. Above all, Gautam Buddha founded Buddhism.

Some FAQs for You

Q1. How many types of religions are there in the entire world?

A1. There are two types of religion in the entire world. And they are Monotheistic religions and Polytheistic religions.

Q2. What is a Polytheistic religion? Give an example

A2. Polytheistic religion area those that follow and worship any Gods. Hinduism is one of the examples of polytheistic religion. Hindus believe in almost 330 million Gods. Furthermore, they have great faith in all and perform many rituals to please them.

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Essay on “Religion And Politics” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Religion And Politics

 Essay No. 01

Terrorism in Punjab and J & K is endorsed and encouraged by the religious fanatics. Religious places have become the convenient place of refuge for the terrorists and threat to religion is the justification of terrorism. Secular-minded people condemn the induction of religion in politics whereas religious diehards believe that religion is the basis of politics. Is the latter view consistent with the secular character of our State? What will be the long-term effects of mixing up religion and politics?

Gandhiji used to say “My religion is my politics and my politics is my religion.” If religion stands for moral qualities like the love of truth, faith in God, love for human beings it would moralize politics. This is what we need today. In a world where respect for human life is at its lowest ebb, where politics is identified with cheating and political leaders are oblivious of moral consideration we need politics imbued with morality.

But religion is nothing more than a bundle of outdated rituals, hackneyed customs, and irrelevant practices. As it is divorced from practical life; it is not in touch with the realities and demands of the present-day life. It suspends the reasoning power and makes human thinking pointless. It is today a powerful opiate for the masses; with the help of religion, they are drugged into a hostile and dangerous state of thinking. They cannot be persuaded; they confirm their prejudices and never try to change them. They become idolatry and repose full faith in their leaders. Instead of cultivating tolerance, they become intolerant to other religious groups. All of this is incompatible with the democratic spirit which needs broad-mindedness, an open mind, belief in reason, and faith in the potentialities of the common man. Clearly, if we want to weaken our democracy we may allow religion to have incursions in politics.

For India politics as an ally of religion is more dangerous. Religion with diametrically opposed practices may lead to disintegration. Religious dogmatism breeds illiteracy which is available on a large scale in India. So religion should be a private affair having nothing to do with public affairs. It can be achieved only through a thorough overhauling of the outlook.

 Essay No. 02

Religion and Politics

There was a time in the west when religion played an important part in the governance of a state. The king was not only the political head of the state but also the religious head. Such was the importance of religion that many wars were fought between nations holding two opposite views on religion.

In the west with the passage of time, the importance of religion grew less and less in politics. But in the east, especially in India, religion continued to be important. Religion was held in such a high esteem by the Indians, that the British used it as a weapon to divide the country into two nations. They exploited the inherent differences between the Hindu and the Muslim faith. Politically they formed two separate electorates based on religion thus, dividing the people further.

Further, the communal violence that followed the partition demonstrated that mixing religion with politics would be very bad for the development of India and its people. Religion made two communities. Which were living in comparative harmony for centuries, kill and destroy each other

These riots made the founders of our constitution opt for a secular state so that each one is free to practice his or her faith. Without interference from the state Muslims who had stayed back in India were given the same status as the others. Sadly enough it was the death of Gandhiji, which brought peace between the two communities. Soon people forgot their religious differences. They got down to the act of nation-building in earnest.

Until a decade ago, religion was once again dragged into politics; this complicated various problems that the society faced. Vote bank politics and fulfillment of personal gains gave rise to the problems of Punjab, Assam, Kashmir, and Ram Janma Bhoomi.

If looked at objectively each of these problems leads to stagnation of development of a particular part of the country. However, by taxing religion, these problems have been blown out of proportion.

The only solution therefore would be to carefully separate religion from them. And then work towards a solution

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Religion and Politics in India

Introduction, religion and politics in india before independence, relationship between religious and political beliefs, relationship between religion and groups/institutions, works cited.

Globally, religion has always played an integral part in influencing political culture of nations. For many decades, not only has religion influenced social living through its doctrine teachings, but also has been continuously powerful in propelling political ideologies in many nations. Coupled with its linguistic federalism, ethnic problems, and religious discrimination issues, religions have historically spurred political mobilization.

Several Asian studies have constantly indicated a great connection among religions and political development and reforms of the Asian continent, before and after their independence. Two main historical religions of India, the Hinduism, and the Muslim have greatly contributed to fragmented Indian nationalism, with this nation experiencing a mixture of peace and hostility resulting from religious politics. Religious attrition and differences in India before and after its independence may have been significant to the India’s politics. Central to examining democracy development in India, the essay explores the association religion and politics in India before and after independence.

Major political transformations in India greatly associates with the involvement of religious political movements, which since history initiated communal participation in development of nationalism of India (Moore 316). Before independence, political pressure was eminent in India and characterised by political differences between non-Hindu and ethnic minority. Indian State was initially a nation that served in the ideology of secular nationalism under the reign of secular Congress Party that dominated Indian politics (Sahu 243). However, Hinduism was politically influential but their Muslim counterparts remaining sceptical about Hindus religious politics.

Before independence, the caste notion in Hindu society was most influential in social and political organisation. Moore (317) describes “caste system as the organisation of the population into hereditary and endogamous groups” where males engaged in social and political functions. There were four castes in hierarchical order and associated with spiritual, social and political progression in India. Sahu (246) identifies the castes as “Brahmanas (priests and scholars), Kshatriyas (political rulers and soldiers), Vaishyas (merchants and cultivators), and Sudras (artisans and labourers)”

The caste system significantly contributed to political systems in India during the Mogul era from sixteenth century throughout to eighteenth century. The caste system strongly engaged in political reforms and improved the lives of Hindus, though with limited operations following incessant confrontations with the Muslims. As stated by Moore (317), “caste served, and still serves, to organise the life of village community, the basic cell of the Indian society and the fundamental unit that determined strong leadership.” The caste system having a great affiliation with the Hindu religion had significant obstruction to Indian democracy as history identifies this socio-political system as an era of agrarian bureaucracy.

Caste system symbolized the Indian polity and imposed political governance based on military rule that supported taxation and leadership under the chieftains. This means that politicians of Mogul era used the caste reservations to acquire unfair wealth.

The differences towards nationalism before independence of Hindu and formation of the Muslim-dominate Pakistan may be the potential backdrop to fragmented political beliefs and stands in India (Moore 371). Subsequent to Indian partition, disparity commenced intensely on political ideologies as Muslims had most majority of its potential leaders to the Muslim-dominate Pakistan. Following such issues “Indian Muslims supported and voted for the secular Congress party on the understanding that the Congress government would maintain Muslim Personal Law and other aspects of the Muslim culture” (Sahu 245).

The confrontation between the Muslim and the Hindus continued when the Hindu nationalist parties including Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pressured the secularist Congress Party that began losing its political authority after the split. Along religious differences, proponents of secularism and Hinduism have always differed in political beliefs regarding to nationalism and doctrine that should dominate national leadership. Despite having greater political influence, Hinduism has failed to consolidate its religious authority in India.

Hinduism is the most complicated religion as each cultural linguistic zone contains its own worshiping culture and doctrine. As noted by Sahu (245), “Hindus worship different gods and goddesses, which are limited portrayals of the unlimited – ultimate reality that is formless, nameless and without personality.” Coupled with the fact that the BJP possesses leaders from Hindus, but with different religious ideologies following their broad cultural homogeneity, there exists no state religion with dominant principles in national governance. Each of the political parties contains a mixture of religious cultures practiced concomitantly, with each of the two religions influencing each other ideologically (Moore 368).

Contesting to the power of nationalism, none of the religions has managed to conquer national governance. Being proponents of secularism, Muslim differ distinctively in religious ideologies; other minor religions differ with Hinduism, and Hindus themselves have differing doctrine principles. Having shared religious power in national governance where both Muslim and Hindu religious practices apply, there is no State religion.

The India’s partition of 1947 was arguably the backdrop to formation of political groups and institutions that emerged on religious divide. Thought to be the solution towards political differences between the Hindus and the Muslim, the 1947 partition itself was the course of major political pressures in India (Moore 371). Majority Hindus differ between themselves, Muslims have different religious ideologies and Christians, and other minority groups differ as well. BJP, Ram Rajya Parishad, and RSS who were the most anti-congress parties continually existed on the foundations of Hinduism or Hindu nationalism.

Contrary to its opponents, majority of Muslims commenced with their support over Congress secularist party. Following incessant religious attritions on which religion should become a state religion, politics of India divided along linguistic lines. According to Sahu, “religious politics divided as follows: “Indian Muslims developed their own form of occupation-based caste distinction (247); Sikhs demanded a creation of a Punjabi-speaking province” (248) and Hindus remained devoted to their motive of making India a Hinduism state.

The history associated with India’s political transformations on religious grounds is considerably diverse and complicated. Religious contribution to Indian nationalism has remained a convoluted issue, with all religions existing in India having different ideologies towards state nationalism. The Indian Muslims who remained in India after the 1947 partitioning strongly opposes the efforts of Hindus in developing of Hindu nationalism, Christians and other minority religions have had a notion of discrimination.

In addition, Hindu themselves posses different religious ideologies, with some worshiping single god, others worshiping several gods, with all having different worshiping centres. India is still a nation of many religions with shared political influence and none of the religions has dominance in the national governance. This means that efforts of partitioning India into India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan was not a solution towards religious differences as the remaining Indian Muslims have also had significant political consequences in the India’s political stand.

Moore, Barrington. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1967. Print.

Sahu, Sunil. Religion and politics in India: The emergence of Hindu Nationalism and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Print.

Essay on Religion and Politics in India

Students are often asked to write an essay on Religion and Politics in India in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Religion and Politics in India

Introduction.

Religion and politics in India are deeply intertwined. India is a land of diverse religions, and this diversity influences its political landscape.

Religious Influence

Religion plays a significant role in Indian politics. Many political parties are based on religious identities, leading to a blend of religion and politics.

Secularism in Politics

Despite the religious influence, India is a secular country. The government is committed to treating all religions equally, ensuring no discrimination.

Challenges and Conclusion

While the blend of religion and politics can create unity, it can also lead to conflicts. It’s crucial for India to maintain its secular nature while respecting religious diversity.

250 Words Essay on Religion and Politics in India

India, a country of diverse cultures and religions, has always found its politics deeply intertwined with religion. This amalgamation has significantly influenced the socio-political landscape of the nation, shaping its democratic ethos and electoral politics.

Historical Perspective

The birth of India as an independent nation was marked by a partition along religious lines, setting a precedent for the interplay between religion and politics. The political discourse in India has been marked by religious identity, with parties often using religion as a tool to mobilize voters.

Religion as a Political Tool

Religion in India is not just a spiritual matter; it’s a socio-political entity. Political parties capitalize on religious sentiments to foster a sense of identity and unity among their supporters. This strategy often leads to the polarization of society along religious lines, creating a breeding ground for communal tensions.

Secularism and Politics

The Indian constitution advocates for secularism, ensuring equal rights and freedom for all religions. However, the practical implementation often gets blurred with political interests. The selective use of secularism by political parties to appease certain religious groups has raised questions about the true essence of Indian secularism.

The intersection of religion and politics in India is a complex phenomenon. While religion plays a significant role in shaping political ideology and voter behavior, it also poses challenges to India’s secular fabric. Striking a balance between religious freedom and political integrity is crucial for the sustenance of India’s pluralistic democracy.

500 Words Essay on Religion and Politics in India

The interplay of religion and politics in india.

India is a country characterized by a rich cultural, religious, and political tapestry. The interplay of religion and politics in India is a complex and profoundly influential dynamic that shapes the nation’s social and political landscapes.

The Historical Context

The intertwining of religion and politics in India is deeply rooted in its historical context. The nation’s partition in 1947, based on religious lines, set the stage for religion to become a central player in political discourse. The political ideologies that emerged, such as secularism and communalism, were deeply influenced by religious considerations.

Religion in Political Discourse

Religion plays a significant role in the political discourse in India. Political parties often employ religious symbolism and rhetoric to mobilize support. This can be seen in the way political campaigns are often crafted around religious identities, with promises made to protect the interests of specific religious communities. This has led to a form of identity politics where religious affiliations often dictate political alignments.

Religious Mobilization and Vote Bank Politics

The concept of ‘vote bank’ politics has further entrenched the role of religion in Indian politics. Political parties often target specific religious communities, promising to protect their interests in return for their votes. This has created a situation where religion is used as a tool to garner political support, often leading to divisive politics and communal tensions.

The Challenges and Implications

While religion can provide a sense of identity and community, its intertwining with politics has led to a number of challenges. It has often resulted in divisive politics, fostering communal tensions and sometimes even leading to violence. The politicization of religion also undermines the secular ideals enshrined in the Indian constitution, which envisages India as a secular state where all religions are treated equally.

The Way Forward

The way forward lies in strengthening the secular fabric of the nation. This requires promoting a political culture where religion is not used as a tool for political gains. It involves fostering a sense of inclusive nationalism that transcends religious identities. Education and awareness can play a crucial role in this, helping to promote a culture of tolerance and mutual respect.

In conclusion, religion and politics in India are deeply intertwined, shaping the nation’s social and political landscapes. While this dynamic has led to challenges, it also presents opportunities for fostering a more inclusive and tolerant society. By promoting a culture of secularism and mutual respect, India can ensure that religion serves as a force for unity rather than division.

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Origins and Escalation: the Genesis of the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe

This essay about the Thirty Years’ War provides a comprehensive overview of its origins, escalation, and eventual resolution through the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. It explores the religious, political, and territorial tensions that fueled the conflict, highlighting the complex web of alliances and rivalries that emerged. The essay underscores the devastating impact of the war on Central Europe, while also acknowledging its lasting legacy in shaping the modern state system and emphasizing the importance of dialogue and cooperation in preventing future conflicts.

How it works

In the annals of European history, few conflicts stand as testament to the complexity of religious, political, and territorial tensions as the Thirty Years’ War. Spanning from 1618 to 1648, this protracted struggle ravaged Central Europe, leaving death, destruction, and profound social upheaval in its wake. To understand the genesis and escalation of this conflict, one must delve into the intricate web of factors that precipitated its outbreak and sustained its ferocity for three decades.

The origins of the Thirty Years’ War can be traced back to the religious and geopolitical fault lines that divided Europe in the early 17th century.

At the heart of the conflict lay the deep-seated religious animosities between Catholics and Protestants, exacerbated by the Protestant Reformation of the previous century. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had attempted to establish a fragile peace by granting rulers the right to determine the religion of their territories, but it proved insufficient to quell religious tensions.

The spark that ignited the powder keg came in 1618, with the Defenestration of Prague. This dramatic event, in which Catholic officials were thrown from a window of Prague Castle by Protestant nobles, marked the beginning of open hostilities between Catholic and Protestant factions in the Holy Roman Empire. The Bohemian Revolt that followed saw the Bohemian Estates reject the authority of the Catholic Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II, leading to his decisive victory at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620.

Ferdinand’s subsequent efforts to impose Catholicism on his Protestant subjects in Bohemia further inflamed tensions throughout the Empire. Protestant rulers, alarmed by the prospect of Habsburg hegemony and the erosion of their religious freedoms, formed the Protestant Union in 1608 to defend their interests. In response, Catholic princes rallied under the banner of the Catholic League, setting the stage for a broader conflict that transcended mere religious differences.

The Thirty Years’ War soon evolved into a complex web of alliances and rivalries, fueled by dynastic ambitions, territorial disputes, and foreign intervention. The conflict drew in major European powers, including Spain, France, Sweden, and Denmark-Norway, each pursuing their own strategic interests on the Continent. Spain, under the Habsburg monarchy, sought to maintain Catholic dominance and extend its influence, while France, ruled by the Catholic Bourbon dynasty, saw an opportunity to weaken its Habsburg rivals.

The war’s escalation was marked by a series of military campaigns, sieges, and battles that ravaged Central Europe and exacted a heavy toll on its inhabitants. The brutality of the conflict was epitomized by atrocities committed by both sides, including pillaging, massacres, and the widespread devastation of towns and countryside. The horrors of war were compounded by famine, disease, and economic collapse, leading to untold suffering among civilian populations.

Despite the signing of numerous peace treaties and truces throughout the conflict, the Thirty Years’ War dragged on as new actors entered the fray and old grievances remained unresolved. The intervention of external powers, such as Sweden under King Gustavus Adolphus and France under Cardinal Richelieu, further prolonged the war and shifted its dynamics. The tide began to turn against the Habsburgs following their defeat at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631, as Swedish and French forces gained the upper hand.

The war’s denouement came with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a series of treaties that not only brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War but also reshaped the political landscape of Europe. The Peace of Westphalia established the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (“whose realm, his religion”), reaffirming the right of rulers to determine the religion of their territories. It also recognized the independence of Switzerland and the United Provinces (modern-day Netherlands) from the Holy Roman Empire, marking the decline of imperial authority.

The legacy of the Thirty Years’ War is profound and far-reaching, shaping the course of European history for centuries to come. It laid bare the destructive potential of religious intolerance, nationalism, and great power rivalry, leaving scars that would linger long after the cannons fell silent. Yet, amidst the devastation and despair, the war also gave rise to new ideas of sovereignty, diplomacy, and international law, laying the groundwork for the modern state system.

In the end, the Thirty Years’ War stands as a cautionary tale of the human cost of fanaticism, ambition, and geopolitical machinations. It serves as a reminder of the fragility of peace and the imperative of dialogue, cooperation, and compromise in resolving conflicts that threaten the fabric of society. As Europe emerged from the ashes of war, it embarked on a path towards greater stability and prosperity, tempered by the lessons learned from the bloodiest chapter in its history.

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Origins and Escalation: The Genesis of the Thirty Years' War in Central Europe . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/origins-and-escalation-the-genesis-of-the-thirty-years-war-in-central-europe/ [Accessed: 1 Jun. 2024]

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PapersOwl.com. (2024). Origins and Escalation: The Genesis of the Thirty Years' War in Central Europe . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/origins-and-escalation-the-genesis-of-the-thirty-years-war-in-central-europe/ [Accessed: 1-Jun-2024]

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