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The Real Face of the Christian Right |
| Section: CURRENT ISSUES / ANALYSIS |
| Author: Larry Witham |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 2,793 Words, 17,681 Characters |
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The rise of political activism by religious conservatives, the most notable American social movement of recent decades, has been called many things.
The labels have varied: from religious right and Christian right to the moral majority, orthodox alliance, profamily movement, and conservative populism.
Behind the simple monikers, however, scholars are finding a complex social movement. It has taken 15 years since the Christian right first emerged, they say, to gather sufficient empirical data to talk clearly about its structure, beliefs, and levels of involvement.
"Movements are unstable things, and they are very hard to get a handle on," says John Green, director of the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "Social movements challenge our culture, the way we think, the way we live. We have organized politics--parties or interest groups. And then we have unorganized politics--social movements."
Green is among a group of a dozen political scientists who have been combing the main omnibus polls--Gallup, the General Social Survey, and the National Election Survey (NESS)---to quantify the religious right by the religious beliefs and church affiliations of voters.
The data are getting far better, Green says, noting that only since 1990 has the NES--the premier data source on voters--added religion categories more precise than just Protestant or Catholic.
And, for the first time, the venerable New York Times/CBS poll has also explored beyond the stereotypes of the labels. The "religious right movement," the July report says, "is a far more diverse group in terms of geography, politics, and even religious doctrine than is generally suggested by either its critics or its most vocal pro...
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...a broadening religious-right movement may actually bend culture in its moralist direction. If 35 percent of consumers are motivated by conservative moral values, commerce must cater to them, argues Mark Nuttle, a former Robertson adviser. "When Madison Avenue begins to appeal to this group, as it did with blacks and Hispanics, they will become socially acceptable and more powerful," he says.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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