Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2019, 80:1 9–27
doi: 10.1093/socrel/sry041
Advance Access Publication 3 November 2018
Paul Hanly Furfey Lecture
Why Aren’t We Paying Attention?
Religion and Politics in Everyday Life
Jennifer Glass*
University of Texas
The sociology of contemporary religious behavior is vital to understanding a whole range of other social
and political issues. The current deep division in contemporary American political and social life tracks
the deep ideological divide between white conservative Christians and others (both white and nonwhite) so closely that it is almost impossible to intellectually suggest there is no relationship between the
two. Contemporary sociology has assumed that American institutions (if not individuals) have become
so secular that they are shielded from religious practices, in favor of organizing logics that are scientific,
technical, and organizational in nature. What most sociologists missed were the roots of contemporary
backlash against technocratic regimes in the white suburbs and small towns of America where conservative religious affiliations became aligned with a profoundly nativist, anti-intellectual populism.
Key words: conservative Protestantism; public/social policy; organizations.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
I believe the sociology of contemporary religious behavior is vital to understanding a whole range of other contemporary social and political issues. I am
going to lay out my central thesis and then try to convince the reader that it’s
true: the central cleavage in contemporary American political and social life, that
has given us a deeply divided nation and a razor-thin margin of victory for Donald
Trump in 2016, tracks the deep divide between white conservative Christians
and others (both white and nonwhite) so closely that it is almost impossible to
intellectually suggest there is no relationship between the two. For that reason
alone, American sociologists should be flocking to include religious affiliations
*Direct correspondence to Jennifer Glass, Department of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin,
TX 78723, USA. E-mail: jennifer-glass@utexas.edu.
© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association
for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.
9
10 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
and ideologies in their paradigms of social, economic, and political behavior and
institutions. But they have not. Yet, it goes without any serious debate that religious divisions in the Muslim world have become the basis for sectarian conflicts
that have convulsed the region for decades and permeated every aspect of social
life. Why the strong belief among academics in American Exceptionalism, yet
again? And what have been the consequences of failing to point our analytic
lens at changes in American religion for our understanding of public opinion and
public policy?
Traditionally, religion was always seen by social theorists as undergirding and
reproducing a specific social order with its attendant inequalities, and the earliest
social theorists understood the power of spiritual ideologies to produce compliance with and, on occasion, rebellion against institutional practices. From the
caste system in India to the feudal relationships of the medieval Christian church,
political and spiritual leaders have often melded into one central authority system bolstering conformity to existing institutional logics that usually kept certain people impoverished and unheard. Whether this merging of religious and
political practices was viewed as central to moral order (Durkheim) or corrupting
and justifying unequal class relations (Marx), early social theorists understood
the centrality of religion and ideological beliefs stemming from religious affiliation
in social life. As a social “glue” that allowed diverse individuals to see common
purpose and affiliation, religion both defined a set of social values to be realized
through social life and norms to be followed to achieve those values. The downside, however, of any bonding ideology is the in-group mentality it creates and the
prejudice it incites against other value systems and behaviors, producing conflict
both internally and externally with other social groups.
We have lost that understanding in contemporary sociology, assuming instead
that American institutions (if not individuals) have become so secular that they
are shielded from religious practices, and that the central logics dominating contemporary social life are scientific, technical, and organizational in nature (Clark
and Grandchamp 2011; Gorski and Altinordu 2008). Sociologists are not uncritical of this new rationalist ideological regime; indeed, our sections on Poverty
and Inequality, OOW, Race, Class & Gender, Crime, Law & Deviance, and many
others are a veritable paradise of papers on the inequality-generating processes
that technical and organizational logics produce in advanced industrial societies.
Yet in a fundamentally epistemic way, the policy recommendations offered by
social scientists to this “technocratic dilemma” have been similarly technically
and rationally constructed using evidence-based logic. Rather than challenging
the primacy of technical and organizational logics in our daily lives, social reformers merely seek to tame technologies and rationally constructed bureaucracy so
that their inequality-producing tendencies are muted or redirected (Allen 2017;
Daniels 2013, 2015). Does the push for 24-hour connectivity increase work hours,
the gender pay gap, and reduce time for family and community? Develop a public
paid leave system and methods for assessing productivity that use accomplishments rather than face time at the office! The obvious benefits of information
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 11
(data science) over ignorance in boosting human productivity and directing
resources to individuals and organizations goes unchallenged. Let me give some
recent examples: sociologists often obsess about what or how data should be collected or used [Should there be a citizenship question on the U.S. Census? Should
police be collecting information on every patrol stop to determine police deployment and surveillance of citizens?] but we never question whether data in general
should be collected and used in decision making. We want to “tweak the algorithm” when a system produces results we don’t like, but we remain committed to
the idea that the scientific analysis of data will produce policies and practices that
enhance human survival and flourishing.
I am certainly as guilty of this as anyone else in the discipline. I recognize
my own worship at the altar of science as I deflect the views of global warming
deniers, pro-life ideologues, and anti-immigrant racists. I do believe in, appropriately collected and analyzed, data. I do believe that data can direct human
behavior more effectively than our naïve cognitive biases can. I want to live in
a society where major decisions are guided by data and informed by values that
honor individual human dignity as well as our collective human fate. But I sit
in a social location where I can easily determine what data is solid and what is
not, what methods of analysis work and which produce more noise than signal,
which voices to trust, and when to more critically assess the source of information. Most people do not possess the same cognitive and social resources that
university professors have. This yields our current predicament—many people
in the United States are flummoxed and impatient with the endlessly changing
array of information available to them, packaged in ways that seem legitimate
but without the tools to more closely examine what they are told. What they
experience are the negative consequences of policy decisions that seem remote
and sometimes unjustified. The scientific logic behind policies is often opaque,
while the concrete outcome at an individual level seems real and apparent. This
tendency is exacerbated in our highly individualized culture, where collective
outcomes and collective duty are deemphasized relative to individual fulfillment.
What most sociologists en masse have missed were the roots of contemporary
backlash against our technocratic regime in the white suburbs and small towns of
America where individual outcomes were generally less favorable, and that the
populist backlash against technocratic rule would be profoundly religious, nativist, and anti-intellectual in orientation.
What has been forcefully imposed on us in this last election is a belated recognition that fundamentalist religions offer an alternative logic for decision making
and social organization that meets the needs of individuals who either distrust
rational-legal authority or find themselves left behind in an economic system
that is now global, cosmopolitan, and scientific in nature. Moreover, this process
is not now nor has it ever been restricted to the United States—the most famous
yogi in India is now closely aligned with the Hindu nationalist JDP party and
Prime Minister Modi (Worth 2018). And of course, the Middle East and Africa
are filled with the sequelae of fundamentalist Muslim revolts in Iran, Egypt, Iraq,
12 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria, etc. And who could have imagined fundamentalist Buddhist monks in Thailand and Myanmar instigating violence again religious
minorities over the past several decades? (Sharma and Arora 2014).
I mean to focus mostly on the United States in this article, though international experiences of religious fundamentalism certainly are ripe for further
comparative analysis. What is most curious, for example, is that none of these
fundamentalist revival movements recognize themselves in each other. To the
contrary, most think of themselves as protecting their religious culture against the
threat of other religious fundamentalisms. One has to look no further than white
American evangelicals to see the constant invocation of Muslim extremism as
the root of their nativism and anti-immigration sentiment (sentiments that are
clearly not part of the “Jesus message”). Despite their shared patriarchal norms
and obsession with female sexual purity, ideological nationalism, and distrust
of secular culture, these fundamentalist social movements are at heart like wolf
packs that fight to the death over territory despite their close genetic kinship.
They seek the same goals—a protectionist economy to ensure their own people
come first materially, and enough international isolation to contain cultural preferences and practices, especially among insurgent groups.
HOW DID A RELIGIOUS REVIVAL BECOME NATIVIST, AND
ANTI-INTELLECTUAL IN ORIENTATION?
Why a War against Science? Why Now?
It seems clear that white conservative Christians are not uniformly opposed to
science and the scientific method, and that even those with concerns about the scientific community are not uniformly opposed to ALL types of science (Ecklund and
Scheitle 2018), though as a discipline we like to pretend that the variation is more
important than the mean. But it is just as clear that on a variety of fundamental
issues, such as miraculous events and the role of God and humans in the physical
world, white conservative Christians are deeply opposed to the position of scientists, and imagine more diversity of opinion among scientists than actually exists
on touchstone issues, such as climate change, evolution, stem cell research, efficacy
and safety of contraception, and abortion (Funk and Alper 2015). Skepticism of
man-made global warming is high among evangelical pastors, especially younger
ones, according to a recent poll from LifeWay Research (Steffan 2013).
The statistics shown in Figures 1 and 2 coming from the Pew Research Center
control for political party affiliation and education, so these results certainly
underestimate the extent of disagreement between white conservative Christians
and others on scientific issues.1 But even these overcontrolled equations show
These are underestimates because of the strong current relationship between religious
and political affiliation among white conservative Christians. As Katharine Hayhoe, atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University said in June of 2017, “Somehow evangelicalism got
politicized to the point where, [for] many people who call themselves evangelicals, their theological statement is written by their political party first.”
1
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 13
FIGURE 1. Differences among Religious Groups Occur Especially on Evolution, Energy Issues.
Notes: Survey of U.S. adults (August 15–25, 2014). Views on power plant emission limits from
November 2014 Survey. Views on prioritizing alternative energy sources from December 2014.
Significance and relative size of factors are based on results of logistic regression analyses. Views on
safety of childhood vaccines in the February 2015 survey did not include measures on religion.
significant impact of conservative affiliation on beliefs about evolution and
fossil fuels. A similar skepticism about scientific results can be found regarding
research on contraception and abortion (Sullivan 2006; Woodsong et al. 2004).
The controversy surrounding the Hobby Lobby decision allowing employers to
avoid contraceptive coverage under the ACA showed how distrustful some in
the evangelical Christian community were of the medical science showing the
four objectionable methods of birth control did not operate primarily by preventing implantation of an already fertilized egg (Gunter 2014). The fetishization of
the fertilized egg as avowedly human and the distinction between fertilization
and implantation that were the crux of the Hobby Lobby case show the extent
to which some in the conservative Christian community had been mobilized to
see contraception as part of a scientifically suspect plot to force “anti-Christian”
14 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
FIGURE 2. Wide Differences among Religious Group in Views on Evolution. Source: Survey
conducted August 15–25, 2014. Q16. Those saying don’t know are not shown. Whites and blacks
include only non-Hispanics; Hispanics are of any race.
practices into health care via the Affordable Care Act (Burwell v. Hobby Lobby
Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2782 [2014]).
While there have always been tensions between Christian dogma (especially
those espousing Biblical literalism) and science, these were mostly muted in the
postwar era until the rise of the religious Right in 1980s, when creationism or
(later) intelligent design began popping up in Christian curricula and became a
controversy in science teaching in public schools (Berkman and Plutzer 2010).
The modern incarnation of conservative Protestantism in particular supported
a revival of creationism and a disavowal of contemporary scientific discoveries
that might detract from belief in Biblical inerrancy. This denigration of scientific
consensus (along with the promotion of any scientist willing to disagree with
conventional thinking on evolution, climate change, etc.) conveniently allowed
evangelical leaders to create a narrative in which certain forms of science and
scientists could be seen as hostile to Christians and their sincerely held religious
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 15
beliefs. As Christian Smith has noted (1998), drawing a firm line between conservative Christians’ interests and more secular interests helps produce an “embattled
but thriving” identity that provides the social glue keeping this group cohesive
and politically active. Consider the following quote from Erick Erickson, editor
of the conservative website The Resurgent, in June of 2017, “[Evangelicals] are
deeply skeptical of scientists because they believe scientists are anti-Christian.
They see it as another political movement out to get them, one that hates big
families.”
The fear that human dignity will take a back seat to scientific and technological progress is especially likely among those who are poorly prepared to take
advantage of the material gains of scientific literacy. Conservative Christians
are least likely to want their children to become scientists, and are less likely
to be scientists themselves than those from other faith traditions (Longest and
Uecker 2018; Masci 2009). While most white conservative Christians use and
appreciate scientific and technical discoveries, and are supportive of most biomedical research, they nevertheless view divine intervention in the affairs of
the material world as both possible and probable, potentially muting the need
for human knowledge or action. I found three grounds for objecting to the conduct of contemporary science—its methods deny supernatural interpretation of
events, its outcomes are uncertain and subject to subsequent revision, and its
logical conclusions assume no Godly interference in natural processes (denying
God’s omnipotence). These three grounds are repeatedly invoked to dismiss
the work of scientists that does not conveniently fit Biblical narratives about
the role of God and humanity in the cosmos. As Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.),
a graduate of evangelical Wheaton College, said at a town hall in Coldwater,
Michigan, “As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much
bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take
care of it.”
To conclude, while not all topics of scientific or technical discovery are
problematic for religious conservatives, the ones that are problematic are (1)
foundational for science education (evolution and earth’s history which touch
on biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, geology, and meteorology) and/
or (2) part of tremendously important social problems that threaten human
health or prosperity if not dealt with expeditiously (climate change and investments in alternative energy, fertility control, and species and ecosystem protection). Minimizing this religious division by claiming it’s not universal among
adherents, not universal among topics in science, or not informed by religious
dogma as much as partisan affiliation does nothing but paper over the severity
of the problem given the confluence of conservative religion and conservative
politics.
Rev. Mitch Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network
expressed it to the Washington Post in 2017 this way, “Evangelicals tend to believe
climate change is a liberal issue. Many think it’s about the government, Al Gore,
and taking away our freedoms.”
16 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Why the Backlash against Our Nation of Immigrants?
I begin by reviewing some recent poll numbers on religious identification and
beliefs about immigration in the United States. These few graphs show clearly
that the negative attitudes toward asylum seekers, immigrants (legal or not),
and refugees are concentrated among white conservative Christians. And these
differences from other religious affiliations are huge by any standard. In a January
(2018) Washington Post-ABC poll, 75% of white evangelical Christians rated
“the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants” as positive, compared
with 46% of U.S. adults overall, and only 25% of nonwhite Christians. In a
recent Pew Research Center poll (Hartig 2018), white evangelical Protestants
said that the United States did not have a responsibility to accept refugees by
more than two-to-one (68% to 25%). The polling data also show that this negativity stems from two interrelated sources—the belief that today’s immigrants
are degrading American culture and that today’s immigrants are more likely to
come from non-Western and non-Christian nations that don’t share our values
(Whitehead et al. 2018). Combined with the specific distaste for Islam and fear
of violent extremists, the result is a fierce nationalism that requires strong borders and enforcement of strict immigration laws (Leon McDaniel et al. 2011).
For example, two-thirds of white evangelicals believe Islam is not part of mainstream American society, while 72% of white evangelicals—compared with
44% of Americans overall—see a natural conflict between Islam and democracy
(Lipka 2017; Figures 3 and 4).
But how did a community that valued care for others, evangelism to the
unbelieving, and mission work for the poor and dispossessed come to support a
xenophobic outlook on immigrants and refugees seeking entry into the United
States? The conflation of nation with religion among many white evangelicals
when applied to immigration and refugee policy mirrors the boundaries drawn
between white conservative Christians and secular cultural forces they perceive
as threatening traditional American values (Whitehead et al. 2018). As long as
newcomers are seen as similar to those already viewed as hostile to their religious
beliefs and material interests, their presence in the United States will be unwelcome no matter their material situation or needs. For these believers, charity
begins at home and foreign neighbors are cherished as long as they stay home and
don’t come uninvited into the United States.
Combined into a tightly reinforced schema, the confluence of fundamentalist religion, nativism, and anti-intellectualism provided a winning constituency
for a newly radicalized Republican Party with an emerging Tea Party ideology
(Skocpol and Williamson 2016). Without this confluence, which required the
active construction of a nativist and anti-intellectual ideological framework
among white conservative Christians, it is unlikely that the deep cleavage in
American political life apparent from the 2016 election could have been created
and sustained (Edgell 2017). This confluence of attitudes, however, is irrelevant
if attitudes are distinct from behavior—political behavior, organizational behavior, educational behavior, and family behavior. However, it is here that we see
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 17
FIGURE 3. The Cultural Impact of Immigrants by Religious Affliation. Source: PRRI 2015
American Values Atlas.
among the strongest evidence of emerging yet understudied cleavages in behavior between white conservative Christians and other Americans. Distinctively
conservative patterns of early transition to adulthood, less rigorous educational
participation and attainment, restricted occupational mobility, and strong partisan political affiliation and voting behavior have become apparent over the past
several decades. It is to this that I now turn.
HOW DOES RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION AND BELIEF AFFECT
FAMILY, ORGANIZATIONAL, AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOR (THE
INSTITUTIONAL WORLDS WE INHABIT ON A REGULAR BASIS)?
Family Behavior and Educational Participation
Here, I briefly review the research evidence showing clear and distinctive
patterns of “red state” family formation (Cahn and Carbone 2010) driven primarily by white conservative Christians’ early transitions to adulthood (Fitzgerald
and Glass 2008, 2012). The religious injunctions against sexual expression before
marriage and abhorrence of abortion and abortifacient birth control methods lead
to significantly more early marriages, including some shotgun marriages (Pearce
2010), among white conservative Christians followed quickly by several births.
18 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
FIGURE 4. Race, Age, Education Differences on U.S. Responsibility to Accept Refugees. Notes:
Don’t know responses not shown. Whites and blacks include only those who are not Hispanic;
Hispanics are of any race. Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted April 25–May 1, 2018.
These religiously motivated youth curtail their education to facilitate early family
formation, and the results are often less successful work and family lives. In an
economic regime where workers are rewarded by gaining large amounts of human
and social capital before entering the labor force, where long hours and work
devotion yield the highest earnings, and where caregiving responsibilities are
stigmatized and lack accommodations, young conservative Christians find themselves with many financial obligations and fewer economic and social resources
with which to meet them (Keister 2008). Combined with their relative lack of
relationship experience and more traditional sexual divisions of labor, this pattern yields more divorce and family instability than those secular youth who wait
to marry and form families in their 30s and beyond (Glass and Levchak 2014).
Moreover, these patterns persist even after overcontrolling for parental education,
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 19
income, occupation, and region (themselves a reflection of earlier family formation in the parental generation of conservative Christians).2
Patterns of schooling that disadvantage white conservative Christian youth
also set them apart from other groups. While homeschooling has grown in popularity for a variety of reasons, the bulk of homeschoolers cite religious motivations
for avoiding public school, and the results in terms of preparation for postsecondary education vary considerably (Lubienski et al. 2013; Martin-Chang et al. 2011;
Murphy 2014). White conservative Christians are also more likely to send their
children to unaccredited religious schools, and to encourage their children to
attend religious colleges and universities if they pursue higher education. While
youth from religiously conservative households are as likely to work in allied
health professions as other youth, they are less likely to major in STEM subjects
or work in STEM fields postgraduation (Longest and Uecker 2018; McMorris
2016). Both in terms of quantity and quality, the educational attainment of white
conservative Christians is lower than that of similarly situated others, with the
exception of those raised with no religious affiliation.
Because many conservative Christian theologies (the “prosperity gospel”
being an exception) deemphasize material wealth and emphasize service to God
and community, it is not surprising that many of the material disadvantages of a
religiously faithful life are seen as irrelevant or even praiseworthy (Keister 2003).
Thus, the potential educational disadvantages of homeschooling or religious
schooling are outweighed by the control parents can exert over the moral and
spiritual direction of their children’s lives, which is considered the more important responsibility of parents. Yet these are not merely material disadvantages;
they are social disadvantages as well in a society increasingly organized around
technical and capitalist logics.
Organizational Behavior and Occupational Mobility
I will only touch on what we now know about how religion affects complex
organizational behavior (Chan-Serafin et al. 2013). Rather than assuming individuals drop their social identities at the door, we now know they bring their
religious convictions and predispositions to work with them. But organizational
behavior is frequently constrained by organizational logics. So we start from the
premise that the religious and moral commitments of organizations help structure
their organizational logics (what actions are and are not tolerable among employees, clients, and contractors), which in turn influence the expression of religious
belief among employees and clients. So I will begin with examples of the types of
organizational logics among religious and secular organizations that affect rules
and procedures, then move to the individual actions of religious conservatives
within secular organizations.
But curiously, these patterns of early family formation do not hold for black evangelical
Protestants, although evidence of their truncated educational attainment compared to nonevangelical Christian peers exists (Glass and Jacobs 2005).
2
20 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Outside of denominational structures themselves, the most extensive influence of religion on organizational practice can be found in religious nonprofit
organizations, such as hospitals, schools, and adoption/foster care agencies.
Catholic hospital systems have been gaining market share through mergers and
acquisitions, especially in rural areas in the United States (Hafner 2018), creating widespread concern that certain procedures banned by Catholic doctrine
on sexuality and reproduction (such as tubal ligations) will now be difficult to
obtain in large geographic areas. Religiously affiliated organizations such as adoption and foster care agencies have also been seeking exemptions from federal and
state anti-discrimination laws in both employment and client services to avoid
servicing the LGBT community (Rosenberg-Douglas 2018). Similar waivers have
been requested for ACA coverage of contraception for employees in religious
organizations.
But the Supreme Court has also recently allowed capitalist for-profit organizations closely held by conservative Christian owners to also exempt themselves
from certain provisions of federal law under the mantle of religious accommodation. The Hobby Lobby case decided in 2012 limiting the contraceptive mandate
in the ACA was the most recent in a long line of cases successfully adjudicated
in which Christian businesses asked for exemptions from anti-discrimination laws
based on sincerely held religious beliefs about gay and lesbian people, contraception and abortion, or even the seductive potential of very attractive women
(Associated Press 2013; Hu 2012). More recently, a Christian business owner has
been sued for wrongful termination after requiring that all employees attend Bible
Study daily on company time (Albany Democrat-Herald 2018), setting the stage
for another test of religious accommodation.
Secular for-profit organizations have also had to respond to demands from
religious groups or clients for changes in their business practices to accommodate
either employee or client religious beliefs. Threats of consumer boycotts based
on business advertising in which multiracial or LGBT families are featured, or
demands for the withdrawal of business’ advertising support for media or entertainment companies producing content offensive to conservative Christians, are
examples of the types of pressure placed on secular businesses to conform to religious sensibilities. These efforts have achieved a range of modest successes, but
sometimes businesses push back. The secular business communities’ response to
so-called “bathroom bills,” local or state ordinances requiring transgendered people to use the bathroom of their birth designation in public facilities, has been
uniformly negative and reflects skittishness about alienating both younger potential employees and customers who are more favorably disposed toward the LGBT
community (McGaughy 2017).
I turn now to the behavior of religious conservatives as employees within
secular organizations, both private and public sector. In secular for-profit organizations, this has mostly taken the form of requests for religious accommodation
in work duties, which must be “reasonably accommodated” based on settled case
law (Birnbach, 2009; Nejaime and Siegel 2014). This means leaves for religious
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 21
observation or waivers from certain dress codes must be accommodated, but
recently attempts have been made to extend this protection to the conduct of
work itself through “religious conscience” clauses in employment. Particularly
in health care settings, these clauses allow pharmacists to deny contraceptives
or abortifacient drugs to women with a legitimate prescription at a Walmart or
CVS, allow doctors to deny treatment during miscarriage at private hospitals,
allow private clinics to deny infertility treatment to LGBT clients, and so on
based on the provider’s religious beliefs, without regard to the harm done to
these clients (Duvall 2005; Wilson 2012). These clauses also mean that individual employees can refuse to provide services to particular classes of clients but
allow them for others, such as a baker who does not want to bake a cake for a
gay couple, or a social worker who does not want to provide abortion referrals
for poor women.
The most controversial cases of religious accommodation in employment,
however, have been found in public sector workplaces charged with implementing
government policy. Here, successes have been more limited—county clerks who
do not want to provide gay people with marriage licenses have generally not had
their claims for religious accommodation upheld. But pharmacists and doctors in
public hospitals and health care settings have obtained some protection through
legislation designed to permit discrimination in their conduct as long as other
health care providers are able to step in and provide the necessary (generally reproductive health) services. Whether this movement will expand given the priority
in the current administration to expand religious liberty in public employment
and publicly funded organizations is uncertain. I have said little about conservative Christian overrepresentation in the U.S. military, but well-publicized cases of
white conservative Christian “overreach” in the military academies has already
attracted complaints from Jewish and Muslim cadets (Goodstein 2005).
We have little information about the extent to which these religious accommodations in employment are changing the array of consumer services available
in our health care system, for example, or how often employees request accommodations in health care and other settings. We know even less about trends over
time in when and how organizations respond to these requests from employees or
clients. As the social cleavage in American society becomes more pronounced,
how do organizations respond to fractured markets and demands for religious
accommodation in employment and services?
Political Participation and Voting
An existing literature on religious coalitions and voting behavior, mostly
within political science, informs our understanding of the current political
divide in the United States. Sociologists generally look at political participation
through the lens of social movements and rule-making in the public sphere, and
here religious actors have been mostly neglected. This helps explain how they
missed the growing alignment between less educated white voters, conservative
Christian voters, rural and suburban voters, and nativist voters. But religiously
22 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
conservative individuals and organized conservative Christians groups have been
gradually increasing their demands for religion in the public square over the
past several decades (Di Mauro and Joffe 2007; Flippen 2011). These incursions
have been most successful in schools and judicial courts with their rule-making
function. Not surprisingly given this emphasis, school boards, textbook approval
boards, and judicial appointments and elections have been a focus for conservative Christian political activism (Sikkink 2009). The “culture wars” provide an
overarching framework for the focus on these particular institutions as opposed to
say, the IRS, Federal Reserve, EEOC, or SEC, all charged with making capitalist
corporations and private businesses behave ethically and fairly.
The avowed goal of the Religious Right of 1990s and beyond was to bring
back a conservative version of Christianity into the everyday cultural world experienced by Americans, through public displays of prayer at school and government
events, through religious iconography on public property, and through religious
speech and reasoning in schools, courtrooms, health care settings, and public
accommodations. The allocation and division of material assets in the economy,
the distribution of fines and penalties through the criminal justice system, the
treatment of immigrants and refugees, and protection of the environment and
nonhuman species were simply not central concerns. While there is mounting
evidence that religiously affiliated groups are now entering these debates from a
theological perspective, white conservative Christians are not at the forefront of
these debates, and often work in opposition to other Christian groups when they
do (Bean 2014; McCarthy et al 2016; Nita 2016; Tarakeshwar et al 2001; Todd
et al. 2014). We need more analysis of why this is the case, and why certain theological precepts of Christianity are highlighted in conservative discourse while
others about charity, justice, and economic fairness languish (Edgell 2017).
This concern for matters of process (keeping God in all deliberations and
decisions) over outcomes (a more just and peaceful society) also helps explain
the emphasis in white conservative Christian activism for greater protection of
religious expression in private for-profit firms and government employment. The
firmly held belief that Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs because
our culture is pushing God out of social institutions creates a bunker mentality of
imagined oppression that animates the drive for protectionist legislation.
All these goals made the Republican Party a welcoming haven for white religious conservatives and help explain the growing alignment underway between
the Republican Party and organized conservative Christian activist groups.
Arguably, that alignment has made white conservative Christian activism much
more successful than any direct action campaigns undertaken in the past through
boycotts or messaging campaigns.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
I hope I have amassed enough evidence by this point to convince the reader
of my central argument—that the strongest cleavage in American political and
WHY AREN’T WE PAYING ATTENTION? RELIGION AND POLITICS IN EVERYDAY LIFE 23
social life increasingly aligns with the distinctive cultural cleavage between
white conservative Christians and other religious alignments (including people
without affiliation). In our scholarly work, I believe there has been too much
emphasis on the organizational practices of religions rather than how religions
affect other organizations’ practices! And there has been too little investigation
of how individual religious beliefs and practices affect interactions and outcomes
within organizations, including educational, legal, political, and occupational.
For example, while organizational researchers often look at founding characteristics of organizations as having enduring impacts, and note strong differences
between nonprofits and commercial enterprises, we see little attention paid to
the religious background of organizational founders or the impact of executives’
religious beliefs on corporate practices. In my own work on pregnancy accommodation, for example, one young executive assistant reported her CEO boss’
insistence she bring the baby to work until she stopped breastfeeding, because
his Orthodox faith would not allow him to separate a baby from her mother. Of
course, the opposite can occur—as in the ultraconservative Christians who fire
workers for nonwork-related irreverent behavior or who refuse to perform their
job duties if they interfere with their religious beliefs.
Secondly, I believe as a discipline there has been too much focus on difference and diversity within conservative religious communities rather than between
religious conservatives and all other affiliations (including the “nones”). I understand the scholarly impulse to be precise and demolish stereotypes about aggregate groups that see themselves as marginalized. And treatises have been written
on how best to analytically slice and categorize conservative Protestants, evangelicals, conservative Catholics and Jews, all in order to gain relatively small
improvements in modeling outcomes. Yet this focus on diversity has diminished
attention to the ways in which political coalitions and identities are formed and
maintained, and the strength of the mean differences between white conservative
Christians. and others in the United States. What is so amazing about the contemporary Trump coalition is the uniformity of opinion it has engendered among
white Christian conservatives of many faith traditions on a variety of issues not
usually seem as religious in nature.
In general, our discipline pays too little attention to the role of religion
in shaping larger political and economic conflicts—about immigration and
national security; about the purpose and form of welfare state policies and programs; about global warming, energy policy, and environmental protection;
about abortion, birth control, and LGBT civil rights; about sexual coercion and
violence; about racism and policing; about growing inequality and the concentration of wealth, etc. Almost all of these major social conflicts anchor white
conservative Christians (and sometimes conservative Jews and Muslims) on
one side of the debate and technocratic data scientists and policy wonks on the
other. Moreover, religious organizations and proto-organizations often message
about these issues in ways that place their adherents squarely in these debates
through email campaigns, lobbying efforts, and social media platforms that
expand their reach.
24 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Finally, we need to pay more attention to the impacts of moderate and liberal
faith-based groups in the public sphere, as they decline in size but refocus their
mission as agents of social provision. Remarkable recent research notes the impact
of nonprofit community reinvestment programs in lowering urban crime and teen
pregnancy throughout the United States, for example (Sharkey et al. 2017). More
scholarly attention to generational and racial cleavages among Christian conservatives is also warranted, along with attention to the role of rising educational
attainment and STEM emphases on scientific literacy in the white conservative
Christian community. These are the challenges of the future as the populist alignment between conservative religion, nativism, and anti-intellectualism frays over
time with inevitable demographic, educational, and occupational shifts.Source:
Survey of U.S. adults conducted April 25–May 1, 2018.
FUNDING
This research was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Award #5R24 HD042849) to
the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article has been presented for the Furfey Lecture at the annual meeting
of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, Philadelphia, August 2018. All
views expressed are solely those of the author.
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