Religious Traditionalism and Latino Politics in the United States

Abstract

This article examines how and why ethnic context conditions the link between religious traditionalism and the political attitudes and behaviors of Latinos in the United States. Existing research shows that the impact of religious traditionalism on political attitudes varies by policy and religious context. Through an analysis of issue attitudes, ideology, and partisanship, we confirm this existing work and also show that religious traditionalism influences Latino political behavior differently than it influences Anglo politics. The impact of religious traditionalism is not nearly as strong among Latinos as among Anglos. To the extent that traditionalism does influence political attitudes and behavior, it generally produces greater ideological conservatism but does not translate into support for the Republican Party—the latter is quite different from its impact in the Anglo population.

Religion and Gender Ideologies among Working-Age U.S. Latinas/os

“…Previous studies have reported that, on average, conservative Protestants (a) attend services and pray more often than other Latinas/os (e.g., (Diaz-Stevens and Stevens-Arroyo 1998)) and (b) hold more conservative attitudes on abortion (Bartkowski et al 2012), same-sex marriage (Ellison et al 2011), marriage, divorce, sexuality (Ellison et al 2013), political ideology (Kelly and Morgan 2008), and partisanship (Lee and Pachon 2007). Thus, our study indicates yet another critical dimension through which conservative Protestant Latinas/os distinguish themselves from their Catholic counterparts, namely, attitudinal support for male headship.…”

“…Previous studies indicate that Latinas/os belonging to conservative Protestant groups hold highly traditional views on a range of family-related values such as marriage, divorce, cohabitation, sex outside committed relationships (Ellison et al 2013), abortion rights (Bartkowski et al 2012), same-sex marriage (Ellison et al 2011), and political ideology and partisanship (Kelly and Morgan 2008;Lee and Pachon 2007). Other research notes distinctions between converts and life-long adherents of conservative Protestantism, suggesting that those who convert are more liberal than life-long adherents, although this is true only for men.…”

Religious influences on Latino ideology and vote choice: are Evangelical Catholics different?

“…While increased frequency of church attendance has correlated to Anglo Americans holding a more conservative ideology (Layman 2001;Layman and Green 2005), scholars have noted a significant and opposite effect upon African-Americans, who increasingly identify with the Democratic Party as their religious attendance increases (Reese and Brown 1995;CalhounBrown 1996;Brown and Brown 2003). The impact of behavior with regard to Latinos are mixed: while Latinos significantly differ with Anglos on several policy issues (Leal 2007), studies with religious variables find a commonality, specifically between Latino and Anglo Protestants (Ellison, Echevarria, and Smith 2005;Kelly and Kelly 2005;Kelly and Morgan 2008). Given that minorities establish racial identity and solidarity in their houses of worship, it is possible that the influence of religious behavior varies by ethnicity (Brown and Brown 2003).…”

“…Such action, however, reduces critical variance (Desipio 2007), particularly based upon belief structures, and has already been applied to Protestant denominations, whether Evangelical or not. With respect to Latino Protestants, scholars have noted that such variation between Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals has different impacts upon political ideology and action (Kelly and Kelly 2005;Lee and Pachon 2007;Kelly and Morgan 2008). Some scholars argue that religious identity is only politically salient among those who are "Evangelical" (Lee and Pachon 2007), while others argue that any Protestant Latino, whether mainline or Evangelical, is more likely to vote (Jones-Correa and Leal 2001), more likely to identify oneself as Republican, and more likely to vote for the Republican candidate (Espinosa, Elizondo, and Miranda 2003;Kelly and Kelly 2005;Leal et al 2005;Kelly and Morgan 2008;Lopez and Taylor 2012).…”

Testing Evolutionary Hypotheses Regarding Individual Differences in Human Mating Strategies

“…There is a robust phenotypic relationship between religiosity and conservatism (Guth, Kellstedt, Smidt, & Green, 2006; N. J. Kelly & Morgan, 2008;Layman & Carmines, 1997;Layman & Green, 2006; L. R. Olson & Green, 2006) and as both religiosity (Bouchard et al, 1999;Waller et al, 1990;Zietsch, Verweij, et al, 2011) and political orientation (Alford, Funk, & Hibbing, 2005;Eaves et al, 1999;Martin et al, 1986) are heritable, assortative mating may have produced positive genetic covariance between the two traits. Shared genetic variation is typically the result of two mechanisms (which are not exclusive): firstly, pleiotropic effects of genes may influence both traits via a common predisposition (for instance towards traditionalism), or the traits may have become genetically linked via assortative mating producing repeated pairings between alleles increasing religiosity and alleles increasing conservatism.…”