306 Jeff Manza and Nathan Wright
recent years, however, the stability of the political alignments of mainline Protestants
has been questioned. Several analysts have found evidence of a shift of this group away
from the Republican Party and toward the political center (e.g., Lopatto 1985; Kellstedt
et al. 1994; Manza and Brooks 1997, 2001).
A variety of ways of accounting for these trends has been advanced in the literature
on the mainline denominations. One account emphasizes rising levels of social issue
liberalism among these groups. The receptivity of many mainline Protestant religious
leaders and local congregations to politically liberal messages on such issues, beginning
in the 1960s with the Vietnam War and on issues of racial and gender inequality and
sexual freedom, suggests one possible explanation for the relative shift away from the
Republican Party (cf. Wuthnow and Evans 2001). Second, some analysts have empha-
sized changes in the demography of the mainline Protestant groups, in which more
conservative church members are defecting – or not joining in the first place – in favor
of stricter denominations. Left behind is a group of adherents in the mainline churches
that is more in tune with the messages of the clergy (e.g., Finke and Stark 1992:
Chapter 5). Finally, the relative loss of economic and political power to non-Protestant
groups suggests a third possible source for the movement of liberal Protestants away
from the Republican Party. A number of scholars have emphasized the relative gains
of other religious groups, as we have seen above, that have reduced the power of the
established Protestant denominations.
Toward “Culture Wars”?A number of analysts have argued that a religiously rooted
set of cultural conflicts have emerged, with religious conservatives of all denominations
lined up on one side and religious liberals and seculars on the other (e.g., Wuthnow
1988, 1989, 1993; Hunter 1991; DiMaggio, Evans, and Bryson 1996; Layman 1997).
Some highly visible conflicts over issues with clear religious content – abortion, school
prayer, the teaching of evolutionary biology, public support for controversial works of
art, rising divorce rates and the alleged breakdown of “traditional” family values, gay
and lesbian rights, and others – have indeed generated considerable public controversy
since the 1960s, and appear to have become increasingly important in shaping voters’
political alignments (Brooks 2000). Central to the “culture wars” thesis are two argu-
ments. First, there has been a breakdown of traditional denominational alignments, as
intradenominational conflict has grown. Second, these conflicts are not only an “elite”
phenomenon, but polarization is increasingly reflected in the political consciousness
of the mass public. The growing proportion of Americans with no religious identity –
doubling from 7 to 15 percent in the 1990s, according to data from the General Social
Survey (Hout and Fischer 2002) – also suggests the possibility of increased political
divisions between those with versus those without religious identity.
Systematic empirical tests of the culture wars hypothesis have produced decidedly
mixed results. Layman (1997) found evidence using the National Election Study that the
political impact of doctrinal conservatism has had an increasing effect in that narrow
period on partisanship and vote choice, net of other religious, sociodemographic, and
political variables. Whether such findings would hold over a longer historical period
is unclear. Bolce and De Maio (1999) find that antipathy toward fundamentalists is
very high, even among otherwise tolerant segments of the electorate. Brooks (2000)
demonstrated that social issues have become increasingly salient in presidential voting,
and that general societal-wide liberalization on these issues has significantly benefitted