Religious Conservatives and the Requirements of Citizenship: Political Autonomy

Abstract

Many scholars have viewed the rise and political influence of religious conservatives in the U.S. with some alarm, arguing that their commitments are so illiberal and undemocratic as to be a substantial threat to the creation and maintenance of a just and stable democratic polity. In particular, many worry that religious conservatives lack the requisite civic virtues necessary to making pluralist democracies work. After attending to what sorts of virtues a good citizen ought to possess, we present evidence drawn from interviews with state-level religious conservative activists suggesting that political mobilization and integration into institutions of deliberation and electoral contestation actually works to make them better citizens, at least with respect to one important virtue, political autonomy. If such engagement can temporize the dangers politicized religion can sometimes pose, those concerned about religion's public influence might have their fears eased. Religious conservative activists can make for good citizens, fellow participants in the project of constructing a common political order that is durable, decent, and democratic.

The Christian Right: Engaged Citizens or Theocratic Crusaders?

“…In recent years, a number of Christian Right scholars have sought to illuminate the democratic virtues of this movement (Conger & McGraw 2008;Shields 2009). In his The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right, for instance, Jon Shields argues that Christian Right organizations ought to be applauded for their participatory virtues.…”

You’ve Got a Friend: Religious Conservatives, Outsiders, and Social Bridging (APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper, JSSR submission 2014)

“…Charles Taylor (1998) theorizes that to the extent communities require mutual trust and solidarity, they are less welcoming to outsiders. Conservative Christians, in particular, are seen as socially exclusive and politically intolerant (Conger and McGraw 2008). The religious and political conservatism of white Evangelicals, such as the belief in individual responsibility, blinds them to structural discrimination against minorities and undermines the authenticity of interracial friendships (Jackman and Crane 1986;Emerson and Smith 2000).…”

The asymmetrical structure of left/right disagreement

“…If interests, beliefs and predispositions influence the opinions of voters in the electorate, then it seems reasonable to suppose that these influences bear down on the opinions of party insiders as well (Aldrich, 1983;Wittman, 1983). And if party policy reflects the effort by politicians to balance the sometimes competing demands of policy-seeking activists, on the one hand, with the strategic pressures toward office-seeking positions on the other (Conger and McGraw, 2008;Miller and Schofield, 2008), then how party activists organize their policy preferences across multiple dimensions of political disagreement is likely to affect in important ways how this balancing act plays out. For this reason, the following analyses abandon the notions of a single-dimensional political world, symmetrical preference structures and a mass-elite dichotomy.…”