Two Approaches to Religion and Politics: Moral Cosmology and Subcultural Identity*

Abstract

We explore two competing approaches to internal religious divisions and their political consequences. The "moral cosmology" approach focuses on religious worldviews. It juxtaposes the religiously orthodox to modernists, arguing that the former are theologically communitarian in belief while the latter are individualistic. The religiously orthodox worldview (relative to modernists) is posited to lead to politically conservative stances on cultural issues of abortion, sexuality, and family but politically liberal stances on economic issues. In contrast, the "subcultural identity" approach focuses on identity rather than worldview. According to this approach, self-identified evangelicals and fundamentalists are expected to be more politically conservative on both cultural and economic issues when compared to mainline or liberal Protestants. Through analyses of the 1998 GSS, which allows operationalization of the two approaches and their extension to Catholic identities, we find that cosmology and identity are associated, but they have independent-and sometimes opposite-effects on Americans' political beliefs.Correspondence should be addressed to Brian Starks,

Morality and politics: Comparing alternate theories

“…First, available measures captured only some of the many possible points of political division, and thereby might miss unique patterns of variation. For instance, substantial research suggests that religious traditionalists (in Hunter's sense) are surprisingly ''liberal'' on economic issues like government aid to the poor, while maintaining strong conservative stances on cultural issues such as abortion and sexuality (Davis and Robinson, 2006;Starks and Robinson, 2009). Future work should expand the political outcomes used to better capture these (and any other) counter-intuitive trends.…”

Religion, Spirituality and Everyday Practice

“…Perhaps the most commonly used indicators of religiosity -denomination, biblical literalism and church attendance -yield countervailing effects with respect to attitudes toward crime and punishment (Young 1992;Unnever et al 2005a, b), tolerance toward homosexuals (Burdette et al 2005), abortion decisions (Adamczyk 2008), and economic issues (Starks and Robinson 2009). Perhaps the most commonly used indicators of religiosity -denomination, biblical literalism and church attendance -yield countervailing effects with respect to attitudes toward crime and punishment (Young 1992;Unnever et al 2005a, b), tolerance toward homosexuals (Burdette et al 2005), abortion decisions (Adamczyk 2008), and economic issues (Starks and Robinson 2009).…”

Ambiguity, Religion, and Relational Context: Competing Influences on Moral Attitudes?

“…This perspective, in turn, informs a variety of values that reflect that reasoning, from child-rearing practices (Starks and Robinson 2007) to end of life treatment (Hamil-Luker and Smith 1998) to financial management (Keister 2008). On the basis of this emphasis on moral absolutism, I expect those who identify with conservative Protestantism (denoted as being a born-again Christian) to differ in important attitudinal respects from those who identify with no religion, mainline Protestants, or Catholics.…”