As anyone with an ear to hear or an eye to see knows, religion's place in American politics—and democracy more generally—has been the object recently of sometimes rather heated debates. Scholars and pundits alike have poured forth a torrent of arguments analyzing religion's relationship to voting patterns, political attitudes, civic engagement, and, of course, bowling leagues. In the American context, much of this work has been critical, especially of the most politically visible believers, conservative Protestants known alternatively as Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, theocrats, and worse. But amidst the sometimes hysterical jeremiads warning of coming theocracies or religious wars (or both), there persists a more sober and careful set of concerns about how religion and in particular politically mobilized religion might and does affect the viability, stability, and quality of modern pluralist democracies.Footnote 1 Among these concerns is the worry that religious traditions, especially as they become politically engaged, might shape individuals' political attitudes, capacities, and beliefs in ways damaging to democratic prospects, producing citizens lacking in civic virtue.
We suggest in this article that there is some tantalizing empirical evidence pointing in the opposite direction. Interviews with over 50 religious conservative activists shows that political participation and engagement positively shapes those activists' political views, inculcating in them a greater willingness to compromise, work within existing liberal democratic political institutions, and recognize reasonable limits on the range of proper political ends. While not an apology for religious conservative activism, our findings do suggest that scholars (and other citizens) might have less to fear from such activism than is commonly believed.
We are certainly not the first to take up this question of whether religious motivations are appropriate in American civic life and more specifically, whether religious conservatives are good citizens. While some scholars echo our assertions that the movement can produce good citizens and others do not, all share our desire to approach the movement on its own terms, to take seriously its identity as a social movement and its legitimacy as a player in modern politics. Much of the early work on the radical and religious right of the 1950s and 1960s portrayed leaders and supporters as suffering from pathological personalities, but the scholarship of the religious conservative movement which emerged in the late 1970s in the United States debunked much of this literature and pointed to a less pejorative way to approach the movement and its policy goals.Footnote 2
Of those scholars who find that religious conservatives can be good citizens, most point to the experience of political involvement as the catalyst for production of civic virtues. Matthew Moen argues that the movement has demonstrated the classic stages of social movement evolution in their activities in American politics.Footnote 3 Movement activists have become significantly more politically sophisticated over time and have moderated both their rhetoric and their tactics. Moen believes that these are evidence of a growing ability to play by the rules of the system and mirror the behavior and growth of other social movements and their entry into politics. Like Moen, Clyde Wilcox and Mark Rozell argue that religious conservatives, both individual activists and as a group, have changed their tactics and modes of speech over time.Footnote 4 While concentrating primarily on the movement in Virginia, they believe these developments to be indicative of changes in the larger movement. Most recently, Jon Shields has demonstrated that Christian Right leadership intentionally instills deliberative political values in its followers, grounding these deliberative norms in the Bible.Footnote 5 All of these authors point to a change in generations of activists, with the second generation exhibiting behavior that is much more in line with traditional understandings of good citizenship in democratic politics.
On the other side stand those scholars who remain skeptical of religious conservative activists' ability to be true and full participants in the democratic polity because of the source and nature of their political commitments. Michael Lienesch examines the writings and thought of religious conservative leaders and comes away concerned that the movement can never truly integrate into liberal politics because it takes its themes and authority structure from an absolute source: the Bible.Footnote 6 Lienesch fears that the movement leadership's goal of creating a morally-based public policy makes it impossible for them to exist within liberal politics with its imperatives of compromise and non-comprehensiveness. Similarly, in some of his work, Ted Jelen wonders whether Christianity and political action can ever be aligned.Footnote 7 He worries that religious conservative activists will compromise their religious convictions by compromise in politics or that, conversely, they will apply their theological certitude to the inherently uncertain plane of modern politics. He, like many other scholars in this vein, find no satisfying answer to the conundrum. While both Leinesch and Jelen point to signs of progress and possible avenues for further change, they and others remain concerned that such alteration in the movement's strategies may change the fundamental nature of the movement itself, undermining its own rationale.
One of the particular challenges of this topic is that the implicit standard at hand—what makes for a good citizen—is itself much disputed and indeed resists easy definition. Perhaps this should not be surprising, given that liberal democracy is very much a hybrid regime, a pastiche of mixed government that combines impulses and institutions that sometimes fit together rather awkwardly, if at all. Things are further complicated by the fact that any single aspect of citizenship may be important at one turn and problematic if maximized out of proportion to its other aspects.
Consider participation, or political engagement. It was not that long ago that political scientists worried that western democracies were “overloaded” and could not handle as much engagement as they were experiencing. Today, the worry is of course the opposite, that citizens are apolitical, apathetic, and disengaged.Footnote 8 Comprehending how religious political mobilization affects civic virtues requires, first, describing the content of those civic virtues.
So we begin below by engaging the political theory literature on citizenship and sketch out briefly the sorts of attitudes, practices, and habits of mind—civic virtues—that theorists suggest make for good citizens. We then articulate more fully what we make of one of the more important (if sometimes controversial) liberal democratic virtues, political autonomy, and suggest that the significance of consent for liberal democratic government requires citizens have the capacity to critique and evaluate political proposals on their own merits and engage their fellow citizens in ways that respect their standing as free and equal. While autonomy is certainly not the whole of what makes for a good citizen, focusing on it allows us to dig more deeply into how religious political activism might relate to citizenship and allow us to perhaps set the ground for more comprehensive treatments in the future. We then turn to our empirical evidence to suggest that, in many situations, religious conservative activists do meet the criteria for politically autonomous citizens, thus lending credence to the notion that religiously motivated people can be involved in politics without endangering democratic life. What is more, the evidence suggests that participation has a politically virtuous effect: over time, religious conservative activists seem to demonstrate more developed capacities for political autonomy, and thus, good democratic citizenship.
What we suggest is that the political mobilization and integration into democratic practices of deliberation and electoral contestation makes these religious activists better citizens. In particular, participation in political affairs seems to give religious conservatives a greater awareness of the distinctiveness of political goals which, in turn, facilitates activists' ability to engage comprehensively in politics, with all the rules, compromise, and consistency that entails. Though our evidence may be more suggestive than conclusive, the implications look to be fairly powerful. If political activity can go some distance in temporizing the dangers politicized religion can sometimes pose, those concerned about religion's public influence might have their fears eased. None of this is to say that religion cannot or does not pose a real challenge to pluralist liberal democracies, but merely that religious conservative activists can and do make for good citizens, fellow participants in the project of constructing a common political order that is durable, decent, and democratic.
Civic Virtues and Political Autonomy
Before we can say anything about whether our religious conservative activists are good citizens, we need to have some idea as to what constitutes a good citizen in pluralist liberal democracies. Though we hardly have space to cover the whole range of capacities, qualities, and attitudes we might hope to see in our fellow citizens, we can profit from some of the recent work by liberal political theorists regarding the kinds of civic virtue democracy demands.Footnote 9 While even classical liberal theorists like Locke, Kant, and Mill all emphasized virtue's importance to the success of liberal politics and social life,Footnote 10 liberals have historically shied away from talking too much about the qualities and characteristics that individuals ought to possess, even as citizens. Virtue-talk was for liberalism's opponents, those who thought—with Aristotle—that political authority ought to have as a primary purpose the shaping and improving of citizens' moral life. Liberalism was at least partly born of the conviction that even if the standards of human excellence could be reasonably demonstrated, our perpetual (and sometimes reasonable) disagreement about those standards was too inflammatory and dangerous to resolve or enforce politically. One need not be a skeptic to think that societies constituted by wide moral and religious pluralism invite much danger by promoting a particular view of the good life. But liberal democracies can be no more indifferent to citizens' moral character than their rivals. Under conditions of pluralism and social conflict, individuals' capacity to cooperate with those whom they deeply disagree demands a great deal more than just a kind of grudging indifference.Footnote 11 It demands real virtue. Indeed, to the degree that any liberal government is limited government, it will, perhaps, rely even more on its citizens' virtues than its competitors. Of course, that cuts both ways. A limited government ought to have less over which citizens will disagree and so will require less forbearance than, say, a communitarian one. Nonetheless, the point stands, since a limited government will be reluctant to engage in certain kinds of morality-enforcing acts and so proceeds with the expectation that citizens will be in some way self-regulating.
So what are the liberal virtues? Formally speaking, they are the virtues that a good liberal citizen would possess. Besides the general virtues necessary for any political regime (loyalty, courage, law-abidingness) and those necessary for a liberal market society (entrepreneurship, adaptability, work ethic), a successful liberal politics, William Galston suggests, carries its own particular laundry list of political virtues: the ability to respect the rights of others, discernment in political choice, moderation in political demands, and a commitment to public discourse.Footnote 12 Thomas Spragens similarly argues that what he calls “civic liberalism” requires that citizens be independent, tolerant, deliberative, and self-restrained, among other things.Footnote 13 Stephen Macedo, in turn, emphasizes the need for tolerance, impartiality, “broad sympathies,” and self-restraint.Footnote 14 Most of these virtues are innocuous and uncontroversial; they are virtues that might be required of most any regime, at least under pluralist social conditions. The same cannot be said to be true of what must be the two most distinctively liberal virtues, toleration and autonomy. Probably more than any of the others, these two both speak to the heart of liberal democratic politics and are especially controversial.
As to the former, if there is anything that distinguishes liberal democratic societies it is their aspiration to construct political communities in such a way as to give individuals the maximal feasible space within which to live their distinct, diverse lives. Liberalism may not exist solely to give protection to pluralismFootnote 15 but such protections do have a pride of place and to the degree that such protections give effect to toleration, we might say that it is toleration that makes pluralist liberal democracies possible. It is no secret, of course, that religious believers tend to be less tolerant in general (as usually defined by political scientists),Footnote 16 and charges of political intolerance usually lead the bill of indictments against religious-conservative activists. Whether political engagement might temper the salience of those charges is an important question slated for further inquiry, but for now we wish to focus on the latter distinctive liberal virtue, autonomy.
Political Autonomy Defined
Political autonomy, in its most basic sense, means the ability to rule oneself. For civic republicans, autonomy stands coextensive with the idea of being actively engaged in collective self-government, or “sharing in self-rule.”Footnote 17 Strong individualists like Mill argue that autonomy requires a studied dissociation from society's conventional opinions and a cultivated independence that promotes, even celebrates, distinctiveness and personal self-rule.Footnote 18 In A Theory of Justice, Rawls suggests that the principles of justice appropriate to a constitutional democracy carry with them a Kantian view of autonomy, namely “that a person is acting autonomously when the principles of his action are chosen by him as the most adequate possible expression of his nature as a free and equal rational being.”Footnote 19 In particular, we should think of ourselves as deliberating and acting autonomously to the degree that we are doing so as if we ourselves were within the Original Position, fully ensconced behind a “veil of ignorance,” or “independent of natural contingencies and accidental social circumstances.”Footnote 20 Regardless of the differences among theorists concerning the precise definition of autonomy, they are largely unified in the conviction that religion is bad for its cultivation and exercise, a point often shared by religious critics of liberalism.Footnote 21 This seems especially true when political philosophers refer to the sorts of conservative believers that populate the Christian Right.
For Rawls and a number of other influential theorists, however, that point of contention became a problem. In particular, Rawls came to think that his claims in favor of a comprehensive moral autonomy left the broader claim for justice as fairness vulnerable and “unrealistic” because it failed to solve the problem of stability. “Many citizens of faith,” he notes, “reject moral autonomy as a part of their way of life,” and do so reasonably.Footnote 22 Tied to affirming a comprehensive autonomy “liberalism becomes but another sectarian doctrine” and cannot work to legitimate political institutions.Footnote 23 Rawls' response was to reconstruct justice as fairness as a purely political doctrine based on a conception of the “person as citizen” rather than the person as autonomous moral agent. As citizens, individuals “are regarded as capable of revising [their conception of the good] on reasonable and rational grounds … [and] their public identity as free persons is not affected by changes over time in their conception of the good.”Footnote 24 This sort of citizenship, he suggests, is compatible with being the sort of person who “regard[s] it as simply unthinkable to view [herself] apart from certain religious, philosophical, and moral convictions, or from certain enduring attachments and loyalties.”Footnote 25 While a state that directly and consciously attempts to indoctrinate students into being Millian-style individuals might reasonably be rejected as unjustifiably disrespectful of citizens' non-autonomist comprehensive views, one that merely attempts to ensure that citizens understand their rights within a liberal political system and are reasonably prepared to exercise them well would not.
The political value of autonomy is fully realized “by citizens when they act from principles of justice that specify the fair terms of cooperation they would give to themselves [as citizens] when fairly represented as free and equal persons [in the Original Position].”Footnote 26 In this revised heuristic, all that is required is that we be capable of reflecting on the kinds of principles appropriate to democratic citizens, not necessarily morally autonomous agents. This turns out to mean that citizens need to be prepared to think about and evaluate political proposals critically, but they need not do so with respect to their own comprehensive beliefs. Political autonomy as a necessary virtue or capacity might then be more attractive to many religious believers than its comprehensive predecessor since it would not putatively require the capacity or inclination to look critically at that faith as the price of good citizenship.Footnote 27 Citizens may not need to be morally autonomous to be good citizens, but they do need to be politically autonomous.
Political autonomy makes it possible for citizens to have both the power and capacity to govern themselves. Liberalism is, among other things, a theory of government that makes claims about the relationship between legitimacy and consent. Even if consent as a strict criterion is an implausible standard, liberals still make political legitimacy dependent on whether or not it could be the object of consent. Liberal governments protect religious liberty not necessarily because every citizen affirms the principle of religious liberty but because no reasonable person would consent to a government that forced its citizens to worship against her conscience.Footnote 28 As Harry Brighouse points out, this principle of legitimacy means that citizens within liberal societies must be able to consent and, what is more, this consent must be “free and authentic.”Footnote 29 In other words, “it must be true that citizens would give their consent if they were reasonable, informed, and not overly self-interested.”Footnote 30 A liberal government could not reasonably claim itself legitimate so long as some portion of its citizens were so thoroughly dominated that they were not even minimally capable of rendering judgment on that government, whether such domination came from political or non-political sources.
More particularly, being politically autonomous seems to require first, a knowledge and acceptance of our rights and liberties that we possess by virtue of our democratic citizenship and second, a willingness to view others has having the same rights and liberties we have. This reinforces the idea that we must necessarily not be under the domination and social coercion of others. If, for instance, religious liberty is guaranteed under a liberal constitution, then we must grasp that we can leave or join a faith and not lose the goods tied to citizenship. We may, as Tomasi notes, refuse to exercise our rights but we cannot alienate them, and this places limits on others' control over our lives (however much we might seek to give that control over).Footnote 31 Finally, and this may be more important, we must come to respect the distinctiveness of politics as a practice meant to secure distinctively political goods.
The first point about how rights create social limits implies as much. Once we recognize that we have certain rights and that this places limits on others (and ourselves), we must also come to accept the idea that the institution primarily charged with protecting these rights—the state—is not reducible to the society it governs. Thus, our relationship to that state and our fellow citizens—our political identity—is not simply coextensive with our own more comprehensive (religious) identity. Though we need not understand our political identity as one that is entirely freestanding with respect to our comprehensive one, neither can they be entirely conflated. A proper understanding of political autonomy must include, then, the development of a political identity that embraces democratic politics as a distinctive practice meant to secure the goods implied by our (and others') status as free and equal citizens. Politics is not religion or religion politics, however much the two may inevitably engage one another.
Political Autonomy on the Ground
We claim that political autonomy consists of the knowledge of and capacity to exercise political rights and liberties, the recognition that others have the same rights, and the ability to distinguish political goods as different from goods secured by other practices. Understanding whether religious activists can and do develop such capacities means translating these rather abstract claims into tangible, observable, and testable concepts. How might citizens exhibit these attributes of political autonomy in political democracies as we understand them?
To operationalize the idea of political autonomy into testable propositions, we begin by examining each component separately. First, politically autonomous people possess knowledge of their personal rights and liberties and the capacity to exercise them. This does not necessarily mean that they do participate actively, since one of the features of a liberal democracy is that citizens' participation in public life is not intrinsic to their human flourishing. But it does mean that they are aware of (and capable of doing) what is required for them to be full participatory democratic citizens. They must be able to engage politically both in terms of participating, by voting or activism, and of deliberating, whether on their own or with others, about political issues. Now, it is likely that individuals who are politically autonomous will be people who are participating in politics in some manner. Though the recluse can be politically autonomous in this particular way, we can be much more confident in this regard about the political autonomy of an actively engaged citizen, especially if she participates within and not outside of established political institutions and practices.
Of course, not just any political activity or discourse counts as evidence of political autonomy; in our own capacity for recognizing and exercising our rights, we also need to recognize others' similar capacities and view them as equal to our own. In other words, embracing our rights implies a generous consideration of other's views and recognizing their political equality. A politically autonomous person will be willing to grant others the same rights as herself and will especially grant another's right to participate fully in the political process. Recognizing this virtue generally means seeking to preserve that equality by not trying to change the rules and deprive another of her political rights. While the precise content of political rights may (and will) be contested, that contest will be one of equals within an established process. Practically speaking, we can see this when an individual is able to recognize that others have different views, correctly identify what these differences are, and seek to engage them as differences among equal citizens. Of course, in order to gain a full picture here, we will need to examine both the actions and self-perceptions of the activists so that those reported views can be triangulated with observable behavior.
How can we distinguish whether an individual is appropriately recognizing the political equality of those around them? First, we can learn a significant amount by listening to how activists describe their own thoughts and behavior. In addition, we should observe the ability to work in pursuit of political goals with others who may not share their views, and an ability to compromise those goals based on others' views. Citizens should be able to work in groups with people of diverse backgrounds in order to achieve their goals and be able to construct compromises with those with whom they disagree because the political relationship requires it. In this way, activists can signal their recognition of political equality by granting others the same benefits and rights as they have, to pursue goals through the political system as citizens free and equal like themselves.
The willingness and capacity to compromise are also evidence of the third characteristic of an autonomous person, the development of a political identity that embraces democratic politics as a distinctive practice. Compromise means that a person has been able to assess her own political goals and understands them to be separate from other, more ultimate values. In our context, we would expect politically autonomous actors to recognize that there are some things that politics cannot and should not do, such as answer ultimate questions about the origin and purpose of the universe and human life—or save one's soul. An ability to see the world in this way allows politics to perform a delimited set of functions in both these individuals' lives and society at large. This separation of politics from other parts of life can best be operationalized as the ability to prioritize political goods, a commitment to “repeated play” within the system (thus a willingness to be defeated), and support for democratic institutions.
Fully autonomous people should be able to prioritize the political goods they seek. In being able to approach politics as a distinctive practice, they are able to separate political goals from other types of goals and thus give them an appropriate value. This means that they should be able to compromise on political values and be able to weigh different goals differently. This ability to prioritize political goals leads naturally into a commitment to the political process over time, or repeated play in the system. A person is able to see political activity as distinctive, and not ultimate, and is thus able to accept defeat and return to try again. Practically, we can observe this characteristic of autonomy both in individuals' willingness to continue in the political process after a policy defeat and in their willingness to start and join organizations that institutionalize this commitment to repeat plays of the game. An activist joining an interest group or a political party signals at least a basic understanding of the need for commitment over time and the distinctiveness of political activity.
Finally, the autonomous individual shows support for the extant political and democratic institutions. These institutions structure how politics will be dealt with in a distinct way. Support for democratic institutions demonstrates an individual's understanding that there are appropriate venues for political conflict that are distinct from other types of conflict. This, in turn, shows that an individual approaches politics as a distinct practice with its own rules and norms. Support for democratic institutions is shown through a willingness to work within the political system and to play by the rules of the game. In this way, it is directly related to a person's ability to ascribe the same rights to others as to themselves.
In all of these situations, citizens will demonstrate that politics is not ultimate; it does not have the ability to decide ultimate questions for people and thus, inhabits the realm of prioritized goals and compromise. Politics is distinct from other processes that denote value in our society. Of all the characteristics of autonomy, the recognition of politics as a distinct practice may have the most wide-ranging impact on individuals' behavior, yet we suspect it is the hardest to observe and correctly identify. In any case, the acceptance of one's own rights and the ability to ascribe them to others seems to be necessary but insufficient characteristics of autonomy. All three aspects are required for a person to be politically autonomous.
Religious Conservative Activists and the Conduct of Politics
In order to understand religious conservative activists' behavior and attitudes, over 50 of these activists from all over the country were interviewed between 2001 and 2005. Most were from Southern and Midwestern states, though a few were from the Northeast and West. These individuals represent a good cross section of those who are active in the movement ideologically, demographically, and geographically. The largest portion consists of leaders in state-level religious conservative political organizations or the state-level incarnations of national ones. These include organizations such as the Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, and Right-to-Life, as well as similar independent state organizations. Some are activists solely in the Republican party or are elected Republican officials. A few activists work independently of any group or party primarily lobbying state and local governments. The vast majority are Evangelical Protestants, though some are mainline Protestants and a few are Catholic; a small majority of the activists are men and all are white.
These religious conservative activists are usually the center of friendship and information networks that give them unique access to both political leaders and those Christians in the pews available for political mobilization. The interviews took place individually and in groups over the past five years. This group is clearly not representative of all religious conservative activists in the country. It excludes those “purists” who have stayed outside the political system or left it due to fear of compromise or to an overriding commitment to anti-systemic goals. But we have no indication of any significant bias being thus introduced into our assessments, since we are concerned here specifically with those activists who are engaged in “normal” politics and are opinion-leaders for the grassroots supporters who look to them for leadership. The activists interviewed were identified largely by a “snowball sample,” utilizing the movement's networks existing both within and beyond the bounds of state politics. All were offered comprehensive anonymity in return for the candor of their responses.
In analyzing these interviews, we sought to identify the most important themes addressed by activists and to understand how they viewed their activism in light of the democratic ideal of autonomy we have posited. These analyses should be viewed as interpretive, not as quantitative data from a survey of activists. While we are confident in our conclusions, there is certainly room for interpretation in dealing with open-format conversational interviews. One challenge in dealing primarily with interview data is that the researcher is, in some ways, at the mercy of the memory and agenda of the person being interviewed. Legitimate questions arise concerning the validity of the analyses based on these interviews. This may be especially problematic as we ask activists to describe their behavior and motivations because they have an interest in presenting the best, and in our case, most politically autonomous answers. We have sought to deal with this in a number of ways. First, where possible, we have tried to corroborate activists' claims about their behavior with outside information. Generally, we can confirm the facts of their stories, but obviously not their reactions or motivations. Further, we use the findings of other political scientists in their studies of the movement to bolster our impressions of activists' goals and motivations. Finally, we are perhaps less concerned with the possible discrepancies between an activists true and stated feelings and motivations than we might be because we are specifically addressing the role of autonomy in citizenship and not other ingredients. It seems more difficult to dissemble—and easier to verify—autonomous behaviors such as commitment to repeated play within the political system or compromise than it would be to dissemble concerning toleration or other parts of democratic civic virtue. Nevertheless, we recognize that our assessments of religious conservative motivation must remain suggestive and not conclusive.
The characteristics of an autonomous person are, as we have noted, perhaps easier to deduce than they are to observe. What we tried to do in the previous section of this article is to map out ways that we can operationalize autonomy, to explain how we can identify behaviors and thus people who live up to the philosophical ideal. But operationalization of autonomy is not as straightforward as one might expect. Many of the characteristics we have identified overlap in terms of both how we generally tend to think about these concepts and in the evidence we might use to demonstrate their existence. Thus, these characteristics of autonomy are related to and build upon one another. They do not exist in abstracted individuality and we cannot observe them as such. Much of our evidence, then, while referring back to our operationalizations, will demonstrate (or fail to demonstrate) multiple characteristics of autonomy. In this way, however, we gain more theoretical leverage as individuals are likely to demonstrate a cluster of these autonomous behaviors, or very few of them.
Rather than addressing each of these operationalizations individually, we present a picture below of contemporary religious conservative political activists and sketch out how they view the political system and their place within it. Because the characteristics of autonomy are comprehensively interrelated, we approach our discussion of religious conservative behavior holistically, pointing out the ways in which we believe they satisfy the requirements of political autonomy. And we do believe many religious conservatives, both verbally and behaviorally, exhibit the characteristics of politically autonomous citizens.
The most striking things to emerge from the interviews are the activists' commitment to what they see as the common (democratic) good, their technical political sophistication, and their growing focus on intermediate goals and strategic compromise. It is no secret, of course, that many of the ends pursued by religious conservatives are controversial and, for some, simply outside the bounds of what is permissible in a democratic polity. Be that as it may, the activists interviewed here exhibit a strong attachment to the American political system and the procedural and substantive requirements of representative democracy. All agree that, whatever its faults, our democracy is the best political system available. In fact, many activists attribute America's stable form of government and prosperity to divine intervention, thus giving extra weight to their democratic commitments. What is more, though they certainly understand the concept quite differently than their political opponents, they seem to think about politics in terms of the common good. One activist highlights his view that good laws for families are good for everyone, not just Christians, suggesting that activists' well-known commitments to traditional morality has its basis in a quest to help all people, not simply enforce religious conservatives' own beliefs. Activists firmly believe that their policy positions work for the general good and not purely for the benefit of their supporters.
Importantly, activists recognize that there exist legitimate differences of opinion over what that common good should look like. They all acknowledge that people cannot be forced to agree with their policy stands, regardless of the issue, and pursue political ends that they think can find reasonably wide agreement. Activists seek parental notifications for abortions for minors because clearly a large percentage of the total American population, Christian and otherwise, believe that the policy is in best interest of society. Religious conservatives seek to reduce the fees for marriage licenses when a couple has had some pre-marital counseling because most citizens think that it is a non-invasive way to promote stable marriages. While some of these goals have been forced on the movement by the realities of American politics, activists' involvement in the process have made them more pragmatic and cognizant of their role and what change is possible in contemporary American politics. One remarks:
The Christian's responsibility is to show love to others and treat all people fairly and equitably … That responsibility goes for the unborn child who needs to be protected from having his life taken by someone else, and that goes for the unbeliever who should be free not to believe. We can't force others to serve God. God himself gives each of us the freedom to choose to serve Him or not.
This recognition of legitimate differences of opinion concerning policy goals and implementation points to religious conservatives' ability to grant political equality to those with whom they disagree. It further suggests that many do, in fact, have the inclination to compromise on various issues, demonstrating their autonomy by granting rights to others and approaching politics as a distinctive practice.
Perhaps just as significantly, these religious conservatives strongly support the American system's focus on individual rights and responsibilities and affirm in important ways the idea that politics has a limited scope. Crucially for the would-be theocrats, they especially recognize the distinction between politics and religion. While they do not separate the two with some metaphorical wall (high or otherwise), they do emphasize that the two do not entirely overlap. One activist pointed out that while most people's lives are affected by politics, life's ultimate questions are encompassed by religion, not politics, suggesting a sense of limits to what politics can achieve. In sum, activists see themselves as acting within liberal democratic parameters; they see themselves as reasonable citizens and decidedly not anti-systemic.
Within the context of those political ends, the religious conservative activists showed themselves remarkably sophisticated about the practice of democratic politics. They are well educated and well versed in the habits and strategies of democracy; they are not the poor, uneducated and easy to lead group described by Michael Weisskopf in the Washington Post in 1993. Most religious conservative activists choose means that put them in the mainstream of American political activity. They have formed interest groups and issue organizations and have a growing presence in the Republican parties of many states.Footnote 32 Many have experience in both election campaigns and legislative battles. Some have become highly skilled political operatives whose services are in demand from state party leadership and candidates. Most demonstrate both nuts-and-bolts knowledge of how politics is done at the state and local level in the United States and the ability to utilize that knowledge for their political ends. They are active in all arenas of state and local politics, in issue efforts, election campaigns, legislative action, and party governance.Footnote 33 They are not simply there to make arguments about the rightness of their causes in the public square; they take the time and effort it requires to become a real presence in the political realm. In this way activists demonstrate their commitment to repeated interactions with the political system, showing their support for democratic institutions and their ability to see political goals as distinctive.
This engagement has, over the past twenty years, translated into a commitment to long-term political strategies. While there is certainly not unanimity concerning the vehicle of that commitment—the question of whether to engage in party or interest group politics is still a live one—every activist described not only plans and strategies for long-term change, but a commitment to be part of the political system for the long run. One activist noted:
So as Christians who want to see more Christians elected, and to serve and forward good public policy, we do have to be shrewd, and we do have to be smart about the way we run campaigns. And when you run out with a sign that says, “Hey, I'm a Christian and I want to see a theocracy,” you're going to repel a lot of people. And therefore, if we don't have the ability to govern, then do we have the ability to forward good public policy or prevent bad public policy?
This commitment to governing effectively over the long term emerges at all levels. No longer do activists believe that they will be able to solve all the problems they find in American society in the near future. Interestingly, many claim that one of their challenges is convincing their rank and file supporters of this. The activists interviewed for this project consistently made distinctions between the long-term professionalized activists in the movement—like themselves—and the grassroots supporters they seek to mobilize. This reflects both a general phenomenon among religious conservatives (noted by other scholars of the movement)Footnote 34 and a recognized issue for political activism at all levels: the differences between professionals and amateurs in public policy debates.Footnote 35
Religious conservative activists have further shown sophistication in their approach to influencing legislative behavior at the state level. While some are involved in building party discipline within the legislatures, most are involved more directly with individual legislators by lobbying and serving as the source for research and bill writing. In fact, at least one religious conservative group in each observed state was actively engaged in writing legislation. In one state, where legislative issues dominate the religious conservative movement's efforts, several non-religious conservative observers remarked that you could count on the fact that a bill was written by a religious conservative group if it was introduced by certain legislators. In another state, a religious conservative activist described how her organization “looks around each fall to determine which new bills to propose and which laws need to be changed.” The group then produces fact sheets on these issues and looks for sponsors for their bills. This demonstrates the efforts by religious conservatives, like other interest groups, to encode their ideas into law by exploiting the fact that legislators need information and assistance to do their jobs effectively.
In some cases religious conservative activists have formed long-term relationships with sympathetic members in state legislatures. These relationships are noted also by state legislators and other non-religious conservative observers. They use these friendships during the session to help the bills they support and kill those they do not. One activist explained that they work like all other political interest groups when they lobby; they use all the same strategies and tactics to move or stall legislation. These efforts and relationships are extremely important because they provide an avenue to real access in state legislative bodies. Religious conservative activists are engaging in legislative activity, seeking their policy goals, but within the context of the democratic system. This experience is teaching them to prioritize their goals and thus reinforces the idea of politics as a distinctive activity.
One of the easiest ways for religious conservative activists to foster this legislative access is to ensure that sympathetic and even movement candidates are elected in the first place. This need has led to a growing sophistication in religious conservatives' roles in election campaigns at all levels of state politics. It can be seen both in the mobilization of rank and file religious conservatives for volunteer campaign work and the number of religious conservative activists who become foundational to candidates' campaign teams. Many religious conservative activists were integral members of the Republicans' 72-hour taskforce during the 2004 election. These activists tell stories about the large number of religious conservatives they were able to mobilize for campaign work, particularly phone calls and neighborhood canvassing for Get Out the Vote efforts in conservative areas. Activists describe large numbers of homeschooling families being recruited to work phone banks in the days before the people went to the polls. Several believe that these activities made the difference in Iowa where the Bush victory margin was less than 20,000 votes. Other evidence suggests similar activities with varied outcomes in a variety of swing states. This suggests that through their mobilization efforts, religious conservatives are performing a significant civic education function, particularly for their fellow religious believers, showing an understanding of their role as democratic citizens.
A growing phenomenon that is an outgrowth of campaign efforts and clearly demonstrates the practical focus of contemporary religious conservative activists is the religious conservative political operative. Many of these people began their political lives working on religious conservative issue politics and graduated into the Republican party or Republican campaign work. Frequently, it is their knowledge of the intricacies of state politics that allow them to be an asset to candidates running at the district and state level. One former religious conservative issue activist became executive director of the Republican party in his state and oversaw a party restructuring that many believe lead directly to Republican victories all over the state. He then moved on to head a successful Bush campaign effort and finally started his own influential political consulting firm. There are examples all over the country of individuals whose early political activity in religious conservative circles gave them a start in politics that has propelled them into significant positions of power in the politics of their states. This is perhaps the best example of how the experience of politics has impressed upon religious conservative activists the value of joining institutions that foster “repeat play” in the political system. This ability to recognize the value of consistent, sustained political activity is the most comprehensive evidence of religious conservatives' ability to separate political goals from religious ones and vice versa.
Religious conservative activists further recognize that their ability to be effective depends in great measure on their reliability as coalition partners with other organized interests. They speak of strategic coalitions on individual issues with groups that are far from the religious conservative fold. Just a few examples from conversations with religious conservative activists show the range of such alliances.
One of the things I've learned is that there's a difference in politics between temporary and permanent coalitions. And you're building majorities for specific issues at specific times. You can have temporary coalitions with people you would not be working with under any circumstances for any reason, except for the fact, you know, like, the feminists can often be in the same venue against obscenity and pornography because of the demeaning aspect to women … We were picketing the X-rated movies … and the only other group that was out there picketing with us was the feminist group.
But the goal is … to allow protections for these kids who wanted to start a Bible club. Because these kids have been singled out. So the ACLU said, “Hey, as long as you don't just, you know, stick with or focus on the Bible kids and give them special protections, we're in.”…And so I think the method and the relationships really goes a long way to working within the majority rule as far as forwarding public policy.
Religious conservatives are presenting their ideas accessibly so that others can understand and discuss them. They accept both their own and others' rights and responsibilities in the political system.
Consistent involvement with politics has taught many religious conservative activists the usefulness and art of compromise in trying to advance their positions. Following their understanding of the long-term role for Christian political activism, they have learned to work within the context in which they find themselves. One explains: “And my personal opinion is that the greater the number of non-negotiables you have within your political arsenal, the more difficult task you have to get and maintain influence within political arenas.” This sentiment is echoed by other activists who, along with their growing ability to compromise, consistently exhibit their deep understanding of politics in their states.
We interview virtually all the candidates… If they're pro-life and they're pro-family, then I say, “That's all I need to know; you don't have to run on my issue. You know, run on what will win in your area.” Our people a lot of times want them out there with a Bible, you know, saying, “I'm pro-life, and I'm pro-gun, and I'm against homosexuality,” and that's not a winning strategy in a lot of races.
This understanding of the political and social context in which they operate exhibits, perhaps more than anything else, the movement's strategy of long-term engagement and success in the political arena. They have taken the time to learn how to do politics in their states and are consistently seeking ways to teach others these skills. They have found that the movement can be much more successful in implementing its policy goals when it has mastered the means of achieving those ends, particularly at the state level. And activists further demonstrate their commitment to an incremental strategy and to “moving the ball” even if it is not very far along the path to their policy goals.
I think the incremental approach has worked in a lot of cases for us too. I mean, it's one of the things…that our people want everything or nothing. And you know, my argument with those people is that we didn't lose our culture overnight and we're not going to regain it overnight. So, let's move the ball.Footnote 36
Many times over the past few years, religious conservatives have abandoned an unreachable best outcome to achieve a more feasible intermediate outcome. This has been particularly the case in their strategies for large-scale change concerning controversial social issues. A good example of this can be seen in the abortion restrictions that have proliferated at the state level since the Casey decision. While few religious conservative activists would take issue with the movement's commitment to total eradication of abortion for any reason, most activists are currently concentrating on transitional goals designed to make abortions harder to obtain. These include abortion-provider licensing laws, informed consent, parental consent and waiting period laws, and laws prohibiting the transportation of a minor to another state for the purpose of procuring an abortion. Clearly, this demonstrates religious conservatives' ability to prioritize their goals. They have determined that the best is sometimes the enemy of the good, and so work to achieve what good they can.
In fact, these abortion reduction strategies have proven to be a defining issue in the evolution of the movement. Many of the earlier activists were unwilling to pursue intermediate goals, believing first that no accommodation with evil was acceptable under the moral code they believe they had been given by God. Older activists also worried that any acknowledgement of abortion through regulation helped to uphold Roe vs. Wade. One remarked to a colleague, “Well, I just can't be in favor of [regulating abortion clinics] because that will be the state's legitimizing the abortion practice.” The second generation activists are more politically sophisticated and patient, thus they embrace these intermediate measures as saving lives, without losing their ultimate commitment to making abortion illegal in the United States. On this issue, one activist notes, “Look, there's a way. We're sort of the next generation; let's actually try to advance the ball. Let's stay on the ground, but do it in a wise manner.”
An understanding of the context in which they operate and a fundamental shift in the strategies of these newer-generation activists has led to an increasing focus on public perceptions of the movement and its spokespeople. This notion of how the movement appears to the general public is an interesting one. Most of the second-generation religious conservative activists are highly sensitive to their public image and cringe when they hear people like the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blame the September 11 attacks on the immorality of United States. All argue that they fundamentally disagree with such sentiments, and many have stated so unequivocally in print. But they are frustrated by the damage these types of statements do to the movement's quest to impact social issues. They can also be embarrassed by the naïveté of their less-experienced colleagues.
A lot of our people go to meetings and say things and do things that put them up to ridicule. And when it makes me nervous when I agree with them on the issues, I know that somebody that doesn't understand it all has got to be really nervous. But our people have to understand that there's a time and there's a place to say something, and sometimes it's not even what you say, it's how you say it on an issue.
These activists intuitively recognize the need to use rhetoric and ideas in their education and advocacy that appeal to the broadest sector of the American public. Many of the activists point to the success that Catholics have had in utilizing the Natural Law perspective to support policy positions based on their theological understanding of the world. This is not to say that they disguise their motives, but they look for the commonalities of opinion and purpose to emphasize in their communications with people outside the religious conservative fold. And in fact, many talk about the need to educate the general public, not simply religious conservative grassroots, on the basis of their issue positions. This, we believe, is further evidence of religious conservatives' ability and commitment to making their arguments accessible to the general public.
Certainly, this assertion is contestable. While we have linked activists' choices to use more accessible rhetoric to evidence of their commitment to a democratic political arena, others—scholars and critics of the movement alike—have seen it as simply a ruse to disguise the movement's underlying undemocratic intentions. Our response is two-fold. First, in many situations around the country, the movement can be seen moderating its behavior over time. Other scholarly and journalistic work points out these changes over time.Footnote 37 This is significant because it suggests that even if the intention of moderated rhetoric is instrumentalist, its presence is having an effect on the actual practices of the movement.Footnote 38 We reiterate that we cannot know the true, interior motivations of religious conservative activists, but their words and deeds seem more important in light of the actual practice of everyday politics in the United States.
Religious conservative activists seem to be demonstrating politically autonomous attitudes and behaviors in tangible ways. The individuals in our study are clearly cognizant of their need to think and act in politically autonomous ways. They are able to recognize and accept their own and others' political rights and they seem to evince a better understanding of the distinctiveness of political goals than most scholars previously believed. While the evidence we have offered may be more suggestive than conclusive, we think that it has fairly significant implications for our understanding not only of religiously motivated political actors, but also for our ability to gauge the true overlap of political philosophy and political reality.
Religious Conservatives' Political Evolution
As we noted, two things stand out from this brief survey: religious conservative activists have become increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of how to make politics work and those activists have firmly affixed themselves to the American democratic order. These certainly demonstrate the activists' political autonomy, at least as we have defined it. But what is perhaps even more interesting is how this political sophistication and engagement has, according to the activists themselves, changed them politically. There is significant evidence, for example, that the stridency of religious conservative activists' rhetoric has softened over time, both in individuals and in succeeding generations of activists. One activist relates his own experiences.
The other thing about it is that there are certain people within the movement who have the gift of belligerence. That is, a lot of the criticism of our movement has been justified. If we're going to be perfectly honest … I'm not innocent of those charges from years past.
This attention to rhetoric is not unrelated to their need to build coalitions and the recognition that politics is rarely an all-or-nothing proposition. There is a willingness to build consensus that underlies their commitment to representative democracy in a pluralistic culture. Indeed, their commitment to pragmatism draws fire from some of the more ideologically-committed religious conservatives. And it is certainly the case that this group of activists is more modest than their predecessors in their goals for change in the society. One religious conservative active in Republican party politics explains:
At least through the Robertson era I had that stigma as one of those far-right-wing kooks, but now some things have evolved and a lot of us I guess are being more perceived as…they know we're [conservative on the] issues but at least we can talk to and work with. And to me, that's not a bad deal.
and
A lot of, I guess I'll call them cream of the crop of the people who got involved and who are still in the party and they're influential and they have a lot of credibility … some of them, including myself, are now viewed as maybe not pure enough.
This sort of evolution sets this generation of activists apart from their predecessors, at least in the eyes of many of the interviewees. The earlier generation of religious-conservative activists—defined, say, as those mobilized before the early 1990s—formed many of the stereotypes of the movement that still exist today. Many were strident in their promotion and defense of their positions on social issues. One activist explains:
I saw this in the movement in the Robertson campaign. We were the embodiment of the truth, or the embodiment of the cutting edge, or the embodiment of what was going on right then, and if you were not with us, then that automatically put you in the “other” camp.
This focus on absolute purity and rightness produced a reputation of intolerance for the movement in the early years of the Moral Majority and the late 1980s in the Pat Robertson campaign for president. But involvement in politics has, it seems, produced a new breed of activist, more committed to engagement within the political system. In some ways, of course, the perceived changes here are unsurprising. The activists are inside the system now, not outside fighting for access. Activists themselves note:
What I've seen in the fifteen years or so there, is the ones who have stayed in have become more sophisticated as to expectations of working with the moderate wing of the party.
and
You've got the religious conservative Protestant Evangelical who is politically active and becoming more sophisticated politically over time. You see those folks a lot in positions of leadership; they're elected officials, party leaders, that sort of thing.
People given political responsibility will often find good reasons to moderate their demands; it is commonplace for activists who remain outside the formal institutions of politics to view those on the inside as sell-outs or co-opted. In some ways they may indeed be—and we would suggest that such a phenomenon is a good thing for political autonomy.
Of course, other viewpoints on the evolution of the movement exist. While there is certainly other scholarly evidence for the transformations we observe among our sample of activists,Footnote 39 there is also some evidence suggesting that the movement may be permanently handicapped by its grounding in absolutist moral stands. Some researchers have found evidence directly contradicting ours, that involvement in politics has not moderated religious conservative activists' attitudes or behavior.Footnote 40 So, at some level, the degree to which religious conservative activists are good citizens remains an open question. But, at this point, we believe there is more evidence in their favor than to their discredit.
Conclusions
To return to the question we left at the end of our first section, does this new breed of religious activists qualify as entirely virtuous? It would be wrong, we think, to give an unequivocal answer to that question; too many of our interviewees (and religious activists more broadly) held views that too intimately conflated American democracy and Christian culture.Footnote 41 But we can say with some confidence that individuals seem to be made more autonomous by their activism and that the newer generation of activists is more virtuous than the previous. They are more willing to compromise, more willing to distinguish between public and private goods, and more willing to accept disagreement over contested goods as politically reasonable (even if they think the moral disagreement not so reasonable). Though hardly perfect, the activists interviewed certainly qualify as politically autonomous as we conceptualize it.
No doubt, of course, many will find this analysis unconvincing, content to think religious conservative activists—or any political activists motivated by religious faith—inevitably dangerous, profoundly opposed to core democratic values, and proper objects of marginalization, not inclusion. There are certainly reasonable arguments in this direction, but it is worth noting that there are any number of political issues about which the range of reasonable (i.e., democratic) claims include those made by many of these activists. The activists' willingness to engage politically and the resulting change in their political identities suggest, finally, an answer to the dilemma of how to deal with goods where public/private status is at issue, and it is an answer quite the opposite of marginalization. In particular, participation in political affairs seems to heighten religious conservatives' understanding regarding the distinctiveness of political goals, facilitating activists' ability to comprehensively engage in political life with all the rules, compromise, and inconsistency that entails. This suggests that when goods are disputed in this way—and reasonably so—the answer is not to rule some side out of order, i.e., marginalize them, but rather to commit the dispute to the rough and tumble world of campaigns, elections, deliberative debates, and so on. In short, the evidence presented here suggests that we should have a little more faith in our political institutions, not the blind faith of the young child, but the reasonable faith that recognizes the powerful pull of institutions and sees how it can make us into responsible, autonomous, even virtuous, citizens.
