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

Abstract

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.

Ideological profiles of US adults and their support for youth mentoring

“…Although it is impossible to know exactly how individuals interpreted this item, it is likely that many participants’ endorsement of the direction of the country was influenced by support for contemporaneous policy initiatives. These findings are consistent with broader trends regarding strengthening support for Republican politicians and policies among highly religious voters (e.g., Evangelicals), including among younger generations like Millennials (Pelz & Smidt, ).…”

Comparing Political Attitudes of Evangelicals with the Attitudes of Mainline Christians and Non-Church Members in The Netherlands

“…This may have shaped their views on homosexuality in a different direction than the views of older evangelicals who were raised in a socio-cultural context that was less friendly toward homosexuality. Such a difference between older and younger evangelicals on the matter of homosexuality was, for instance, also found by Pelz and Smidt (2015) in their study into generational differences among American evangelicals. With regard to pro-life issues, however, such a distinction between older and younger evangelicals does not come forward as age has no effect here.…”

Climate Change, Politics and Religion: Australian Churchgoers’ Beliefs about Climate Change

“…These patterns have also been found for belief in human-caused climate change and degree of concern about climate change [14,15] and support for international and domestic policy action [16]. The link between American evangelicalism and affiliation or alignment with the Republican Party is well established and persistent (see Pelz and Smith for an intergenerational analysis [17]), and political conservatism accounts for some of the distinction between evangelicals and other Americans in their views on climate change [14][15][16]. Other factors include evangelicals' beliefs about the end times [18], weaker biospheric/altruistic values [14], and theologically-and politically-fueled distrust of international institutions and international cooperation [16].…”