Politics of Evangelical Identity - Local Churches and Partisan Divides in the United States and Canada

It is now a common refrain among liberals that Christian Right pastors and television pundits have hijacked evangelical Christianity for partisan gain. The Politics of Evangelical Identity challenges this notion, arguing that the hijacking metaphor paints a fundamentally distorted picture of how evangelical churches have become politicized. The book reveals how the powerful coalition between evangelicals and the Republican Party is not merely a creation of political elites who have framed conservative issues in religious language, but is anchored in the lives of local congregations. Drawing on her groundbreaking research at evangelical churches near the U.S. border with Canada--two in Buffalo, New York, and two in Hamilton, Ontario--Lydia Bean compares how American and Canadian evangelicals talk about politics in congregational settings. While Canadian evangelicals share the same theology and conservative moral attitudes as their American counterparts, their politics are quite different. On the U.S. side of the border, political conservatism is woven into the very fabric of everyday religious practice.
Bean shows how subtle partisan cues emerge in small group interactions as members define how "we Christians" should relate to others in the broader civic arena, while liberals are cast in the role of adversaries. She explains how the most explicit partisan cues come not from clergy but rather from lay opinion leaders who help their less politically engaged peers to link evangelical identity to conservative politics. The Politics of Evangelical Identity demonstrates how deep the ties remain between political conservatism and evangelical Christianity in America.

List of contents

Timeline vii Preface and Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Comparing Evangelicals in the United States and Canada 20 Chapter 2 The Boundaries of Evangelical Identity 45 Chapter 3 Two American Churches: Partisanship without Politics 62 Chapter 4 Two Canadian Churches: Civil Religion in Exile 88 Chapter 5 Evangelicals, Economic Conservatism, and National Identity 112 Chapter 6 Captains in the Culture War 133 Chapter 7 The Boundaries of Political Diversity in Two U.S. Congregations 166 Chapter 8 Practicing Civility in Two Canadian Congregations 193 Conclusion Politics and Lived Religion 221 Methodological Appendix: Ethnographic Methods 227 Notes 235 Bibliography 275 Index 307

About the author

Lydia Bean is senior consultant to the PICO National Network, the largest multiracial network in the United States bringing low- and moderate-income faith communities into public life.

Summary

A comparative look at evangelical churches across the U.S.-Canada border that reveals deep political differences

It is now a common refrain among liberals that Christian Right pastors and television pundits have hijacked evangelical Christianity for partisan gain. The Politics of Evangelical Identity challenges this notion, arguing that the hijacking metaphor paints a fundamentally distorted picture of how evangelical churches have become politicized. The book reveals how the powerful coalition between evangelicals and the Republican Party is not merely a creation of political elites who have framed conservative issues in religious language, but is anchored in the lives of local congregations.

Drawing on her groundbreaking research at evangelical churches near the U.S. border with Canada—two in Buffalo, New York, and two in Hamilton, Ontario—Lydia Bean compares how American and Canadian evangelicals talk about politics in congregational settings. While Canadian evangelicals share the same theology and conservative moral attitudes as their American counterparts, their politics are quite different. On the U.S. side of the border, political conservatism is woven into the very fabric of everyday religious practice. Bean shows how subtle partisan cues emerge in small group interactions as members define how "we Christians" should relate to others in the broader civic arena, while liberals are cast in the role of adversaries. She explains how the most explicit partisan cues come not from clergy but rather from lay opinion leaders who help their less politically engaged peers to link evangelical identity to conservative politics.

The Politics of Evangelical Identity demonstrates how deep the ties remain between political conservatism and evangelical Christianity in America.

Additional text

"The Politics of Evangelical Identity provides a major contribution to our understanding of how politics is received, translated, and activated within a major subculture of both American and Canadian politics. By situating herself within the specific contexts of evangelical communities, Lydia Bean demonstrates clearly and convincingly the mechanisms of evangelical politics that have been lost in studies conducted utilizing only aggregated survey data. This book will be of interest to Comparative Politics scholars, students or religion and politics, and American Politics scholars."---Rebecca Clendenen, Journal of Global Analysis

Product details

• Authors: Lydia Bean, Lydia Bean
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 24.08.2014
• EAN: 9780691161303
• ISBN: 978-0-691-16130-3
• No. of pages: 336
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology; USA, Canada, Sociology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology of Religion, RELIGION / Religion, Politics & State, Religion & politics, United States of America, USA, Religion and Politics