Evangelical Protestant Interaction with Catholics in American Politics
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DOCTRINE, DISCUSSION AND DISAGREEMENT: EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT INTERACTION WITH CATHOLICS IN AMERICAN POLITICS A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government By Carin Robinson, M.A. Washington, DC July 25, 2008 Copyright 2008 by Carin Robinson, M.A. All Rights Reserved. ii DOCTRINE, DISCUSSION AND DISAGREEMENT: EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT INTERACTION WITH CATHOLICS IN AMERICAN POLITICS Carin Robinson, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Clyde Wilcox, Ph.D. ABSTRACT: In this dissertation, I examine the Christian Right as a cross-cutting network and assess the impact of Catholics’ participation in this social movement on evangelical Protestant political attitudes. After reviewing the historical animosity that previously defined this political partnership, I outline the areas of disagreement that remain even in the context of today’s religious conservative movement. These areas of disagreement are significant, according to deliberative democratic theorists, because exposure to rationales for opposing viewpoints might lead to opinion change and greater political tolerance. Therefore, I conduct a survey-experiment to investigate the effect of exposure to dissonant Catholic rationales on evangelicals’ policy preferences and their political tolerance. In general, the results of the survey-experiment suggest that evangelical supporters of the Christian Right are unlikely to change their policy opinions in light of Catholic claims regarding capital punishment and immigration policy, but exposure to these cross-cutting messages does have the potential to increase tolerance. Moreover, I find that exposure to these same cross-cutting messages attributed to a political out- group (mainline Protestants) actually decreases tolerance. Finally, my empirical results make clear that evangelicals are not uniformly affected by Catholic arguments in the iii information environment. Specifically, previous contact with Catholics appears to moderate how these messages are received, perhaps by altering the perceived credibility of the source of the message. In this way, the study deepens our understanding of source credibility and cross- cutting exposure by demonstrating how the source of a dissonant message moderates its effect. The empirical results are supplemented with in-depth interviews with elites as well as a case study of one evangelical-Catholic network that I use to trace the causal mechanisms behind the increase in tolerance. In closing, I argue that the Christian Right has the potential to contribute to the goals of deliberative democracy by uniting citizens across lines of religious difference. iv To Oozy v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Cross-cutting Dialogue in the Christian Right Movement 7 Outline of this Dissertation 14 Chapter 2: The History of Cross Pressures: From Foes to Friends 18 Anti-Catholicism and American Democracy 22 From Foes to Friends 26 Evangelical Attitudes towards Catholicism: Past and Present 44 Conclusion 55 Chapter 3: Deliberative Democracy and Doctrinal Divides 57 Deliberative Democracy Defined 59 Testing Their Claims: Deliberative Democracy and Social Science 65 Deliberation within the Christian Right 76 Conclusion 80 Chapter 4: Crossing Lines of Difference: The Death Penalty, U.S. Immigration Policy and Attitude Change 82 Cross-cutting Messages and the Death Penalty 85 Cross-cutting Messages and U.S. Immigration Policy 91 Research Design 98 Results 106 Conclusion 122 Chapter 5: Coalition Politics and Evangelicals’ Political Tolerance 125 vi White Evangelical Protestants and Political Tolerance 127 Review of Theoretical Foundation and Expectations 132 Results 136 Conclusion 162 Chapter 6: The Case of Evangelical-Catholic Interaction in the Witherspoon Fellowship 164 Methodological Approach 173 Personal Histories and Social Identities within Evangelical-Catholic Interaction 179 Evidence of a Collective Identity Emerges at WF 185 Causal Mechanisms: The Message and the Messenger 190 Conclusion 194 Chapter 7: Conclusions 197 Hearing the Other Side…but From Whom? 198 Expanding Scholarship on Religion and Politics 202 The Future of “Co-belligerency” and the Christian Right 203 Conclusion 210 Appendix A 211 Appendix B 218 Appendix C 219 Appendix D 220 Appendix E 235 Appendix F 237 Appendix G 238 Works Cited 242 vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1.1: Evangelical and Catholic Christian Right Members’ Political Attitudes 11 Figure 2.1: White Evangelical Protestant Affect Towards Catholics 1964-2004 45 Table 2.1: Predictors of Anti-Catholicism in 1960s and 2000s 47 Table 2.2: Predictors of Anti-Catholicism, White Evangelical Protestants 1960s and 2000s 50 Table 2.3: White Evangelical Protestants’ Attitudes towards Catholics and Catholic Beliefs 52 Table 4.1: Experimental Treatments 99 Figure 4.1: Predicted Effects of Experimental Treatments on Support for Lenient Immigration Policy 106 Table 4.2: Percent of White Evangelical Protestants Ranking Statement “1” (Most Persuasive) by Experimental Treatment 107 Figure 4.2: Support for the Death Penalty by Experimental Treatment 108 Figure 4.3: Evangelical Interaction with Catholics and mainline Protestants by Age 111 Table 4.3: Percent of White Evangelical Protestants Ranking Statement “1” (Most Persuasive) by Experimental Treatment 114 Figure 4.4: White Evangelical Protestants’ Support for Lenient Immigration Policy by Experimental Treatment 116 Figure 4.5: The Effect of Catholic Treatment on White Evangelical Protestants’ Support for Lenient Immigration Policy by Amount of Contact with Catholics 118 Table 4.4: The Impact of Catholic Treatment x Catholic Contact on Immigration Policy Attitudes 120 viii Figure 5.1: Predicted Effects of Experimental Treatments on Political Tolerance Judgments 136 Figure 5.2: Political Tolerance: A Comparison of GSS White Evangelicals with Evangelical PAC Donors 137 Figure 5.3: White Evangelicals’ Rating of Catholics by Experimental Treatment 139 Figure 5.4: White Evangelicals’ Rating of Mainline Protestants by Experimental Treatment 141 Figure 5.5: White Evangelicals’ Negative Affect towards Out-Groups by Experimental Treatment 143 Figure 5.6: White Evangelicals’ Tolerance for Groups’ Free Speech by Experimental Treatment 146 Figure 5.7: White Evangelicals’ Tolerance for Groups Teaching in Public Schools by Experimental Treatment 149 Table 5.1: Significant Differences between Experimental Treatments on Political Tolerance 152 Figure 5.8: Generalized Tolerance by Experimental Treatment 154 Figure 5.9: The Effect of Experimental Treatment on Generalized Tolerance by Amount of Contact with Catholics 157 Figure 5.10: The Effect of Experimental Treatment on Generalized Tolerance by Age 158 Table 5.2: Effects of Catholic Treatment on Generalized Political Tolerance 160 ix Chapter 1 Introduction When it comes to faith and American politics, the presidency of George W. Bush was supposed to be a story about evangelical Protestantism in the White House. After all, Bush’s acceptance of Christ as an adult and his intimate conversations with evangelist Billy Graham were well known even before he took office. While president, he regularly spoke of his faith as a personal relationship with his heavenly Father, consistent with the interpretation of Christianity practiced in the evangelical tradition. Moreover, his ability to win the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections with the strong support of evangelicals seemed to solidify his evangelical credentials. Thus, historians, political scientists, and journalists have taken turns assessing how Bush’s evangelical faith may have shaped his policy positions, his cabinet appointments and his leadership style (e.g. Robinson and Wilcox 2007; Mansfield 2003; Aikman 2004). However, looking back on his presidency now, it appears a different story could be written, this one having to do with an entirely different kind of religious influence. In fact, according to a former Bush speechwriter, the key to understanding Bush’s domestic policy is to consider the teachings of the Catholic Church (Burke 2008). Former U.S. Senator (PA-R) and Catholic Rick Santorum has gone so far to say that Bush was a “Catholic president,” more so than even President John F. Kennedy. Similarly, the 1 former director of the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives, Catholic John DiIulio, has figuratively called Bush a “closet Catholic” (DiIulio, 2007, 117).1 It does not require inner-circle status to understand the basis of these labels. Bush’s respect for Catholicism is quite evident in his public life. His rationales for public policy are often framed in “Catholic” terms. For example, he joined other evangelicals in adopting Pope John Paul II’s “culture of life” rhetoric to defend his opposition to abortion and stem-cell research. His faith-based initiative is consistent with Catholic teaching having to do with subsidiarity – the idea that a society functions best when local people are responsible for local problems.2 In addition, President Bush surrounded himself with Catholic intellectuals during his time in office and sought their advice on public policy. Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and editor of the ecumenical journal First Things spent time educating President Bush on the church’s social teachings. He said in 2008, “There is an awareness in the White House that the rich Catholic intellectual tradition is a resource for making the links between Christian faith, religiously