Religion and American Politics

The idea behind this volume is to present a broad international and interdisciplinary perspective on the role of religion in American politics (both domestic and international). The United States is remarkably religious and secular at the same time. While it is a pluralist democracy, known for its multicultural identity, the role of religion has been crucial in the formation of the nation’s identity and history as well as in American politics. The relations between religion and U.S. politics are complex and delicate, and while the United States remains a world power, they also influence its foreign policy and international relations. Therefore, researchers continue their efforts to analyze and understand these dynamics.

This volume is a result of cooperation between Jagiellonian University scholars and an international group of academics, including renowned American specialists, who study a variety of topics surrounding the interactions between religion and American politics. Coming not only from the United States but also from Israel, Spain, Hungary, Poland, and the Palestinian territories, they provide a unique international perspective on how the United States deals with issues at the intersection of religion and politics and how American solutions concerning the interactions between the two spheres are perceived around the world. As one aspect of this cooperation, the contributors to this book also had the opportunity to meet and discuss these topics at the international “Religion and Politics in the United States” conference organized in 2021 by Paulina Napierała and the GIRES Institute (which during the pandemic served as a commodious forum for online academic events).

The authors of the following chapters represent several academic fields. Therefore, they examine how religion and politics in the United States conflict, collaborate, or otherwise influence each other, taking various perspectives. The majority of us are political scientists, but others represent theology, religious studies, law, history, and cultural studies. The topic of religion and politics is interdisciplinary in its nature, but a (recently actively developing) sub-field of political science—the politology of religion (or political science of religion)—while often drawing on different perspectives, also adds its own prism and offers new models, concepts, and other theoretical and methodological tools useful in analyzing religious influences in the political sphere. Therefore, in the introductory chapter, I explain the research approaches taken in this volume as well as the new concepts.

The book explores the intersections between religion and American politics in many contexts, historical and contemporary, domestic and international. It is divided into four parts: Evolving Relations Between Religion and American Politics; Constitutional Dimensions of Religious and Political Debates in the United States; Religion, Race, and Politics: The Political Role of the Black Church; and Religion, International Politics, and Global Issues. Each part starts with a slightly longer chapter that takes a broader perspective and considers historical background, and thus introduces readers to the particular topics discussed in the following chapters.

The first part starts with Károly Pintér’s chapter, where he analyzes the evolution and condition of American civil religion as well as its prospects after Donald Trump’s controversial and divisive use of it. The author places the recent transformation of civil religion in a historical and theoretical perspective. In the second chapter, James L. Guth and Lyman A. Kellstedt examine the role of religion in creating support for recently rising populist movements, paying special attention to conservative populism in the United States. Using quantitative methods, they analyze how different ethnoreligious traditions respond to populist themes and to what extent theological traditionalism influences attitudes toward American conservative populism.

In the second part of the book, the authors analyze constitutional dimensions of various religious debates in the United States. It starts with Sebastian Kubas’ text concerning the relations between the modern liberal constitutional state and religious organizations. Kubas examines the attempts of the Christian Right to institutionalize their cultural preferences through decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. His chapter introduces a broader perspective of the evolution of the Christian Right’s legal strategies and then discusses cases concerning both the Free Exercise and the Establishment Clauses. In the next chapter, Jerold L. Waltman focuses specifically on contemporary free exercise jurisprudence, putting it into legal and political context. He carefully examines three major cases from the last few terms of the Court, presenting arguments and perspectives of both sides of the “religious freedom” debate. He also distinguishes between regulations that might apply to religious organizations and to commercial enterprises that invoke religious reasons. Emily R. Gill’s chapter concentrates on the debate focused strictly on the issues of religion, liberty, and marriage equality. She starts with discussing differences between negative and positive liberty, and then analyzes Obergefell v. Hodges, describing four different positions concerning marriage equality and referring to prior U.S. Supreme Court decisions. The last chapter of this part also discusses religious clauses of the First Amendment, concentrating, however, on how they influence a “foreign” non-Christian (immigrant) group in the United States. Elad Ben David shows how the clauses are being incorporated in the concept of “American Islam,” particularly by Yasir Quadhi. This chapter, while generally discussing domestic issues, also touches upon the international contexts and events that have influenced the situation of Islam in the United States.

The third part of the book is dedicated to the role of the Black Church in American history and politics—a topic usually discussed separately although it is deeply connected to the relations between religion and politics in the United States. The chapters here describe the complicated relations among religion, race, and American politics, concentrating on a particular ethnic minority church but also depicting the role that minority churches can play in democratic pluralistic societies (despite or against the systemic flaws). In the introductory chapter, Paulina Napierała, focusing on the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, analyzes a comprehensive topic of the activist tradition of the Black Church. She places her study in a broader historical and theoretical perspective and provides a background for specific themes discussed in the following chapters. The next topic, analyzed by Cristóbal Serrán-Pagán y Fuentes, concerns the life and the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—one of the most famous figures in the Black Church. The author pays special attention to King’s stance on the “triplet social evils” in the United States: racism, poverty, and militarism. While racism and poverty are mostly seen as domestic problems, in discussing King’s attitude toward the Vietnam War Pagán also touches upon the international context. Michael McLaughlin, on the other hand, focuses on a lesser known aspect of history, the role of churches in the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren Program, showing how—despite ideological differences—they provided a sanctuary for the Black Panthers and gave the Party a chance to influence communities through caring for the hungry. In the last chapter of this part, Jajuan Johnson presents the consequences of Black churches’ continuous engagement on the side of their communities. He examines the evolution of racialized violence against Black churches in the post-Civil War era and presents cases of violence against this symbol of Black independence in the era of Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The final part of the volume discusses religious influences on American international policies and on public attitudes toward global issues, including militarism and global warming. In the first chapter, James L. Guth and Brent F. Nelsen analyze how religion shapes public attitudes toward the “Trump Doctrine.” They begin with the broader context, commenting on how the “return to religion” in international relations has sparked interest in the role of religion in shaping attitudes toward foreign affairs—one channel through which faith can influence a nation’s policy. They define the “Trump Doctrine” as a “distinctive blend of nationalism, militarism and unilateralism” and find it important that religion significantly influences public attitudes toward Trump’s policies. In the next chapter, Husam Mohamad puts the focus on a specific narrower topic: how the beliefs of evangelical groups such as dispensationalists and Christian Zionists have been influencing U.S. policies in the Middle East. He also investigates how these groups promote their vision of Israel’s relations with the Palestinian territories. In the last chapter, Lyman A. Kellstedt and James L. Guth examine how religion shapes American attitudes toward global warming, finding considerable differences among members of American religious groups. The global issue of environmentalism turns out to be highly influenced by religion, especially by theological traditionalism that usually results in skeptical attitudes toward global warming.

The publication of this volume would not have been possible without a grant from the Institute of American Studies and Polish Diaspora at Jagiellonian University and additional funds provided by the Centre for International Studies and Development, which I acknowledge and greatly appreciate. I would also like to thank the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Advanced Research Collaborative for the grants that allowed me to work on the last stages of the editing process at the City University of New York. I am grateful for academic support from scholars representing various Polish and American universities who agreed to review particular chapters of the book, and especially for the work of the reviewer of the whole volume. Mostly, however, I want to thank all the scholars who agreed to participate in this publication.

Regardless of secularization processes taking place in the modern world, especially in terms of institutional or functional differentiation,¹ and against the predictions of the early proponents of secularization theory, including Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, who expected that with modernization religion would disappear (at least from the public life), it still plays an important role in the public and political sphere² of many countries, including the highly modernized United States. Because religion’s constant presence attracts new research, some scholars argue that secularization theories were wrong. Others, on the other hand, explain that such theories usually comprised several levels, claims, and assumptions, including structural differentiation, decline of religious practices and beliefs, and marginalization or privatization of religion. As they argue, while the general historical structural trend of secular differentiation has been taking place, religions have reacted to it in different ways—not only by marginalization and retreat to the private sphere (as previous theories would suggest) but also by what Jose Casanova calls the “deprivatization” of religion. In this perspective, privatization and deprivatization are simply different historical options for religions in the modern world.³ Both of these processes have been taking place in the United States as well—and as a result of the dominance of one option or the other, over the past few decades, “the study of religion and politics has gone from being ignored by the scholarly community to being a major focus of research.”⁴

Secularization theories have had a similar effect on studying international relations, and despite the recent “return to religion” in international relations, it is important to remember that the religious factor “stayed on the backburner in the study of international relations for a long time,”⁵ which has been especially evident in theoretical approaches. Currently, one group of academics suggests that religion’s return poses a fundamental challenge to international relations theory and therefore new and alternative paradigms should be developed, while another group has argued that the study of religion in international relations does not require a revolution, but rather evolution of the theoretical frameworks currently at our disposal.⁶

Because religion continues to be an important force in American domestic and international politics, as well as in international relations in general, in this volume scholars focus on how it influences various policies and public attitudes, including those toward foreign affairs, and how—through that—it also influences U.S. foreign policy. They further examine how American religious groups can act as social movements, political actors, and interest groups (in both domestic and international contexts).

This chapter provides an overview of different perspectives and approaches taken by the authors to examine and explain the complicated relations between religion and American politics. It also presents the attempts undertaken by the representatives of the political science of religion to structure the way the new sub-discipline draws on different fields and approaches, adding its own prism and methodology and trying to develop a separate theoretical framework. It is thus necessary to begin this discussion with a brief presentation of how scholars researching the relations between religion and politics conceptualize religion.

There are many definitions of religion, including theological, non-theological, inclusive, exclusive, substantive, functional, sociological, and psychological ones.⁷ Theological definitions are useful mostly for theologians, but not so much for social scientists. Substantive definitions focus on the presence of a set of items (the content) associated with religion, such as God, gods, other supernatural beings, or the Absolute.⁸ Functional definitions concentrate on the role that beliefs and rituals play for a community (sociological) or an individual (psychological).⁹ Many scholars researching religion and politics have adopted a substantive rather than a functional approach, viewing religion as related to the supernatural.¹⁰ One of the most general substantive definitions is that authored by Edward Burnett Tylor which simply states that religion is a belief in spiritual beings.¹¹ The reason for choosing substantive definitions in political studies has been explained by the authors of the Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics:

On the other hand, some of the most well-known definitions often contain both levels: substantial and functional—for example, Durkheim’s famous definition that states, “[R]eligion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”¹³ Some authors argue that both functional and substantive approaches can be useful in political science, depending on the research purpose.¹⁴ As Maciej Potz stresses, if scholars want to “explain general mechanisms by which various beliefs and ideas translate into political action, the functional approach will enable generalizations,” showing similarities between “religious” and “secular” ideas.¹⁵ However, if the purpose of the study is to understand the difference that religion makes in politics (which the political science of religion is mostly interested in), then “substantive definitions will better serve this purpose.” Focusing on these ideas, beliefs, and practices, “which refer to the supernatural,” substantive definitions allow investigation into their political impact.¹⁶ In the end, for his own studies he chooses a broad substantive understanding of religion that combines sociological and psychological approaches, according to which “religion is a system of beliefs and practices related to the supernatural, held and practiced individually or collectively.”¹⁷

As the authors of The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics stress, however, no matter how religion is defined, it is a multidimensional phenomenon and scholars do not always agree on the number and character of its dimensions. Nevertheless, a number of social scientists have accepted the view that there are at least “three major components of religion that are potentially important for politics: believing, behaving, and belonging.”¹⁸ In this perspective, “the substantive content of a faith is embodied in religious beliefs, the practice of a faith is reflected in behavior, and belonging is revealed by affiliation with a religious community.”¹⁹ While all of these dimensions provide a useful scheme for analyzing the political influence of religion, different theoretical approaches put varying emphases on these three dimensions.

Theoretical perspectives that consider these dimensions are often applied by political scientists researching the American religious context, and they have been carefully analyzed by Corwin Smidt, Lyman Kellstedt, and James Guth in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Politics. I will briefly present these perspectives before discussing other approaches and different propositions of theoretical frameworks. As the authors explain, since the 1980s American political scientists have been looking at the influence of religion on politics through two most common competing perspectives. More recently, another perspective was added—one that attempted to provide a kind of synthesis of the previous two. Importantly, the first of these, the ethnoreligious perspective, is closer to Durkheim’s notion of religion as a social phenomenon where the affiliation with a religious group shapes political responses, and the second, the theological restructuring perspective, more reflects Max Weber’s view that religion is embodied in beliefs which shape political attitudes and behavior. The third one, the synthetic perspective, views religion as embodying belonging, beliefs, and behavior, all of which influence political life.

As the experts explain, the ethnocultural perspective was formulated primarily by historians, and it focuses on the different ethnoreligious groups that migrated to America. According to this view, these groups held differing worldviews, cultural preferences, and religious reference groups, all of which shaped their political and partisan views and preferences.²⁰ And although, as sociologists of religion argue, these ethnoreligious attachments have been recently weakened by assimilation and other processes, many American political analysts continue to apply this scheme, finding it still, at least partially, relevant.

The second perspective, also known as religious restructuring theory, was introduced in the 1980s to explain the growing divisions within American faith traditions and was further developed in the 1990s.²¹ The scholars behind it argued that growing theological divisions within different traditions had affected political divides. “Orthodox” believers who adhered to traditional doctrines tended to support the political right, while religious “progressives,” who argued for a compromise with science, tended to move toward the left. Within this theory, theological divisions are more important than ethnoreligious divisions.²²

The third perspective built on the previous two, arguing that both religious affiliations and religious beliefs, along with religious behavior, help to explain how religion shapes American politics. According to this approach, some groups behave as the ethnoreligious model would suggest and others respond on the basis of contemporary divisions over beliefs.²³

These models, often used by American researchers including political scientists and sociologists (usually in their quantitative analyses), have been applied in several studies included in this volume. In the following chapters, they are extensively used particularly by F. Nelsen, James L. Guth, and Lyman A. Kellstedt. However, elements of these perspectives, especially of restructuring theory, also appear, while not always explicitly, in other analyses, including the chapters authored by Pintér, Kubas, Gill, Napierała, and Mohamad. In a similar vein, the elements and certain assumptions of the ethnoreligious model can be traced in the articles concerning Black churches.

As the aim of this volume was to include interdisciplinary research on religion and politics in the United States, as well as both qualitative and quantitative analyses, the authors—representing different disciplines—have also taken theoretical and methodological approaches characteristic of their various fields of studies. Moreover, some of them, apart from using a particular perspective, draw widely from other fields as well. A number of the contributors, including the political scientists, employ legal, sociological, historical, theological, religious, and cultural studies approaches, as well as politological.

Károly Pintér, for example, as a specialist in language, literature, history, and culture, not only examines the historical development of certain concepts studied by sociologists of religion, but he also employs elements of content analysis and discourse analysis, focusing on linguistic and rhetorical aspects of the researched phenomenon while placing it in a political context. Cristóbal Serrán-Pagán y Fuentes, on the other hand, while strongly concentrating on the theological perspective and theological interpretations, also applies elements of historical, biographical, and comparative religions approaches, especially when he explains the influences of certain Christian and non-Christian theologies on Martin Luther King’s political views. Michael McLaughlin largely uses a historical framework, building on social historical work and historiography related to the Black Panthers and their partnership with churches. Additionally, however, he draws from social movement theories and research perspectives common in the Black Church studies and sociology of religion, especially when examining the role of religion in Black political organizing. Jajuan Johnson while looking through the prism of heritage studies, adds elements of cultural and religious studies theories as well as elements of theological analysis when approaching Black liberation theology. Generally, however, he places the topic of Black church burnings in the political context of Barack Obama’s election. Focusing on political mobilization of Black churches and using an interpretative model developed within political science, Napierała additionally places her analysis in a historical perspective and discusses previous sociological approaches to the topic of Black Church activism. She concentrates on theology as well, and touches upon the potential applicability of certain elements of the restructuring model in analyzing the levels and forms of political behavior of Black churches. The legal scholar Sebastian Kubas extensively applies his legal perspective in focusing on church-state relations and constitutional law. He stresses, however, that the legal disputes that he describes concern the socio-political realm. He also pays attention to sociological and political studies on the Christian Right. Elad Ben David applies a legal perspective in his chapter as well, while his knowledge of Islamic studies and references to international politics play an important role in his analysis. Jerold L. Waltman and Emily R. Gill are political scientists who analyze constitutional dimensions of religious and political debates in the United States, widely drawing from both the legal framework and political philosophy. Husam Mohamad, also a political scientist, employs a broad theological analysis, and while concentrating on the role of interest and lobbying groups in the policymaking processes, he also touches upon social movements theories.

All these analyses, in result, provide a truly interdisciplinary picture of the intersection between religion and politics in the United States. The variety of perspectives, which the authors (representing different fields) have employed, undoubtedly contributes to the understanding of the political role of religion and to the general topic of religion and politics. Moreover, a number of these approaches have sometimes been applied by some political scientists who postulate the development of a new separate sub-discipline of political science: the politology of religion or political science of religion.²⁴ While they generally see the new sub-field as “a specific discipline due to its research of political science themes, in the context of religion,”²⁵ they do not always agree on details in methodology. Therefore, the use of the above-mentioned approaches would be possible mostly for those scholars who, while seeing the politology of religion as a specific sub-field of political science (rather than religious or other studies), treat it broadly and interdisciplinary in terms of methodology.²⁶ Not all political scientists favoring the development of the politology of religion, however, agree with such an approach. Some postulate a narrower definition of the sub-field along with a set of separate analytical models and theoretical tools emerging strictly from political science. Therefore, it is useful to take a closer look at different approaches to the politology of religion and their evolution.