This just in! Evangelicals are actually America's least politicized group of churches

In 1979, Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell (that would be “senior”) launched the Moral Majority to mobilize religious conservatives across America in support of conservative politics — imitating prior campaigning by liberal churches.

One year later, these culturally conservative voters helped Republican Ronald Reagan score a surprising 44-state sweep for president against two evangelical Protestants, Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter and independent John Anderson.

Ever since, news-media professionals have disgorged an endless stream of reports assessing the impact of evangelical Protestants in Republican and conservative politics. Of course, when the media people say “evangelical” that’s almost always shorthand for “white evangelical.” African-Americans and Hispanics are far more liberal on economic issues and, thus, Democratic.

This emphasis was understandable back when the “religious right” was newborn, but far too many journalists continues to neglect other faiths.

News Flash. There is evidence that at the grass-roots level, white evangelical churches are the least politicized among the nation’s five main faith sectors, over against congregations of Catholics, Black Protestants, “mainline” Protestants in predominantly white denominations and non-Christiana (i.e. Jews, Muslims, and adherents of Eastern religions). 

So says new survey research from the National Congregations Study (NCS) reported by sociologists Mark Chaves at Duke University and Kraig Beyerlein at the University of Notre Dame. The advance release was timed to accompany early voting, with academic publication set for December. 

This is the fourth round of NCS surveys that started in 1998. Working off the General Social Survey data base at the University of Chicago, the project developed a randomly selected sample of leaders from an array of 1,262  congregations, of which 43% were evangelical. (Only 6% were Catholic, where parish memberships are far larger than for the typical Protestant congregation).

Journalists should explore this material in depth, but the emerging scenario appears to indicate a relatively small and unrepresentative band of evangelical partisans at the national level has — aided by massive amounts of news coverage — distorted the public image of grass-roots white evangelicalism. (This is a different question from how these churchgoers vote, where sweeping fidelity toward Republican candidates has long been evident.) 

Looking at those five major religious categories, the evangelicals are exceeded in activism in ascending order by the white “mainline” Protestants, non-Christians, Catholic and Black Protestants. The latter is no surprise since their churches’ role in the community is uniquely central and persistent.

Whether President Donald Trump wins or loses, it may be time for a big media rethink all of this. 

To The Religion Guy, the most significant NCS data are found in a chart on the very last page of the article. It compares political activities in white evangelical Protestant churches over against other Protestants (combining the white “mainline” and Black categories).

For simplicity’s sake, let’s call this “conservative” vs. "liberal.” Only a 40% minority of religiously conservative congregations reported any political activities in the preceding year vs. a 62% majority among the liberals. 

Specific examples of political involvement were the providing of specific political opportunities (6% for conservatives vs. 24% for liberals), sponsoring political discussions (5% vs. 15%), voter registration drives (12% vs. 36%), get-out-the-vote campaigns (17% vs. 38%), distributing voter guides (the only close match with 24% vs. 26%), lobbying of officials (less than 1% vs. 16%), participation in demonstrations or marches (6% vs. 22%) and inviting candidates to speak at church (1% vs. 12%).

For what it’s worth, this tracks with The Guy’s own spotty and anecdotal impression from a half century of journalism work observing U.S. churches.

As you’d expect, the same pattern appeared in a comparison of church leaders’ characterization of members’ political outlooks. On every activity, the politically conservative churches (46% of congregations in the survey) were notably less mobilized for activism than liberals (only 15%, while 39% identified with the political middle). 

This bears directly, for example, on Trump’s effort to abolish president-to-be Lyndon Johnson’s amendment that denies tax exemption to churches and other non-profit organizations that endorse (or oppose) specific candidates. This was an obvious bid to unleash evangelical preachers and churches as a partisan Republican force.

Only 4% of all the congregations have risked tax exemption and endorsed candidates, while an added 17% said they’d do so if  their tax status were not threatened. But here again, Black Protestants would be the most likely to enact such overt partisanship and white evangelicals the least likely (37% vs. 11% respectively). Trumpublicans obviously need to re-examine this one.

Looking at trends over time, church activism has generally been increasing with an upswing since the 2012 survey, more among liberals than conservatives, with a “surge” among Black Protestants and growing Catholic concern over the immigration and sanctuary issues.

There’s much more to explore in these data. Also, what do Chaves and Beyerlein suspect on how Trump’s nomination of a new Supreme Court justice will impact voters on the abortion and religious-liberty issues? Contacts: Chaves (919–408–1188 or mac58@duke.edu) and Beyerlein (574–855–6678 or kbeyerl1@nd.edu. Duke University public relations is at 919–684–2823 or after-hours for reporters on deadline at 919–812-6603.