The Perils of - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

The Perils of
Politicized Religion

David E. Campbell

In the United States, religion and partisan politics have become increasingly inter-
twined. The rising level of religious disaffiliation is a backlash to the religious right:
many Americans are abandoning religion because they see it as an extension of pol-
itics with which they disagree. Politics is also shaping many Americans’ religious
views. There has been a stunning change in the percentage of religious believers who,
prior to Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy, overwhelmingly objected to im-
moral private behavior by politicians but now dismiss it as irrelevant to their ability
to act ethically in their public role. The politicization of religion not only contributes
to greater political polarization, it diminishes the ability of religious leaders to speak
prophetically on important public issues.

I n the contemporary United States, religion has increasingly become mired

in partisan politics. Politicians routinely appear alongside religious leaders
while campaigning and invoke their own religious bona fides as they appeal to
voters. The connection between religion and partisan politics has become so per-
vasive in American politics that it is easy for Americans to forget that, in compari-
son with other liberal democracies, the United States stands apart. I was reminded
of this myself when, a few years ago, I gave a lecture in Berlin on religion’s role in
American presidential elections, a subject on which I lecture frequently to Amer-
ican audiences. The Germans in the audience were aghast as I explained how U.S.
presidential candidates, Republicans in particular, regularly speak in very person-
al terms about their religious beliefs.

At the same time that religion and partisan politics have become intertwined,
the United States has also been undergoing a “secular turn,” with more and more
Americans identifying as not having a religious affiliation, and a smaller but still
growing number adopting an affirmatively secular worldview. In their exhaustive
analysis of the existing data on religious trends, social scientists David Voas and
Mark Chaves conclude that “the evidence for a decades-long decline in American
religiosity is now incontrovertible. Like the evidence for global warming, it comes
from multiple sources, shows up in several dimensions, and paints a consistent
factual picture.”1

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This essay describes how these two trends are related, and why we should care.
One consequence of the overlap of religion and partisanship has been a secular
backlash: increasingly, Americans–especially young people–are abandoning
religion because they see it as an extension of politics, specifically politics with
which they disagree. As an empirical matter, the politicization of religion (and the
religionization of politics) as well as the attendant backlash have been fascinating
developments, as they contribute to our understanding of how religion and pol-
itics interact. Tuttavia, the partisan inflection of American religion is not just an
interesting empirical trend; it has troubling normative implications as well. Some
may lament the growth of secularization; others may celebrate it. I take no posi-
tion either way. Piuttosto, my concern is with the social consequences of the politi-
cized form of religion that has triggered the secular backlash.

One need not be an advocate for religion, or even a religious believer, to see the
dangers of politicized religion. There are at least two reasons: Primo, the growing
secularist-religionist cleavage is yet one more way that Americans are polarized.
Given the deep-seated nature of a religious or secular worldview, such a cleav-
age has the potential to be especially dangerous. History shows that religious
conflict–including, and especially, disagreement between the religious and the
secular–can bring societies to a boiling point, even more so when those religious-
secular divisions reinforce a political cleavage. Secondo, the more religion is
wrapped up in partisan politics, the more it loses its prophetic potential. Religious
voices are not always on the right side of history (sometimes they are on both
sides or take no side), but nonetheless have a unique ability to raise a moral voice
and to mobilize social action. For many Americans, Martin Luther King Jr. is the
exemplar of a prophetic voice in our politics, but he stands among many religious
leaders who, over the course of American history, have risen above the partisan
fray to express a moral voice. Given the current state of our body politic, prophetic
voices are needed now more than ever. Many religious traditions can speak to the
troubles of our time, including economic inequality, racial prejudice, and callous-
ness toward immigrants and refugees–inspiring Americans to find solutions to
seemingly intractable problems. Even people with a secular belief system should
appreciate that religion can serve to inspire and motivate people to bring about
significant social change.

This essay answers a series of questions. In the contemporary United States,
to what extent is religion perceived as partisan? What is the empirical research to
support the argument that the partisan tinge to religion has led to a secular back-
lash? Why is the political fracture along religious-secular lines a threat to reli-
gious tolerance? How does the partisan perception of religion hinder its prophet-
ic voice? Che cosa, if anything, can be done to change the status quo, so that religion
transcends the partisan fray–perhaps serving as a force for lessening rather than
exacerbating political polarization?

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

F or a younger generation of Americans, it may seem obvious that religion

and partisanship go hand in hand, since that is the only world they know.
My undergraduate students, Per esempio, have come of political age during
a time in which the religious right is often described as the base of the Republican
Party. To them, the partisan connection between religion and the GOP is an article
of faith. Election commentary often features discussion of the “God gap,” or the
fact that, in general, Americans who attend religious services regularly are more
likely to vote Republican. Nor are these merely the mistaken notions of the chat-
tering class: social science research confirms that religious commitment (mea-
sured in various ways) is indeed a strong predictor of identifying as a Republican.2
The connection between religion and the Republican Party has not formed by ac-
cident, but is instead the result of deliberate choices by strategic politicians, who
saw an opportunity to wean many white religious voters away from the Demo-
cratic Party by emphasizing socially conservative issues like opposition to abor-
tion and LGBT rights.

Many voters are like my undergraduate students, who have internalized the
religious divide between the parties. In national surveys of Americans, far more
say that “religious people” are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats;
even more say that “evangelicals” are Republicans. In fact, when asked which
groups are likely to be Republicans, Americans put evangelicals next to business
people, traditionally the heart and soul of the GOP. Conversely, Americans also
associate secularists with the Democratic Party, although not to the same extent
that they link religionists with the Republicans.3 Notably, these partisan group as-
sociations are shared by Republicans and Democrats alike: questo è, people on both
sides of the aisle perceive the religious-secular divide between the parties.4 At a
time when Republicans and Democrats agree on very little, this is a rare example
of bipartisan consensus. Yet it is also important to note that a sizeable share of
the American population does not perceive a religious-secular cleavage between
the parties. Thirty-six percent say that evangelicals are “an even mix” of both Re-
publicans and Democrats. More, 54 per cento, say the same about religious people
generally. Likewise, 55 percent perceive “people who are not religious” as split be-
tween the two parties. In other words, while there is undoubtedly a partisan di-
vision along religious-secular lines, there is still a significant portion of the elec-
torate who do not see politics through a religious lens, suggesting that American
politics is not locked into an intractable division between religious and secular
Americans.

Furthering the point that the religious-secular divide is not a permanent fea-
ture of the American political system, it is also important to note that there are
exceptions to the religion-Republican connection, most notably among African
Americans. Black people are, on average, highly religious, and yet lean heavily to-
ward the Democratic Party. The same is generally true of Latinos, although they

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

are, on average, less religious than African Americans, and less likely to identify
with the Democratic Party. While a much smaller share of the electorate, Muslim
Americans are another group with a high level of religiosity who are also heavily
Democratic. Così, the talk of a God gap is largely a divide among white voters:
a reminder that there is no iron law that links religion to only one party or polit-
ical perspective. Readers of a certain age will also recall that the current religion-
Republican connection is, in historical context, a relatively new development. As
late as the 1970s, there was essentially no connection between voters’ degree of re-
ligiosity and their partisan leanings.5

These important exceptions notwithstanding, the fact remains that many vot-
ers associate religion with one of our two political parties. The public perception
is significant for understanding voting patterns, voter mobilization strategies, E
the policies that the parties are likely to support when in office. Yet the religion-
Republican connection goes further than just the tendency for religious voters (es-
pecially those who are white) to identify as Republicans. To say that members of
any religious tradition are likely to have a particular political view implies that it is
the religion that leads to the political view; religion comes first. In other words, Esso
suggests that voters’ religiosity pulls them toward the party that has spent a gen-
eration branding itself as the party favorable to religious interests.

T here is also increasing evidence, both anecdotal and systematic, that poli-

tics shapes religious views. Instead of religion preceding politics, politica
takes priority over religion, thus flipping the typical assumption of how
religion and politics come together. As I explain below, the fact that many Amer-
icans prioritize politics over religion–whether consciously or unconsciously–is
what drives the secular backlash to the rise of the religious right.

What is the evidence for the claim that politics often precedes religion? Contro-
sider two notable examples. One is Roy Moore, a Republican senatorial candidate
in Alabama in 2017. Prior to running for the Senate, Moore had made a career out
of being a cause célèbre within religious right circles. As the elected chief justice of
the Alabama Supreme Court, he installed a two-ton granite monument of the Ten
Commandments in the state judicial building. A federal court determined that it
was a violation of the Constitution’s nonestablishment clause and ordered it re-
moved. When Moore refused, the court expelled him from the bench. Moore then
took the monument on a national tour, speaking to sympathetic audiences about
how the United States is a Christian nation whose values are under attack by those
espousing a secular view of the world.6 He again ran for the Alabama Supreme
Court and won, but was again removed from the bench for defying the Supreme
Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.7

With this background, Moore ran for the Senate as the candidate of the reli-
gious right, an enviable distinction in Alabama, a highly religious state in which

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

white evangelicals are a large constituency. Tuttavia, instead of rolling easily to
victory, he was soon embroiled in controversy. Multiple women came forward ac-
cusing Moore of having sexually harassed them as teenagers when he was an assis-
tant district attorney in his thirties.

In light of these charges, many Republicans dropped their support of Moore.
But not all. Among his most vocal supporters were various pastors, including
Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham. A group of over fifty pastors released a
letter endorsing Moore, despite the evidence that he was a serial sexual predator.8
While Moore lost the election, exit polls revealed that he received 80 percent of
the vote among white evangelicals.9

The second example of politics taking precedence over principle is a similar
tale about Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. Many highly religious
voters were slow to warm to Trump, and it was not hard to see why. He owns ca-
sinos, had long bragged about his extramarital sexual dalliances, and is often pro-
fane. While on the campaign trail, he demonstrated an obvious unfamiliarity with
the Bible and the core tenets of Christianity. Eventually, Anche se, religious Repub-
licans–including but not limited to evangelicals–came to be among Trump’s
strongest supporters. And they stuck with him even after the release of the Access
Hollywood tape, in which Trump is heard bragging about how being a celebrity
enabled him to kiss women without their consent and to grab them by their gen-
itals. On election day, 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump. To put
that level of support in context, Trump received a higher percentage of evangelical
support than George W. Bush in 2004 (78 per cento), who is himself an evangelical.
Given the extraordinarily high level of white evangelical support for Trump,
one might ask whether this story is really only about the politicization of evan-
gelicalism specifically, and not religion more broadly. There can be no doubt that
evangelicals are a “leading indicator” of how religion has become politicized. Not
only are evangelical leaders the most vocal religious leaders in Trump’s camp but,
as noted above, Americans are more likely to associate evangelicals with the Re-
publican Party than simply “religious people.” Notably, Anche se, this is not just an
evangelical, or even Protestant, phenomenon. Per esempio, among white Catho-
lics, Trump received 60 percent of the vote, obviously lower than among evangel-
icals but still higher than white Catholics’ support of Mitt Romney in 2012, John
McCain in 2008, or George W. Bush in 2004.

Both the Moore and Trump examples suggest that religious views can be sub-
ordinated to partisanship. Ancora, the vote is a blunt indicator, making it difficult
to decipher people’s underlying opinions. No doubt many religious voters were
casting a vote against Hillary Clinton rather than for Donald Trump. Fortunately,
Anche se, we need not rely on the broad brushstrokes of election returns to see how
politics can shape the views held by religious Americans. Public opinion data pro-
vide finer-grained evidence. Back in 2011, a poll conducted by the Public Religion

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

Research Institute and Religion News Service asked a nationally representative
sample of Americans whether “a public official who commits an immoral act in
their personal life” can still “behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their pub-
lic and professional life.” This was just over a decade following the impeachment
of Bill Clinton, when the nation was riven over the question of the connection
between private and public morality. At that time, 60 percent of white evangel-
icals said that immoral acts in private meant that a public official could not be
trusted to behave ethically in a professional capacity. This is to be expected, giv-
en the number of religious–especially, evangelical–leaders who argued for Presi-
dent Clinton’s removal from office owing to his adultery and his dishonesty when
denying his affair under oath. Consider these words from Franklin Graham in a
1998 Wall Street Journal op-ed, which succinctly reflect the prevailing view of Clin-
ton’s indiscretions among evangelical leaders at the time: “If [Clinton] will lie to
or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will
prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”10

This same question about private and public morality was posed in another
national survey done in October of 2016, following the release of the Access Hol-
lywood tape. Now, only 20 percent of evangelicals–Trump’s strongest support-
ers–said that private immorality meant a public official could not behave ethi-
cally in their professional responsibilities, a precipitous forty-point drop.11 White
evangelicals were not the only ones whose opinions changed. Among mainline
Protestants, there was a twenty-two-point decline in those who said that immo-
rality in private meant unethical behavior in public. Catholics fell fourteen points,
while black Protestants only dropped five points. In contrasto, people without a re-
ligious affiliation became five points more likely to agree with the statement that
immorality behind closed doors precludes ethical behavior professionally.

While these changes in attitude are revealing, are they long-lasting? Or did
they simply reflect the heat of the 2016 presidential campaign, only to fade away
after election day? To find out, my colleague Geoffrey Layman and I posed the
same question on the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a very large
survey of the American electorate. Come mostrato in figura 1, we found that the results
held steady. Infatti, after two years of the Trump presidency, white evangelicals
were slightly less likely to see a connection between private immorality and pub-
licly unethical behavior: 16.5 per cento, compared with 20 percent back in 2016. IL
views of mainline Protestants, Catholics, black Protestants, and people without a
religious affiliation were virtually unchanged.

The point in highlighting the changing attitudes toward private immorality
and public ethics is, Ovviamente, to suggest that the change is due to politics trump-
ing (if you will) an opinion that is closely tied to one’s religious beliefs. To dig
deeper into the connection between partisanship and views of public officials’
morality, we asked two other versions of the same question that prime respon-

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

Figura 1
Evangelicals, Catholics, and Mainline Protestants Have Become Less
Concerned about a Politician’s Private Morality

Percent saying an elected ofﬁcial who
commits an immoral act in their personal life
cannot behave ethically in their public life

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White
Evangelicals

Catholics

White
Mainline
Protestants

Black
Evangelicals

No
Afﬁliation

2011

2016

2018

Fonte: Geoffrey Layman and David E. Campbell, Cooperative Congressional Election Study,
2018.

dents to think of either Trump or Clinton when answering the question. One be-
gins with the statement, “Many supporters of Donald Trump have argued,” fol-
lowed by the statement that a public official can act immorally in private but eth-
ically in public. The other references the affair and impeachment of Bill Clinton
by adding the prefatory statement, “When he was president, many supporters of
Bill Clinton argued. . . .” Respondents were randomly assigned to receive only one
of the three variations: the generic, Trump, or Clinton version.

Come mostrato in figura 2, when asked about Trump specifically, only 6 percent of
white evangelicals said that there was a connection between private immorality
and public ethics. In contrasto, when primed to think about Clinton, 27 percent saw

149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

Figura 2
Concern about a Politician’s Private Morality Depends on the Politician

Percent saying an elected ofﬁcial who
commits an immoral act in their personal life
cannot behave ethically in their public life,
differentiated by politician

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White
Evangelicals

Catholics

White
Mainline
Protestants

Black
Evangelicals

No
Afﬁliation

Generic

Clinton

Trump

Fonte: Geoffrey Layman and David E. Campbell, Cooperative Congressional Election Study,
2018.

a connection: a difference of twenty-one points. Other religious groups also differ
when asked about Trump or Clinton, but not to the same extent as evangelicals.
Catholics were five points more likely to link private morality and public ethics
when asked about Clinton; mainline Protestants were three points more likely.
Lest one think that it is only Republican-leaning groups that shift their views de-
pending on the politician in question, both black Protestants and people without

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

a religious affiliation were modestly less likely to connect privately questionable
behavior with public ethics when asked about Clinton–by eight and five percent-
age points respectively.

It does not take a political scientist to figure out what is going on here. Many
people respond to this question according to their party affiliation, not out of
principle. To underscore that point, we can compare Republicans to independents
and Democrats. Both evangelicals and Catholics who identify as Republicans are
far more likely to question the public ethics of a privately immoral official when
asked about Clinton versus Trump. Among evangelical Republicans, the percent-
age who express concern about the professional behavior of someone who misbe-
haves in private rises thirty-four points when asked about Clinton compared with
Trump. Among Catholic Republicans, the gap is even greater: forty points. IL
inverse is also true. Both evangelicals and Catholics who identify as Democrats
or independents are more concerned about a private-public connection when
asked about Trump instead of Clinton, although the differences are not as large as
for their Republican counterparts: eight points for evangelicals and twenty-nine
points for Catholics.12

In sum, we have strong evidence that many religious believers place party over
principle when evaluating the public implications of behavior they find immoral.
They put politics first.

Some readers may ask whether the influence of politics over religion is any-
thing new. After all, religion has long been intertwined with American politics.
Clearly, this is the case, but this should be cause for concern rather than compla-
cency. It is precisely because of this history that we should be alarmed about stark
political divisions along religious lines. In the past, there was political conflict be-
tween members of pietistic and liturgical faiths, not to mention the tensions be-
tween Protestants and Catholics.13 At times, these conflicts even led to violence.
Such a legacy of religion-fueled discord should give us pause, as they are a remind-
er that differences rooted in religion can be explosive.

Ancora, the parallels with the past are imperfect. What is new about today’s polit-
ical environment is that the partisan differences are not between religious camps,
but rather between religion and secularity. One party has wrapped itself in reli-
gion, thus making religion, broadly construed, a source of partisan identity. IL
other has more quietly–and almost by default–come to be associated with secu-
larism. While a few Democratic politicians have described themselves in secular
terms, they remain few and far between. There is a “freethought” caucus within
Congress, but it has all of four members, fewer than the Friends of Kazakhstan
(which has ten). Most famously, during his 2016 presidential run, Bernie Sanders
described himself as “not particularly religious,” a highly unusual admission in
contemporary American politics. Yet he protested vigorously when leaked emails
found some Democratic officials describing him as an atheist.

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

Republicans’ identification with religion qua religion, and the Democrats’ sec-
ular mirror image, has had far-reaching implications for both the religious and po-
litical landscape of the country. Perhaps the most significant consequence of the
perception that religion has become an extension of politics has been its contribu-
tion to the nation’s recent “secular turn.” Over roughly the last twenty-five years,
there has been a rapid rise in the percentage of Americans who report not having
a religious affiliation. Until the early 1990s, the percentage of Americans who do
not identity with a religion hovered between 5 E 7 percent–small enough that
few observers paid much attention to them. Then, beginning in the early 1990s,
that percentage began to rise. By 2000, it was 14 per cento; In 2010, it reached 18
per cento; and in 2018, it had grown to 23 percent.14 This sudden growth is puzzling,
as most theories of secularization posit a process of generational replacement,
whereby a population secularizes gradually as older, more-religious members die
off and are replaced by younger, more-secular cohorts. This has been the pattern
in most other advanced industrial democracies. What explains the anomalous
American case?

In a prescient article published in 2002, sociologists Michael Hout and Claude
Fischer proposed an explanation for the rise of the religious Nones, as those with-
out an affiliation are often called: a backlash to the religious right.15 They suggest-
ed that the mixture of religion and partisan politics had led an increasing num-
ber of Americans to disclaim a religious affiliation. Specifically, moderates and
liberals were turned off by religion because of its association with conservative
politica. As they put it, “Organized religion linked itself to a conservative social
agenda in the 1990s, and that led some political moderates and liberals who had
previously identified with the religion of their youth or their spouse’s religion to
declare that they have no religion.”

At the time, Hout and Fischer’s explanation was based more on the process of
elimination than affirmative evidence in favor of their hypothesis. Like an Agatha
Christie novel, they figured out “who done it” by ruling out all the other suspects.
In the years since, their foresight has become more and more apparent, as increas-
ing evidence has accumulated in support of the secular backlash hypothesis.

Per esempio, a recent article has found that, across states, the percentage of
religious Nones has risen most where there has been the most activity by political
organizations associated with the religious right. Other analyses based on repeat-
ed interviews with the same people have shown that, over time, Democrats are
more likely to become religious Nones. Conversely, Nones are not likely to start
identifying as Democrats. Put another way, it is the partisan identity that shapes
one’s religious identity or, more precisely, the lack thereof. Inoltre, that ef-
fect is only found among people who see a connection between Republicans and
religion–further evidence that this is a backlash to the partisan connotations of
religion.16

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While these analyses of voters in their natural habitat are suggestive, there
could still be alternative explanations for the apparent secular backlash to politi-
cized religion. The most convincing evidence for a causal relationship comes from
experiments in which the researcher has complete control over the conditions of
the study, thus ruling out alternative explanations. To that end, my colleagues and
I have conducted a series of experiments in which we expose people to examples
of politicians who employ religious rhetoric, thus testing how they react. The de-
sign of the experiment is straightforward. Primo, we collect baseline data on indi-
viduals’ religious preferences. Then, roughly a week later, we have them read a
news story that describes the Republican and Democratic candidates in a nearby
congressional race. In some versions of the story, the Republican uses a lot of re-
ligious rhetoric, in others, it is the Democrat who does so, and in other versions,
both do. There is also a control condition in which neither candidate mentions re-
ligion. Subjects in the experiment are randomly assigned to one version of the sto-
ry, after which they are asked the same questions as in the baseline survey. Con
this elegant design, we can see whether individuals change their religious pref-
erence based solely on their exposure to the news story. Randomization ensures
that we can be confident that any rise in religious nonaffiliation is due only to the
experimental “treatment”: questo è, being primed to think about the intertwining
of religion with partisan politics.

Our results are completely consistent with the secular backlash hypothesis. Noi
find that exposure to a Republican candidate who employs “God talk” leads to an
increase in Democrats who report no religious affiliation.17 Lest it seem implausi-
ble that reading a single news story could cause people to abandon their religion,
this sort of fluidity in their declared religious identity is consistent with other evi-
dence showing that many Nones have an ambivalent religious identity, and move
back and forth between identifying with or disclaiming a religious affiliation.18

In other words, multiple streams of evidence have converged toward the same
conclusion. It is not just that the United States is becoming a more secular nation.
It is that Americans’ secularization is, at least in part, a backlash to the employ-
ment of religion for partisan ends. The widely held perception that religion is par-
tisan has contributed to the turn away from religious affiliation. As is always the
case with social scientific research, one can question the findings or methodolo-
gy of a given study, but it is hard to argue when different studies using different
methodologies, covering different time periods, all point to the same conclusion.
The decline in religious affiliation, Tuttavia, is only the tip of the secular ice-
berg. While an important social trend, disaffiliation from religion is a very thin
measure of secularization, especially as many Nones are what Hout and Fischer
have called “unchurched believers.” That is, they retain some traditional religious
beliefs, particularly a belief in God, even if they are unwilling to identify with an
organized religion. In order to better understand the depth of secularism within

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

the American population, my colleagues and I have developed a set of measures
to gauge the degree to which individuals adopt a secular identity (such as athe-
ist, agnostic, humanist, secular), receive guidance from nonreligious sources, E
endorse a set of secular beliefs.19 Together, they form a scale of personal secular-
ism.20 While we have a much shorter time trend for these measures than for reli-
gious nonaffiliation, from 2011 A 2017, we observed a rise in this more robust form
of secularism compared with the growth in the Nones. Inoltre, we also find a
two-way relationship between secularism and political attitudes. Over time, being
on the political left leads to more secularism, just as it leads to religious nonaffil-
iation. Tuttavia, unlike nonaffiliation, this sharper-edged secularism also affects
political views. In other words, the evidence points to a mutually reinforcing rela-
tionship between secularism and politics: more of one leads to more of the other.

F or empirically oriented scholars, the secular backlash to the religious right

is an interesting phenomenon–an explanation for one of the most signif-
icant social trends in the last thirty years. Within the literatures in politi-
cal science and sociology (including my own work), these findings are typically
framed in positivist terms. Here, Anche se, I wish to make a normative argument.
My concern is not the rise of secularism per se, as I will leave others to debate the
merits of secularity versus religiosity. Invece, I worry about the politicization of
religion and the attendant secular backlash because this state of affairs does not
bode well for the state of religious tolerance in contemporary America; it also
diminishes the ability of religious leaders to speak prophetically about issues of
public policy.

In our 2010 book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Put-
nam and I showed that religious tolerance in the United States was relatively high,
despite the fact that the United States combines high levels of both religious di-
versity and devotion. The explanation for this puzzling combination of devotion,
diversity, and tolerance, we argued, was the near-ubiquity of social “bridging”
among Americans of different religious perspectives, including between believ-
ers and nonbelievers. Interfaith neighborhoods, friendships, extended families,
and even marriages have become the norm. As people of different religious back-
grounds (including no religion) form close friendships and familial bonds, Essi
become more accepting of those who have a different worldview.

Today, I fear that the conditions for religious tolerance that Putnam and I de-
scribed are disappearing. If a religious-secular divide is combined with a deep
partisan cleavage, the result could be a deterioration in Americans’ degree of reli-
gious tolerance. There are at least two reasons to think that this might be the case.
Primo, while Putnam and I found that people of different religious backgrounds
often comingle, other evidence on the partisan cocooning of Americans suggests
that this sort of interaction is becoming less common. If religiosity and secularity

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

are closely aligned to Americans’ partisan identity, we would expect Americans
with religious and secular worldviews to have less contact with one another, giv-
en that people with differing political views increasingly inhabit different social
spheres.21 Second, even if there is interaction between religious and secular Amer-
icans, injecting politics into the mix makes for a combustible combination, giv-
en the mutual antipathy Republicans and Democrats have toward one another. In
other words, compared with a decade or so ago, I suspect that religious and secular
Americans are less likely to associate with one another and, when they do, are less
likely to have the sort of interaction that fosters comity over contention. I readily
concede that, at this point, this conclusion remains conjecture, to be confirmed
with empirical evidence. But it seems more likely than not.

As a hint that religious-secular discord is increasingly shaped by political
views, consider that since at least 2006, there has been a growing connection be-
tween Americans’ partisan identity and their attitudes toward atheists. In the
mid-2000s, there was little to no connection between partisanship and how peo-
ple viewed atheists. By 2017, there was a sharp division: Republicans held a far
more negative view of atheists than Democrats. Nor is this polarization in atti-
tudes limited to atheists–admittedly, a relatively small share of the U.S. popula-
tion–as Republicans and Democrats have also come to differ in their perceptions
of nonreligious people, a more benign way of describing someone who is secular
that applies to a far larger share of the population.22

A skeptic might ask whether this partisan-inflected antipathy is all that wor-
risome, or at least if it warrants any more concern than the many other ways that
political polarization has divided Americans. I suggest that it should not be dis-
missed as just one more source of division: the religious divides in our politics
now stand in sharp contrast to the past high level of interreligious acceptance
among Americans in their personal lives. Now, Tuttavia, it appears that politics
has come to infuse the relations between religious and secular Americans. It is one
thing to have a political disagreement with your family, neighbors, and friends:
those political differences are couched in personal relationships that subsume
politica. In our current state of polarization, fewer and fewer Americans have such
crosscutting social relationships. Americans’ party preferences align with where
they live, where they shop, and the media they consume. Add to this an alignment
with one’s religious or secular worldview and those divisions burrow even deeper.
There is another reason why the politicization of religion should cause alarm
for religionists and secularists alike: the weakening of religion’s prophetic voice
on matters of public policy, both in the sense of looking ahead and commenting
critically on the present day. Historically, religious leaders have often spoken to the
better angels of our nature, independent of any association with a political party.
Admittedly, this has not always been the case, as we should not romanticize the
role of religion in American politics. Sometimes religious leaders have stayed si-

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

lent in the face of crisis or stood on the wrong side of history. Yet in their finest mo-
ments–including the abolition and civil rights movements–religious voices have
nudged the nation toward a more perfect union. Even secularists who may not en-
dorse its religious motivations should appreciate such advocacy. Politics, after all,
makes strange bedfellows. Tuttavia, religious leaders can only speak prophetically
if religion is not seen as merely an extension of partisanship. Religious leaders must
be willing to transcend partisan divisions as they speak to the problems of our day.
In today’s politics, where might religious leaders be able to contribute to pub-
lic discourse? While this list is hardly exhaustive, religious texts have a lot to say
about economic inequality, stewardship of the earth, racial harmony, and immi-
gration, not to mention war and poverty.

I concede that a superficial reading of my argument could be construed as a
call for a stronger religious left. That inference, Anche se, is wrong. While religion
today is perceived–correctly or not–as aligned with the political right, it would
be equally problematic if religion were so tightly intertwined with the political
left. It is just as much a problem if people on either side of the political spectrum
put their party over principle. The key to religion’s prophetic potential is to not be
perceived as being on one side or the other. Infatti, given the multiplicity of reli-
gious voices in the United States, I would expect religious leaders to take a wide
variety of political positions: left, right, and center.

There will no doubt be readers who object to the characterization of religion
as being concentrated on the right, as there are numerous examples of religious
Americans who are forceful advocates for the left. And there are still others whose
politics do not align with the left-right, Democratic-Republican American politi-
cal spectrum. Some could even be called prophetic. While all of this is true, recall
that the public perception of religion is partisan, and primarily on the right. The ex-
amples that cut against the general trend that I have described here have, for the
most part, not seeped into the public consciousness. The reason for this is proba-
bly a matter of proportion. The sheer volume of conservative religious rhetoric–
amplified by media such as Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and social media in-
fluencers–simply drowns out the voices on the left, in the middle, and those above
the fray altogether. One might say that religion has been weaponized by the right.

W hat then, if anything, can be done about the politicization of religion?

The answer lies in what appears to be driving the secular backlash. It
is less what the religious leaders are doing and more the behavior of

politicians.

Recall the experiments my colleagues and I conducted that showed that reli-
gious disaffiliation can be triggered by the mixture of religion and partisan poli-
tic, specifically in the Republican Party. There is an important nuance in our find-
ing: while we observe a secular backlash when subjects read about politicians

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

who employ religious rhetoric, we do not see a comparable effect when clergy
speak out politically. In other words, voters are not as bothered by religious lead-
ers who cross over into politics than by politicians who co-opt religion. While ad-
mittedly tentative, this evidence suggests that the end of politicized religion will
only come if or when politicians change their behavior, specifically by no longer
deploying religion to court voters.

There is an irony here. The prophetic voice of religious leaders has been com-
promised by the actions of politicians. But this irony also points to a solution.
What if religious leaders refuse to allow themselves to be co-opted by politicians,
and speak out against the mixture of God and Caesar? This would mean no cler-
gy appearances at campaign events; no invitations for politicians to speak in their
houses of worship; no supportive speeches, articles, posts, or tweets. It would also
mean that politicians risk criticism from local clergy–voters’ own priests, pas-
tori, and rabbis–for trying to mix religion with their politics.

While a rebuff from clergy would be an important start, Tuttavia, it is not
Abbastanza. Change will only come when politicians no longer see the status quo as
helping their prospects for reelection, when their old ways cause them to lose
more votes than they gain. At first blush, this may seem like a quixotic suggestion.
Over the last generation, religion has become deeply embedded in our politics, es-
pecially among conservatives. Why would we think that politicians would change
what is working for them? After all, politicians are notoriously loath to do any-
thing to disrupt the status quo under which they were elected.

The most persuasive approach would be if voters in the center and on the
right–especially those who are religious–snubbed politicians who deploy reli-
gion. If voters refuse to vote for, contribute money to, or campaign on behalf of
politicians who exploit religious faith, those politicians will quickly change their
tune. Such a negative reaction from voters would be the most powerful incentive
of all. No politician can afford to alienate their base.

Is it realistic to think that such change is feasible? I remain optimistic that there
is indeed hope. After all, weaponization of religion on the right is a relatively recent
development in American politics. And recall that it is not found in most other lib-
eral democracies. Nor is it even a completely accurate inference for voters to draw
in the United States, as there are many examples of religious voices on the left, both
in the present and the past, which is undoubtedly why many Americans do not per-
ceive religion to be the province of one party over the other. The very fact that a
sizeable share of Americans does not associate religion with one party over anoth-
er means that the perception of politicized religion is far from universal. Tuttavia,
the end of politicized religion, and the religionization of politics, will require some
consciousness-raising. Religionists and secularists alike need to recognize that the
mixture of religion and partisan politics both threatens the state of religious toler-
ance in America and muffles religion’s potential to be a prophetic voice.

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

author’s note

Much of the work discussed in this essay has been in collaboration with Geoffrey
Layman and John Green. I am grateful for their insights, although they should not
be held responsible for any of my normative conclusions. Some of the data was col-
lected through a grant from the National Science Foundation (Award 0961700). In
aggiunta, my work has been funded by an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.

about the author

David E. Campbell is the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy at
the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of American Grace: How Religion Di-
vides and Unites Us (with Robert D. Putnam, 2010), Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons
and American Politics (with J. Quin Monson and John Green, 2014), and Secular Surge:
A New Fault Line in American Politics (with Geoffrey C. Layman and John C. Verde,
forthcoming).

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endnotes

1 David Voas and Mark Chaves, “Is the United States a Counterexample to the Seculariza-

tion Thesis?” American Journal of Sociology 121 (5) (2016): 1524.

2 Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites

Us (New York: Simone & Schuster, 2010).

3 Specifically, in un 2017 national survey that I conducted with Geoffrey Layman and John
Verde, 37 percent of Americans said that religious people were “mainly Republicans,"
compared with 9 percent who said that they are “mainly Democrats.” (The remainder
chose “an even mix of both.”) Fifty-five percent said that evangelical Christians are
mainly Republicans, while only 9 percent described them as Democrats. Thirty-seven
percent of Americans said that “nonreligious people” are mainly Democrats, while
only 7 percent put them in the Republican camp. A slightly higher percentage, 42,
linked atheists with the Democratic Party; 10 percent put them with the Republicans.
David E. Campbell, Geoffrey C. Layman, and John C. Verde, Secular Surge: A New Fault
Line in American Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

4 Per esempio, 65 percent of people who identify as Republicans see evangelical Christians
as “mainly Republicans,” which is close to the 59 percent of Democratic-identifying
Americans who describe evangelicals as Republicans. Ibid.

5 David C. Leege, Kenneth D. Wald, Brian S. Krueger, and Paul D. Mueller, The Politics of
Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).

6 Joshua Green, “Roy and His Rock,” The Atlantic, ottobre 2005, https://www.theatlantic

.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/roy-and-his-rock/304264/.

7 To be precise, he was suspended by a specially formed Supreme Court and then resigned

from office.

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion

8 Leada Gore, “Kayla Moore Posts Support from 50 Pastors; 4 Ask for Their Names to Be
Removed,” AL.com, novembre 13, 2017, https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/
53_pastors_sign_letter_of_supp.html.

9 See “Decision 2017: Alabama Results,” NBC News, Gennaio 30, 2018, https://www.nbc

news.com/politics/2017-election/AL.

10 Franklin Graham, “Clinton’s Sins Aren’t Private,” The Wall Street Journal, agosto 27, 1998,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB904162265981632000.

11 È interessante notare, recall that roughly 20 percent of white evangelicals did not vote for Trump:
about the same number that see a link between private immorality and public ethics.
12 Unfortunately, the other religious traditions are too small to allow for an analysis that
combines party and religion in this way, although given these findings, we have every
reason to expect comparable results.

13 Richard J. Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (Chica-
go: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Paul Kleppner, Continuity and Change in Electoral
Politics, 1893–1928 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); and Robert P. Swierenga, “Ethno-
religious Political Behavior in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Voting, Values, and Cul-
ture,” in Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the 1980s, ed. Mark A. Noll
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

14 These figures are from the General Social Survey, but other data sources show precisely
the same trend. See NORC at the University of Chicago, The General Social Survey, var-
ious years.

15 Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer, “Why More Americans Have No Religious Prefer-
ence: Politics and Generations,” American Sociological Review 67 (2) (2002): 165–190.
16 Paul A. Djupe, Jacob R. Neiheisel, and Kimberly H. Conger, “Are the Politics of the Chris-
tian Right Linked to State Rates of the Nonreligious? The Importance of Salient Con-
troversy,” Political Research Quarterly 71 (4) (2018); Michele F. Margolis, From Politics to the
Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 2018); Stratos Patrikios, “American Republican Religion?” Politi-
cal Behavior 30 (3) (2008): 367–389; Putnam and Campbell, American Grace; and David E.
Campbell, Geoffrey C. Layman, John C. Verde, and Nathanael G. Sumaktoyo, “Putting
Politics First: The Impact of Politics on American Religious and Secular Orientations,"
American Journal of Political Science 62 (3) (2018): 551–565.

17 Campbell et al., “Putting Politics First.”
18 Chaeyoon Lim, Carol Ann MacGregor, and Robert D. Putnam, “Secular and Liminal:
Discovering Heterogeneity among Religious Nones,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli-
gion 49 (4) (2010): 596–618.

19 David E. Campbell and Geoffrey C. Layman, “The Politics of Secularism in the United
States,” in Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. Robert Scott and Marlis
Buchmann (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2017).

20 Specifically, the scale includes three types of items. First is a set of eight secular beliefs,
to which respondents indicate whether they agree or disagree. Five of the statements
are worded to affirm secular perspectives:

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149 (3) Summer 2020David E. Campbell

•
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“Factual evidence from the natural world is the source of true beliefs.”
“The great works of philosophy and science are the best source of truth, wisdom,
and ethics.”
“To understand the world, we must free our minds from old traditions and beliefs.”
“When I make important decisions in my life, I rely mostly on reason and evidence.”
“All of the greatest advances for humanity have come from science and technology.”

The other three statements represent the rejection of secular values:

•
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“It is hard to live a good life based on reason and facts alone.”
“What we believe is right and wrong cannot be based only on human knowledge.”
“The world would be a better place if we relied less on science and technology to
solve our problems.”

The second part of the scale consists of a question that asks respondents whether they
receive guidance from nonreligious sources, modeled on an oft-used question about re-
ligious guidance.
Third, the scale includes a measure of secular identity. Respondents were presented
with a list of descriptive terms and asked which (if any) describes them. Those who se-
lected atheist, agnostic, secular, or humanist were coded as having a secular identity.
21 Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America
Is Tearing Us Apart, 1st ed. (Boston: Mariner Books, 2009); Shanto Iyengar and Sean J.
Westwood, “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polariza-
zione,” American Journal of Political Science 59 (3) (2015): 690–707; and Lilliana Mason, Uncivil
Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).
22 Specifically, attitudes toward atheists and nonreligious people are measured with a
type of survey question known as a feeling thermometer. This is a one-hundred-
point scale, in which higher scores indicate that a respondent is more positive toward
members of that group. Between 2006 E 2017, Republicans’ attitude toward non-
religious people fell into negative territory (going from an average score of fifty-three
to forty-eight), while Democrats became more positive toward the nonreligious (fifty-
four to fifty-eight). Consequently, back in 2006, there was a miniscule one-point differ-
ence in the scores given to nonreligious people by Republicans and Democrats. By 2017,
that gap had grown to ten points. We have a shorter time frame for the assessment of
atheists–2011 to 2017–but we observe the same growth in a partisan gap. In 2011, Dem-
ocrats gave atheists an average score six points higher than Republicans. That gap grew
to nineteen points by 2017.

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesThe Perils of Politicized Religion
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