Did Mainstream Media Distort America's Religion-and-Politics Divide? Is this Still Happening?

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(OPINION) While culling files from decades of religion-beat work, I have come across a forgotten and seminal article from 2002 that contended the media were distorting public understanding of American politics. It said "religious right" Republicans were blanketed with coverage and turned the tables, contending that "the true origins" of cultural conflict were found in increased "secularist" influence in the Democratic Party.

As journalists contemplate the tumult of the succeeding two decades, ask what the article in question might say about media performance, past and present.

Consider the hostility toward openly religious nominees expressed by Senators Schumer, Feinstein, and Harris (now vice president and prospective future president). Or contrast the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which passed the Senate 97-3 in 1993, with current House Democrats' unanimous vote for the pending Equality Act, which would forbid practical applications of that very law.

Customary political history emphasizes such landmarks as the Rev. Jerry Falwell (Senior) launching Moral Majority in 1979, Ronald Reagan's Republicans cultivating conservative Christians in the winning 1980 campaign or the Rev. Pat Robertson founding Christian Coalition in 1989 after his Republican run for president.

These events were important, of course. But what about Democrats and the other half of what was happening?

That's the focus of the 2002 article, by political scientists Louis Boice and Gerald De Maio from the City University of New York's Baruch College, drawn from their 2001 presentation at an academic conference. The piece appeared in the conservative journal The Public Interest, which is now defunct, but fortunately, the American Political Science Association archive has posted the text (.pdf here). Also, click here and then here for tmatt columns on this duo’s work.

In their telling, 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion, was the pivot point for Democrats' shift on emotion-laden social issues away from cultural conservatism and an "accommodation" policy toward religion. The result was that "the Republicans, by default more than by overt action, became the traditionalist party."

The duo cited the analysis of political scientist Geoffrey Layman (then at Vanderbilt, now at Notre Dame) of Democrats in his related 2001 book "The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics." Convention Delegate Survey data showed that over one-third of white Democratic delegates in 1972 were non-religious or "never or seldom" attended religious services, compared with about 5% of the American population that was similarly secularized. (Black Democrats are notably more devout, and less likely to go Republican, than whites.)

By the 1992 Democratic convention, a remarkable 60% of white first-time delegates listed no religious attachment or only attended worship "a few times a year" or less. By contrast, about 5% of 1992 first-time Republican delegates were that secular, which had been the consistent GOP pattern going back to the Reagan years.

Another index of polarization was the standard "thermometer" scoring on how delegates viewed 18 groups in society. Over half the 1992 Democratic delegates expressed the lowest possible warmth toward "Christian fundamentalists" (note: not "evangelicals").

Boice and De Maio then concluded the following about polarized cultural attitudes in American National Election Studies data from the elections of 1992, 1996 and 2000:

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, this increased cleavage had less to do with traditionalists becoming more conservative than with secularists (and to a lesser extent, religious moderates) embracing the progressivist positions held by liberal elites."

That's a mere sampling of the specifics writers will find in the research by these three political scientists.

This week, David French, an evangelical columnist with TheDispatch.com, brought matters up to date in a (subscribers-only) piece. He calls religion "a key factor" that "all too many analysts minimize or ignore."

While the Democratic Party is run by secularizing white liberals, he observes, it depends on non-white minorities that "are quite similar to Republicans in their baseline religious beliefs." Though churchgoer Joe Biden "largely bridged the God gap," French contends that in this period of "religious upheaval and political realignment" Democrats' "deep value differences" may gradually undercut hopes for political hegemony.

Changing topics:

The conservative Protestants at juicyecumenism.com alert reporters to a potentially significant April 29 statement by Bishop Mariann Budde that ends a long dispute over efforts by Christ Church in Accokeek, Maryland, to leave the Episcopal Church. The money aspect of the deal was not disclosed.

The 20-year struggle by a congregation founded in 1698 has obvious feature possibilities. But there's also news here if the Episcopal Church is quietly changing its policy on dropouts under national Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who took charge in 2015 (and won global TV fame with the 2018 Harry-and-Meghan wedding).

His PB predecessor, Katharine Jefferts Schori, sought to remove decisions on dropouts from local bishops and dioceses with a national policy against deals that in the typical case set up competitors to the Episcopal Church. JuicyEcumenism's acerbic comment: "Church properties could be sold to anyone, for any purpose – except those who claim Anglican identity" when they leave the Episcopal denomination.

Sure enough, the Accokeek congregation is joining the Episcopalians' chief competitor, the Anglican Church in North America.

Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion.