[lbo-talk] merely cultural

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Mon Apr 2 09:47:23 PDT 2007


The book in question is "The Truth about Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe" which is available from the usual online outlets.

Here is the link to the U of Chicago Press page for the book:

<http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/306623.html>

I think it's important to point out that this book echoes many of the things B|L has been saying for some time about evangelicals (i.e., there is a diversity of belief, people aren't 'deluded' or 'stupid' and so on).

An excerpt from the introduction -

The basic theme of this book is that the correlations between religious conservatism and political and social attitudes are not necessarily overwhelming. Bible Christians are indeed more likely than other Protestants, for example, to oppose abortion under every circumstance, to believe that homosexuality is always wrong, and to advocate restrictions on pornography. They are also more likely to vote Republican. However, not all Conservative Christians are consistently pro-life; in fact, the majority of them are not. And, while the majority still believe that homosexuality is always wrong, the proportion with that conviction declined rapidly in the 1990s. Finally, the additional vote of Conservative Protestants for Republican candidates, over and above that of Mainline American Protestants, is meager—about seven percentage points. Despite the depiction of Conservative Protestants by the media, by frightened liberals, and by the conservative leadership as if they were a massive and disciplined religio-political voting block, they are not. Indeed, we have argued, this image is a stereotype based on overgeneralization and prejudice. It is also a dangerous image because it marginalizes a major segment of American society because of inadequate information, bad information, or often no information at all. There may be a link between Conservative Christian religious convictions and political behavior but it is modest, even by social science standards.

Any attempt to forge a link of logical or doctrinal consistency between conservative religious belief and conservative politics falters when one considers African American Conservative Christians. In general, as we have reported, the doctrinal and ethical perspectives of African Americans in Afro-American Protestant denominations are, if anything, more conservative than those of whites in other Conservative Protestant denominations. Yet religiously committed African Americans, especially those in the Afro-American Protestant denominations, are the most politically liberal of any major group in American society. Whatever their feelings about abortion or evolution or homosexuality, they still vote in overwhelming numbers for Democratic candidates. Thus, while 52 percent of lower-income, white, Conservative Protestants voted Democratic in the 199OS, 90 percent of lower-income Afro-American Protestants did. In the 2004 election those numbers were 22 percent and 96 percent, respectively. Race, therefore, interacts with and ultimately reshapes the link between Conservative Protestantism and conservative politics.

[...]



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list