The United States of America has one of the most, if not the most diverse religious populations in the world. While countless lives are lost over religious differences in places like Northern Ireland, Israel and West Africa, in America, a Protestant can live happily next door to a Jew, who in turn can live across the street from a person of the Muslim persuasion. This member of Islam can live in peace with the atheist one door down, and this atheist has no hang-ups over the fact that the mailman is Buddhist. This is in no small way attributed to the fact that the US Constitution’s First Amendment includes what is known as the establishment clause, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” effectively separating affairs of religious institutions from secular, governmental institutions. That is, however, no guarantee that American politics will turn a blind eye to religious beliefs. In fact, in the past few decades, political agendas have been turning more and more religious in nature.

In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected the first Roman Catholic President of the United States, putting an end to the 171-year tradition of presidents, beginning with George Washington, that were from Protestant backgrounds. While many conservative Protestants scoffed at Kennedy as trying to break down the wall of separation between church and state and bring Catholic teachings into American government, Kennedy eloquently replied by saying, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute—where no Catholic prelate would tell [a Catholic] president how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.” Kennedy went on to elaborate that no faith-based educational institution should be granted money by the government, nor should any religious affiliation be needed to hold public office (Kosmin and Lachman 1993:169). It was starting to look as if politics were beginning to become more secular. As it is well known, after Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson carried out the rest of Kennedy’s term, and then ran for reelection in 1964. Johnson, a left-leaning Democrat found himself up against Barry Goldwater from the right-minded Republican Party. Early on in the 20th century, many of Protestant denominations had adopted progressive, social reformist doctrines, that many people still value to this day. Despite being Protestant, Goldwater’s platform took a much more conservative approach. This ended up backfiring on him, however, as many Christian publications stated that they opposed Goldwater’s policies. He was further stigmatized by the religious publication The Christian Century as turning his patriotic rhetoric into “religious nationalism.” To make matters worse for Goldwater, in October of 1964, less than a month before the general election, 725 Episcopalian clergy and laymen from forty-one states signed a resolution accusing him of “a transparent exploitation of racialism.” Richard Nixon, a Republican and ex-Vice President at the time, claimed that these allegations were “the most vicious in political history.” As a result, Lyndon Johnson won the 1964 election in an unprecedented landslide victory, with Barry Goldwater only winning six states: his native Arizona, and five states in the heart of the Bible Belt (Kosmin 1993:174-5). While religious leaders in the end went against a candidate with religious morals, they nonetheless had an influence on the outcome of a presidential election.

This is also a good example of how individualism in politics rarely gets anywhere, especially in democratic styles of government. Realistically, it takes money and support from a large group of others to promote a political ideology. While religious groups do not like to be called “lobbies,” as lobbying organizations have an immoral stigma attached to them, it is the best way to describe their efforts at changing American politics. A well-known example of this type of lobby is the Religious Right, composed of the Moral Majority during the 1980’s Reagan Era, and the Christian Coalition, which followed in the 1990’s and still exists today. The birth of the Religious Right is attributable to the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1976. Jimmy Carter referred to himself as a “born-again” Christian, and today’s Religious Right is made up of so-called “born-agains” and conservative evangelicals (Fowler 1995:36). In 1979 Jerry Falwell headed up the conservative religious movement known as the Moral Majority. The following year brought about the 1980 election in which Ronald Reagan, a Republican and evangelical sympathizer, won the presidency. “Reagan acknowledged white evangelical voters in the 1980’s and embraced (at least rhetorically) their concerns” (Fowler 1995:36). The concerns of the Moral Majority and evangelical Protestants in general include, but are definitely not limited to the following: the return of prayer to public school (via a constitutional amendment), bans on abortion, and fewer rights for those with alternative lifestyles (i.e. homosexuals, bisexuals and transgender individuals) (Baker, Moreland and Steed 1989:161). In a nutshell, the Religious Right is very far to the right on political spectrum, as was Ronald Reagan.

While the Moral Majority managed to pick up steam during the Reagan administration, it was poorly managed, and, other than Reagan’s endorsement of their ideals, the Moral Majority had a relatively weak lobbying organization compared to the Jews, not to mention the countless other corporate and political lobbies (Kosmin and Lachman 1993:56). In 1988, George Bush spelled out the defeat of the Moral Majority by not supporting them in the election. In fact, one of the Moral Majority’s top members, Pat Robertson, ran a failed presidential campaign in the same year. However, Bush appealed to people’s religious views by dismissing his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. The ACLU being the American Civil Liberties Union, a political activist group that is pro-choice, believes that prayer has no place in public schools, and promotes equal rights for those who practice alternative lifestyles. Even though the Religious Right was not as influential during the 1988 race for president, religion and morality were still players in an attempt to get votes, as 80 percent of evangelical Protestants voted for George Bush over the much more liberal Michael Dukakis (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:142).

This was not the end for Pat Robertson, however. What formed from the remains of his failed presidential bid became the Christian Coalition, which “has succeeded in channeling the energies of many local conservative Christians in a way that the Moral Majority never achieved” (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:78). The Christian Coalition learned from the mistakes of Falwell’s Moral Majority by being more organized, and building a grassroots movement, rather than relying on emergency pleas for money and Nightline appearances as Falwell had done. By 1994, the Coalition had over 1,000,000 members, 900 local chapters, a Washington lobby, and spending power of over $20 million (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:79). The Christian Coalition also did not only focus its attention to national politics, but to local elections as well. It set up “schools” to train advocates to get into local politics such as school boards, city councils, county boards, as well as positions within the Republican party. During the 1993 New York City public school board elections, the Christian Coalition printed up and distributed many thousands of voter guides with the positions of each candidate on them concerning issues such as condom distribution, gay rights curricula and prayer in school. Even the Catholic archdiocese of New York teamed up with the Protestant Christian Coalition to distribute the guides to its parishes. Both the evangelical Protestants and Catholics opposed the school district’s educational orientation because they felt that it promoted homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and belittled traditional family values (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:79). Moving up to state level politics, by 1995, the Christian Coalition had successfully managed to gain control of Republican party machinery in several states, fighting against gay rights at both the state and local levels. Members of the Christian Coalition had also infiltrated many local school boards. The Christian Coalition mobilized sympathizers and evangelicals by both training people for candidacy and spreading the world about these candidates and their political platforms.

Evangelical Christians are not, however, the only religious force active in government. Jews, while only composing 3 percent of the American population, are well educated, affluent, and have been active in politics. Unlike evangelical Protestants, Jews, in large part, vote for the more liberal-leaning Democrats (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:72-73). According to Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman, authors of One Nation Under God, Jews have the highest median household income in the United States, at $36,700 per year (260). Most Jews in politics are liberal, and a big percentage of them are members of the ACLU, and as such, they have championed civil liberties. Most Jews in Washington are not technically considered religious lobbyists, as they do not regularly attend temple and are also very secular in nature, but there is one notable Jewish lobby group known as the American Israel Political Action Committee, or AIPAC for short. It has gained a reputation as being “one of the most formidable lobbies in Washington” (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:73). AIPAC has about 55,000 grassroots activist members, and many other affiliated political action committees who donate money to various political candidates. One of AIPAC’s political achievements has been the fact that the $3 billion in foreign aid that the United States gives to Israel is now grant money instead of loans. Also, unlike the Christian Coalition, Jewish lobby groups fight for strict separation of church and state (Fowler and Hertzke 1995:73). A survey in 1984 claimed that eighty percent of Jews opposed prayer in school, whereas eighty-nine percent of fundamentalist Christians favored prayer in school (Hertzke 1989:131). It is apparent that even though Jews make up only three percent of the population, they have a formidable lobbying group that gets their voice heard in American politics.

In the world of politics, there are many lobbies that attempt to influence the outcome of elections, and help pass bills in Congress. Even though many of these lobbies are conglomerations of large corporations, religious lobbies cannot be ignored. In a nation where ninety-four percent of the population believes that there is a “god or universal spirit” (Kosmin and Lachlan 1993:9); it is no surprise that there is little separation between spirituality and politics. Voters are influenced by what candidates say, and the candidates know this full well. They also educate the electorate of the platforms of candidates by distributing things such as voter guides. However, the candidates have to know what their constituents want, and religious organizations attempt to provide them with this information. These religious groups also act as lobbies to influence which bills get passed and which ones are shot down. Other groups, for instance, the Jewish lobby, attempt to influence American politics that deal with international affairs such as foreign aid to Israel. The Christian Coalition especially emphasizes traditional family values, and promotes conservative social issues in correspondence with their literal interpretation of the Bible. Although the United States Constitution expressly bars the promotion of any specific religion by the government, it cannot prohibit the influence of certain ideals of various religiously motivated political action groups. And while there are many religious influence groups in the United States, the Christian and Jewish lobbies are the most influential. Although many may not agree with what these groups stand for, religion will be an integral part of the American political system for as long as Americans are religious.

References


Baker, Tod A., Laurence W. Moreland, and Robert P. Steed. 1989. “Party Activists and the New Religious Right.” Religion in American Politics. Ed. Charles W. Dunn. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Fowler, Robert Booth, and Allen D. Hertzke. 1995. Religion and Politics in America: Faith, Culture and Strategic Choices. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Hertzke, Allen D. 1989. “The Role of Religious Lobbies.” Religion in American Politics. Ed. Charles W. Dunn. Washingtonc D.C.: Congressional Quarterly.

Kosmin, Barry A., and Seymour P. Lachman. 1993. One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society. New York: Harmony Books.