Reconciliation Politics: Conservative Evangelicals and the New Race Discourse

Wadsworth, Nancy D.

doi:10.1177/0032329297025003005

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…First, the institutional structures of the Christian Right have either disbanded or withered considerably (Cooperman and Edsall ), with a more decentralized and less conservative group of pastors and religious leaders emerging as the new, more “nonpartisan,” political voices of evangelicalism (Altman and Scherer ). Moreover, these changes have further expanded the type of political issues salient to members of this religious tradition, as environmentalism (Harden ), immigration reform (Golden ), and racial relations (Wadsworth ) have become critical areas of evangelical advocacy. Finally, the Democratic Party has begun to actively court evangelical voters after years of ignoring this segment of the electorate.…”

Section: Tracing Generational Differences Among Evangelicalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generational Conversion? The Role of Religiosity in the Politics of Evangelicals

Pelz

Smidt

2015

Scientific Study of Religion

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The political environment for evangelical Protestants has changed substantially since the Christian Right reached its apex, as a more issue and ideologically diffuse political environment has emerged. The present study tests two different theoretical perspectives on whether these contextual changes may have altered Millennial evangelicals’ political perspectives vis‐à‐vis those of previous generations of evangelicals. On the one hand, theoretical perspectives related to differential political socialization processes across generations would lead to expectations of generational change among evangelicals. On the other hand, theoretical perspectives related to social identity theory would suggest far less change across generations. Using Pew's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, we test these expectations by comparing the relationships between religiosity and political attitudes across three generations of evangelicals. Ordered probit and logistic regression models estimate the impact of religiosity on various political attitudes. These models reveal that Millennial evangelical religiosity continues to be strongly related to Republican Party identification and opposition toward abortion, which is largely consistent with the social identity perspective. Generational change is most evident in a variety of nonsocial issues in which religiosity is associated with less conservatism among Millennials. Additional analysis using the 2012 Religion and Politics Survey with a smaller sample of Millennial evangelicals confirms these results.

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Section: Tracing Generational Differences Among Evangelicalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generational Conversion? The Role of Religiosity in the Politics of Evangelicals

Pelz

Smidt

2015

Scientific Study of Religion

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“…Blacks' position as an out-group in American society could make discrimination such a central issue for them that all other variables decrease in importance. Religion is strongly related to white attitudes toward gay rights, but most black churches have histories of opposing employment discrimination that white fundamentalist churches do not (Wadsworth 1997), and sermons favoring government action to prevent antiblack discrimination should have spillover benefits for LGBs. 14 Younger whites tend to support the rights of minority groups more than their elders do because the eras in which they grew up socialized them to do so (Davis 1992;Herek and Glunt 1993), but the civil rights movement may have socialized blacks more powerfully in the 1950s and 1960s than in subsequent years.…”

Section: Do Demographic Factors Influence Black and White Attitudes Dmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Christian Right, however, has increasingly challenged the LGB movement's claim to "the moral legacy of the black civil rights movement" (Solomon 1999, p. 60), arguing that gays seek "special rights" that should be restricted to legitimate minorities and targeting blacks for many of their arguments (Wadsworth 1997). 3 Openly gay Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.)…”

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confidence: 99%

Black-White Differences in Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights

Lewis¹

2003

Public Opinion Quarterly

329

241

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Black homophobia has been cited as a contributing factor in slowing mobilization against AIDS in the African-American community, as an obstacle to black lesbians and gay men in coming to terms with their sexuality, and as a challenge to the legitimacy of the gay rights movement. Yet evidence that blacks are more homophobic than whites is quite limited. This article uses responses from almost seven thousand blacks and forty-three thousand whites in 31 surveys conducted since 1973 to give more definitive answers on black-white attitudinal differences and their demographic roots. Despite their greater disapproval of homosexuality, blacks' opinions on sodomy laws, gay civil liberties, and employment discrimination are quite similar to whites' opinions, and African Americans are more likely to support laws prohibiting antigay discrimination. Once religious and educational differences are controlled, blacks remain more disapproving of homosexuality but are moderately more supportive of gay civil liberties and markedly more opposed to antigay employment discrimination than are whites. Yet religion, education, gender, and age all have weaker impacts on black than on white attitudes, suggesting that black and white attitudes have different roots.Homophobia is still a great problem throughout America, but in the African-American community it is even more threatening. This is an enormous obstacle for everyone ingregory b. lewis is a professor in

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“…However, theologically conservative white evangelicals did not consistently or seriously take-up calls to address racism, segregation, and Christian racial history in general until the 1990s. In that decade, and for complicated reasons I discuss elsewhere, a vocal minority of white evangelicals finally began to respond, and gradually words like “reconciliation” and “racial diversity” became mainstream refrains within white evangelicalism (Wadsworth 1997, 2008, 2010). This occurred through four main trends: formal and/or institutional recognitions and apologies for racism at denominational and organizational levels like the Southern Baptist Convention; stories on race, racism, and reconciliation efforts in evangelical magazines like Christianity Today (2000); the emergence of a niche literature on “how to” engage in racial reconciliation and build more racially diverse Christian communities; and the promotion of racial reconciliation and healing frameworks through the men's organization Promise Keepers.…”

Section: Fractured Faithmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging Racial Change: Political Orientations in the United States Evangelical Multiracial Church Movement

Wadsworth

2010

Politics and Religion

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Recent years have witnessed the rise of a multiracial church (MRC) movement in American evangelicalism. Leaders of this movement articulate a "biblical mandate"-based mission for breaking patterns of racial homogeneity in pursuit of more diverse, egalitarian, and vibrant churches. While participants are passionate about what they see as a powerful racial change effort in their religious communities, they express a variety of orientations about the potential political implications of faith-based MRC-building. Drawing from interviewbased research inside MRC settings, I find that most participants are nervously interested in applying their framework to political contexts, while a minority articulates a more politicized justice orientation, and others are confused or actively resistant. The movement's political reluctance is instructive of the understudied dynamics between race and religion, especially in theologically conservative churches. In social capital terms, the "bonding" incentives of MRC settings by definition require difficult kinds of "bridging," or reaching across deep historical and identity-based differences, in order to create trustbased networks where they have not existed. When successful, however, such networks can open new paths to race-related political engagement.

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Reconciliation Politics: Conservative Evangelicals and the New Race Discourse

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Generational Conversion? The Role of Religiosity in the Politics of Evangelicals

Generational Conversion? The Role of Religiosity in the Politics of Evangelicals

Black-White Differences in Attitudes toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights

Bridging Racial Change: Political Orientations in the United States Evangelical Multiracial Church Movement

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