March 10, 1998
Contact:
Ann Marie Deer Owens, (615) 322-2706
[email protected]
Vanderbilt political scientist calls for improved measures of religion in voting behavior
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The increasingly important effect of religious doctrine on American voting behavior signals the need for improved measures of religious beliefs, according to Vanderbilt University political scientist Geoff Layman. In a new article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, he calls for more sophisticated measurement of religious beliefs within the leading academic surveys.
"Religious beliefs have become a major source of political cleavage between theological conservatives and theological liberals both within and across traditions," Layman said.
His research, published last summer in Public Opinion Quarterly, found that religious commitment and doctrinal conservatism have become increasingly important predictors of how Americans vote and the party with which they identify.
Despite all the attention by political scientists to the Christian Right and the movement of white Evangelical Protestants into the Republican ranks, he said there are also broader developments in American religion and its connection to politics. "Newer organizations of the Christian Right have fashioned a more ecumenical strategy, trying to move beyond the largely fundamentalist base of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority to reach out not only to other evangelicals, but also to theological conservatives in a wide range of Judeo-Christian denominations," Layman said.
He questions why academic studies have not improved their measurement of religious beliefs at a time when the political importance of these beliefs are growing.
Prior to 1980, the National Election Study, one of the principal academic studies to measure the effect of religious beliefs on voting, contained only two items about religion: denominational affiliation and frequency of church or synagogue attendance. While Layman said that these questions have been improved and new questions added, they fail to capture theological divisions across a wide range of religious traditions.
For example, the two belief questions included in most surveys - view of the Bible and the born-again query, are most appropriate for identifying orthodox believers within the evangelical tradition. However, he said that they are less useful for capturing theological divisions across the wide range of religious traditions.
"Certainly, traditionalists within evangelical denominations place a higher premium on born-again conversion experiences than do orthodox members of the mainline Protestant and Catholic, not to mention Jewish, traditions," he said.
Layman said that one national survey in 1996 on religious orientations and political behavior included questions that are more central to several religious traditions, such as belief in life after death, the view that all religious faiths are equally "true and good" and the observance of high holy days. However, these questions are not in the surveys used by the vast majority of students of American political behavior.
"Questions that distinguish theological conservatives from theological liberals within all of the major religious traditions would allow political scientists to get a more precise handle on the changing nature of the relationship between religion and politics," Layman said. "Political scientists could gain a better sense of whether the movement of committed evangelicals into the Republican Party is truly part of a broader growth in the connection between theological and political orientations."
For more news about Vanderbilt, visit the News and Public Affairs home page on the Internet at www.vanderbilt.edu/News/
###
RSS