My objections are to vast generalizations that do not reflect the state of current research into religious groups, political activism by religious voters, and religious-based social movements. There is still to much reliance on the discredited claims of status discontent and other gems from Lipset, Bell, etc. Further, there is a blurring of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and their relationship to "Mainline" Protestantism and electoral politics.
The best short explanation of these issues can be found in:
Clarkson, Frederick. (1997). Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. Monroe, ME: Common Courage.
I have tried to outline these issues in the responses below.
----- Original Message ----- From: Gordon Fitch <gcf at panix.com>
> I probably should have said "outer class" rather than "lower
> class."
How about dissident subculture?
>Many fundamentalists (like some other seriously
> religious people) reject the dominant bourgeois academic
> authorities on such matters as cosmogony, evolution, and the
> status of science in general, as well as bourgeois professions
> on individual rights in such matters as sexual behavior,
> abortion, freedom of speech, and freedom of and from religion.
And this is what explains some of the distinctions among Mainline Protestants, evangelicals, and Fundamentalists. Fundamentalism was not a reaction to the feminist movement it was a reaction to Mainline Protestant denominations adapting to Modernity. See:
Marsden, George M. (1982). Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marsden, George M. (1991). Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
> I have even heard fundamentalist preachers on the radio go so
> far as to denounce unrestrained capitalism.
As do many evangelical and mainline preachers, and Catholic priests, not to mention liberation theologists on the left. Some Christian conservatives object on the basis of it being crass materialism. But there is another strain in Protestantism that celebrates unrestrained capitalist accumulation. It is not determined by fundamentalist or evangelical belief.
> And the suspicion
> of such people for interventionist, that is, imperialist
> foreign policy has been a staple of bourgeois derision since
> the end of World War II. I didn't mean they might not be
> prosperous, merely that they appear to be at odds with
> ruling-class opinions and practices.
Except that there are both fundamentalists and evangelicals that oppose interventionism, some that even oppose war itself. Mennonites for example.
>
> As I said before, these ideological stances may be superficial,
> that is, may not be thought to call for strenuous praxis, but
> provide instead a mental refuge from the abrasions of modernity.
Why is religious belief any different in this regard than many other ideologies? Religion is merely a theological version of ideology. Most people do not inspect their ideological assumptions.
> Ronald Reagan grew up in a fundamentalist context and went to
> a college run by the Disciples of Christ. However, in later
> life he didn't seem to have a lot of trouble with imperialism
> and unrestrained capitalism, and in spite of the lip service
> given to fundamentalist social ideals nothing much actually
> happened.
This statement makes assumptions about shared beliefs among fundamentalists that are false.
Furthermore, Reagan gave the Department of Education and several other federal agencies to cronies of Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Robertson, and much happened in terms of policy and practice. There were federal hearings designed to undermine modern curricula. See:
Schlafly, Phyllis (Ed.). (1984). Child Abuse in the Classroom. Alton, IL: Pere Marquette Press. Which is testimony from those hearings by evangelicals and conservative Catholics.
Also, what Reagan remembered from his childhood was apocalyptic millennialism, which directly influenced his foreign policy decisions. See:
Halsell, Grace. (1986). Prophecy and Politics: Militant Evangelists on the Road to Nuclear War. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill.
Diamond, Sara. (1997). "Political Millennialism within the Evangelical Subculture." In Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn (Eds.), The Year 2000: Essays on the End, pp. 206-216). New York: NYU Press.
Apocalyptic millennialism in the US can be found in many religious and secular belief structures. That is the point of my article Dances with Devils.
Furthermore, in the late 1970s, there was a major historic shift of previously politically-uninvolved evangelicals and fundamentalists into electoral political activism. And as they moved into the Republican Pary, more moderate evangelicals and mainline Protestants left, mostly to become swing-vote independents. This gave control of the Republican Party to conservative political activists.
See:
Diamond, Sara. (1989). Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right. Boston: South End Press.
Brooks, Clem and Jeff Manza. (1997). "Social Cleavages and Voter Alignments in the United States, 1960-1992." American Sociological Review, v. 62, n. 6, pp. 937-46. Revised and included in Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Manza, Jeff and Clem Brooks. (1997). "The Religious Factor in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1960-1992." American Journal of Sociology, v. 103, n. 1 (July 1997), pp. 38-81. Revised and included in Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Manza, Jeff and Clem Brooks. (1999). Social Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Green, John C, James L Guth, and Kevin Hill, "Faith and Election: The Christian Right in Congressional Campaigns 1978-1988." The Journal of Politics, v. 55, n. 1 (February 1993).
Green, John C. (1996). Understanding the Christian Right. Booklet. New York: The American Jewish Committee.
Green, John C., James L. Guth, Corwin E. Smidt, and Lyman A. Kellstedt. (1996). Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Guth, James L. and John C. Green. (1996). "The Moralizing Minority: Christian Right Support among Political Contributors." In John C. Green, James L. Guth, Corwin E. Smidt, and Lyman A. Kellstedt. (Eds.), Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front, (pp. 30-43). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Guth, James L., John C. Green, Corwin E. Smidt, Lyman A. Kellstedt, and Margaret M. Poloma. (1997). The Bully Pulpit: the Politics of Protestant Clergy. Studies in Government and Public Policy. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
Smith, Christian. (1996 ). "Correcting a Curious Neglect, or Bringing Religion Back In." In Christian Smith (Ed.), Disruptive Religion: The Force of Faith in Social-Movement Activism. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Christian. (2000). Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want. Berkeley: University of California Press.
And groups such as the Free Congress Foundation wrote essays explaining to otherwise skeptical evangelicals and conservative Catholics why it was acceptable for the Godly to get down and dirty with electoral politics. See:
Marshner, William H and Enrique T Rueda. (1983). The Morality of Political
Action: Biblical Foundations. Washington, DC: Free Congress Research and
Education Foundation.
>
> Probably, there are a lot of people more or less like Reagan,
> which is why he was called "The Great Communicator" while he
> actually communicated very little in the sense of literally
> transmitting information. His audience already knew he was
> one of them: they were in communion, not communication. And
> this was enough, the ship of State needing not to be
> unnecessarily rocked.
Except that there was a significant backlash against Reagan's failure to pay his campaign debts to conservative evangelicals which gave us the Robertson campaign in 1988 from which came the Christian Coalition, which helped give us the Republican victories in 1994. Also, most of the Reagan support came broadly from conservative evangelicals, not just fundamentalists.
Diamond, Sara. (1995). Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford.
Diamond, Sara. (1998). Not by Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right. New York: Guilford Press.
Green, John C. (1996). "A Look at the 'Invisible Army,: Pat Robertson's 1988 Activist Corps." In John C. Green, James L. Guth, Corwin E. Smidt, and Lyman A. Kellstedt. (Eds.), Religion and the Culture Wars: Dispatches from the Front, (pp. 44-61). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
-Chip Berlet