Religion, Politics, and Polarization: How Religiopolitical Conflict Is Changing Congress and American Democracy

There is endless discussion of partisan and ideological polarization and a great deal of talk about the role of religion in American politics. But remarkably, there is not nearly enough work on how polarization and the faith-commitments of our citizens interact. Religion, Politics and Polarization fills that void with enormous care, using data in a creative but rigorous way to illuminate two central questions of our time. And it also helps to explain what is going on inside Congress. D'Antonio, Tuch, and Baker have performed a great service and deserve a wide audience.

Religion, Politics, and Polarization fills a gaping hole in the burgeoning literature on political polarization. Revisiting questions about culture wars raised two decades ago by James Davison Hunter, the authors demonstrate how the changing religious affiliations of members of Congress and their visions of the good society have contributed to the striking increase in partisan polarization in congressional voting behavior. They also persuasively make the case that the public is as deeply implicated as political elites in this most important transformation in contemporary American politics.

We hear it every day: 'Congress is mired in partisan polarization, gridlocked—dysfunctional.' But how and why? Pundits offer superficial answers, but very few mention religion. This book says otherwise. Using hard data and sound analysis, scholars William D'Antonio, Steven A. Tuch and Josiah R. Baker use 40 years of data to show that 'the political ideologies of both political parties are rooted in religion.' It's a must read for those interested in the future of American politics.

The ideological polarization of our political parties is one of the most important and defining characteristics of contemporary American politics, both in the mass public as well as within our elected institutions. In this concise volume, the authors provide an excellent analysis of the various ways in which religion interacts with partisan affiliation to influence the polarized voting behavior of members of Congress over the last three decades. This book is highly recommended for anyone seeking a more comprehensive understanding of the intersection of religion and politics in modern American society.

This book is an indispensable guide to the role religion has played, and is playing, in the U.S. Congress. In recent years, scholars have spent a lot of time and energy understanding the religion of voters, but far less research has been devoted to religion among lawmakers. D’Antonio, Tuch, and Baker fill in this gap—demonstrating that making law is often a matter of faith.

This is an important study for understanding the effects of religious belief and affiliation on the oppositional dynamics and processes of American politics and political institutions and on the competing visions of the good society that underlie those conflicts. The authors show that some common understandings of conflictual American political phenomena —articulated in such metaphors as “culture wars”— either have less empirical evidence to support them than might be imagined, or require tempering and nuancing to be useful for understanding significant aspects of those phenomena. It is in the relationship between party affiliation and religious affiliation that we find perhaps the most politically potent and divisive correlations.

This book is a thorough treatment of a subject scholars have not studied enough. It appears at an especially timely moment, as the U.S. Congress is more polarized than ever thanks to seemingly intractable differences in worldviews.

It has been over three decades since Benson and Williams published their seminal Religion on Capitol Hill, and more than twenty years since James Davison Hunter's influential Culture Wars. William D'Antonio and his colleagues bring these concerns together by examining roll-call votes in the House and Senate over the past 40 years, looking at how religion and political party identification interact to shape votes on several key issue-areas of American life. They find evidence of changes in the religious composition of both parties in Congress and increasing polarization in votes. Their argument that these reflect two distinct visions of what constitutes the 'good society' is one that scholars of religion and politics will now be engaging—perhaps for another three decades!

Anyone who has ever been interested in how religious affiliation affects decision-making in Congress will find this book a valuable source of information and insight. The authors focus on the last half century (1960-2010), noting how a changing religious demography has shaped the political culture. . . . This book deserves a very wide audience.

Few social scientists have attempted to measure religion's influence on the U.S. Congress with the level of precision that William D'Antonio, Steven Tuch and Josiah Baker exercise in their fine new study. . . . In the end, the authors can show persuasively that Congress has polarized and that its members' religious affiliations have shifted away from mainline Protestantism and toward Catholicism and conservative Protestantism.

Readers will get a clear sense of the unique impact of religious affiliations on congressional decision-making in the multivariate regression models.