The Official Journal of the
North Carolina Sociological
Association
A Peer-Reviewed
Refereed Web-Based
Publication
Fall/Winter 2016
Volume 14, Issue 2
The Role
of Civil Religion in Choosing a
President*
by
Donald P.
Woolley
Duke
University
and
Ronald C.
Wimberley
North Carolina
State University
Introduction
Three questions
help to introduce the concept of civil
religion: What is civil
religion? Does it exist?
And, what does it do? Indeed,
from previous conceptualization and
research, it appears most people hold
civil religious views although they
probably would not know what civil
religion is if they were asked to
define the term. Nor would they
likely know how their civil
religiosity effects what else they
believe and how they behave.
Such is the case, we surmise, for the
role of one's civil religiosity and
the choice he or she makes for a U.S.
presidential candidate.
What is civil
religion? For our
conceptual and operational purposes in
this research, we attempt to follow
the definition proposed by Robert
Bellah in his influential article,
"Civil Religion in America," where he
reintroduced the concept into social
scientific and religious scholarship
in 1967 and which he reprinted and
further elaborated a few years later
(1970) and elsewhere (e.g., 1974) in
his work.
Accordingly, he
states, "There are…certain common
elements of religious orientation that
a great majority of Americans
share…that provide a religious
dimension for the whole fabric of
American life, including the political
sphere…[and] is expressed in a set of
beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I
am calling the American civil religion
(Bellah 1967: 3-4). Later, he
(Bellah 1970: 168) adds, "I
conceive of the central tradition of
the American civil religion…as the
subordination of the nation to ethical
principles that transcend it and in
terms of which it should be judged."
He (Bellah 1974: 255) further
elaborates that through its civil
religion, "…The nation is not an
ultimate end in itself but stands
under transcendent judgment and has
value only insofar as it realizes…a
'higher law'."
The basis for civil
religion in America can be traced as
far back as the Declaration of
Independence. It opens with
reference to "the laws of nature and
of nature's God" and goes on to say
that,
We hold these truths
to be self evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.
That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just
Powers from the consent of the
governed….
The basic civil
religious principles from the
Declaration of Independence are echoed
in President Lincoln's Gettysburg
Address where he states:
Four score and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth
on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are
created equal.
Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether
that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure.
…That we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain—that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom—and that government of the
people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the
earth.
From the civil
religious basis of the Declaration of
Independence, Bellah (1980: 11) sees
the foundations of American civil
religion in reference to "…a
suprapolitical sovereignty, to a God
who stands above the nation and whose
ends are standards by which to judge
the nation and indeed only in terms of
which the nation's existence is
justified, [that] becomes a permanent
feature of American political life
ever after." In addition, Bellah
surmises, "The existence of this
highest level of religious symbolism
in the political life of the republic
justifies the assertion that there is
a civil religion in America."
The idea of civil
religious transcendence characterizes
societal beliefs and symbols held in
common by the citizenry and aid in
promoting social solidarity and
political legitimacy in a
society. These beliefs, symbols,
and even rituals are used to associate
the values, history, and institutions
of the country with divine favor or
even with a national religious
destiny. Wimberley and Swatos
(1998:94) note that, "Civil religion
is unique in U.S. culture—and arguably
in other cultures as well—in that it
does not claim an identifiable social
group short of the entire society
itself."
Overall, from the
conceptualization of civil religion,
we see that, first, a civil religion
transcends our country's sectarian or
denominational religions as well as
its partisan political
orientations. Second, and
according to this civil religion, the
moral and ethical standards of the
nation's people are ultimately derived
from a higher authority. Third, the
nation's government is justified by
the higher authority through its
people. Fourth, people's rights
and other national blessings come from
the higher power. And fifth, the
nation stands under the higher
standards and judgment of the divine
presence.
Does civil religiosity exist in the
United States? In addition
to historical references to the ideas
of civil religion expressed in the
Declaration of Independence,
presidential addresses since the time
of George Washington, and other
documents (see Bellah 1967; 1970;
1980), empirical research from surveys
of Americans show a dimension of civil
religious beliefs apart from other
religious and political orientations
(Wimberley 1976; 1979; Wimberley et
al. 1976). Furthermore, this
empirically measured dimension of
civil religious beliefs is found to
cut across socioeconomic distinctions
(Christenson and Wimberley1978) and
denominational religious affiliations
(Wimberley and Christenson 1981), but
it does not infringe upon beliefs in
the separation of church and state
(Wimberley and Christenson
1980). The research, for
example, reveals that civil religious
beliefs are indeed widely shared
across denominational identities and
are found most in such American-based
groups as Mormons, Adventists, and
Pentecostals and least among
Unitarians, Jews, and people without a
religious preference.
What does civil religion do?
Although empirical research to date is
limited, two previous studies examine
the potential political effects of
civil religiosity. One of these
(Wimberley 1980) finds that people's
civil religious beliefs appeared to
influence their preference for
candidate Richard Nixon over George
McGovern in the 1972 presidential
election. Another study
(Wimberley and Christenson 1982) finds
that civil religiosity typically fares
as well or better than other
religious, political, and
socioeconomic indicators of people's
public policy preferences. Only
occupational status and age tended to
match or exceed civil religiosity's
correlations with support for programs
in health and welfare programs,
transportation, education, and for
controlling crime and addictions, or
for opposition to environmental and
arts programs.
Since the
contemporary concept of civil religion
was introduced in Bellah's 1967 Daedalus
article and beginning with the
first known empirical research by
Thomas and Flippen (1972) who analyzed
evidence of civil religion in
newspaper editorials, there has been
relatively little empirical research
in comparison to the amount of
conceptualization and commentary on
civil religiosity. Since the
beginning of the 21st Century,
however, the study of civil religion
in America has experienced a
resurgence not seen since the 1980s.
The bulk of this
recent attention includes further
elaboration on the conceptualization
of civil religiosity (e.g., Cristi
2001; Marvin 2002; Santiago 2009) or
is limited to commentary and other
articles using civil religion as a
backdrop (e.g., Silk 1999; Adams 2003;
Will 2004; Benne 2005; Meizel 2006; ;
Hecht 2007; Butterworth 2008).
In the popular press, some (e.g.,
Meacham 2006) may not use the concept
per se but provide historical context
for the development of civil religion
in the United States or view what is
taken to be its misuse in a more
contemporary national context (e.g.,
Phillips 2006). Relatively few
of the academic works (e.g., Flere and
Lavric 2007; Zeljko 2008) that make up
the newer wave of civil religious
writings are actually based on
empirical research. As in
earlier decades, therefore, most
recent studies take civil religiosity
as a given without delving into any
empirical evidence of what it is or
does. Still, calls continue for
more empirical work on the outcomes of
civil religion in America (Swatos
2006).
Civil religion and the presidency.
Overall, the conceptualization
underlying the pattern of theory for
civil religion is extensive. And
although the empirical research on
civil religion is limited and by no
means extensive, the evidence to date
strongly supports the theoretical
claims that civil religiosity exists
apart from other political and
religious commitments, party
partisanship, denominational
affiliations, and socioeconomic
differences, and that civil religion
matters in the way people perceive the
presidency and policy orientations.
Earlier, Wimberley
(1980) suggested that voter
preferences for particular
presidential candidates were a
theoretically appropriate place to
look for the influence of civil
religion in the United States. Many of
the presidential icons of American
civil religion have revealed multiple
civil religious roles. The
saintly Washington, the prophetic
Jefferson and Wilson, and the martyred
Lincoln and Kennedy are all remembered
as such in the collective American
memory. But first and foremost,
these presidents were elected leaders
of the American people. As such,
they became the high priests of
American civil religion's amalgamation
of Judeo-Christian and political
beliefs. As Bellah (1967: 4)
describes it, the religious legitimacy
of their political authority is marked
by the rituals of the inauguration.
The role of a U.S.
president as the nation's civil
religious leader is portrayed by
several religious scholars including
Marty, Hammond, and Bellah.
Marty (1974: 145-147) describes the
most common civil religious role of a
president as that of a priest with
ceremonial duties for the
country. A less common role is
that of a prophet who stands in
judgment over the nation when it does
not meet its ideals. Hammond
(1976: 177) explains that a president
is a civil religious symbol of the
country who perform in a priestly
role. Similarly, Bellah (1967:
8) sees a president as a "national
Magistrate" when he serves in his
official civil religious role.
Regardless of the specifics of the
role, each analyst views the president
as a religious leader—a civil
religious leader—in addition to his
role and responsibilities as the
nation's political leader. That
the president may be implicitly viewed
as the nation's civil religious leader
helps to account for the potential
importance of the civil religious
factor in the minds of the electorate
during presidential elections.
Civil
religion, the presidency, and Reagan.
American religious scholar David Adams
(2003:23) suggests that the public
expression of civil religion in
America has been shaped by three
presidents who he refers to as civil
religion's three greatest
theologians. In the context of
American civil religion, he likens
Thomas Jefferson's role to that of
Moses, Abraham Lincoln to Jesus, and
Ronald Reagan to Paul. Adams
also points out that although each of
these presidents were religious, none
were active in church religion.
This might be expected from a
transcendent civil religious
leadership perspective that rises
above sectarianism. Furthermore,
Adams notes, each took a public role
as a moral leader and helped to voice
and frame the direction of the nation
during their terms.
Most people may not
consciously think of Reagan as the
metaphorical successor to Lincoln as
the sacrificial American Jesus,
although many may be able to view
Reagan in a civil religious missionary
role analogous to Paul's spreading of
the gospel. Others (Mathisen
1989) further suggest that Reagan
offered a priestly form of civil
religious leadership that may have
been more acceptable than the
sometimes prophetic civil religion of
his predecessor Jimmy Carter (Pierard
and Linder 1988). In any event,
there was obviously something about
Reagan that induced a large number of
people to re-elect him to the
presidency in 1984 with nearly 60
percent of the popular vote.
The term
Reagan-Democrat was used by the media
in an attempt to explain the reason
for the size of the popular and
electoral-vote victories of Ronald
Reagan's re-election. In the
Reagan years prior to that election, a
large number of voters who had
customarily identified with the
Democratic Party began to defect to
the Republicans in national elections
while remaining registered as
Democrats (Luebke 1990; 1998;
Greenberg 1996).
An explanation for
this may lay in Wimberley's 1980 study
of the 1972 presidential election.
That study of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern
presidential race found that civil
religious beliefs of the study's
community and church-attender samples
were better predictors of candidate
support than were political party
loyalties. However, the effect
of civil religious beliefs in that
study may have been tempered by the
fact that one of the candidates,
Nixon, was an incumbent
president. As such, he may have
been regarded by the voters—although
largely unaware of the underlying
concept—as having civil religious
legitimation by virtue of already
holding the office of president.
As in other presidential elections
involving an incumbent, this may have
diminished the public's civil
religious perception of George
McGovern and given an advantage to
Richard Nixon. Similarly, as an
incumbent, Ronald Reagan may have had
a civil religious advantage over
Walter Mondale in 1984.
Implications
for Testing
Now, as in the past, most discussion
of American civil religion tends to be
theoretical, if not philosophical or
historical. Also, the analytical
work that has been done is rarely
empirical. Therefore, the
analysis to be reported here offers an
empirical contribution to the study of
civil religiosity in the United
States. It examines the
relationship between civil religion
and the public's perception of the
American presidency. This study
looks at several hypotheses that link
civil religion to the electorate's
preferences for presidential
candidates.
As reviewed
previously, theoreticians and
conceptual analysts such as Bellah
(1967) and Marty (1974) emphasize the
importance of civil religion in the
public's perception of the
presidency. Wimberley's (1980)
research found that in the
Nixon-McGovern presidential race of
1972, civil religious beliefs were a
major factor in predicting greater
voting preferences for incumbent
Richard Nixon. Although that
study of civil religion's influence in
the Nixon-McGovern election showed a
civil religious disposition toward
voting for Nixon, it measures neither
people's perceptions of each
candidate's civil religiosity nor how
the voters own civil religiosity
corresponds with their perceptions of
each candidate's civil religiosity
(Wimberley 1980: 57-58).
Presidential
voting choices. Therefore,
several hypotheses are proposed to
extend the previous line of
research. First, as in the study
of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern
presidential race, it is hypothesized
that people who are more civil
religious will tend to have a
preference for one candidate rather
than the other and, furthermore, will
prefer an incumbent candidate due to
that incumbent's civil religious
legitimacy attached to that
position. Second, it is
predicted that people will prefer the
presidential candidate they perceive
to be the more civil religious.
And, third, people will prefer the
presidential candidate who is
perceived to hold civil religious
beliefs that are more similar to their
own civil religious beliefs.
Methods
Sample. This study draws
from the third in a line of
longitudinal community studies on
political and religious commitment in
Raleigh, North Carolina. The
first was conducted prior to the 1972
Nixon-McGovern election (e.g.,
Wimberley 1976; 1980). The
second study took place in the weeks
before the 1976 presidential election
(e.g., Wimberley 1979). In each
wave of this series, the same
community sample frame, similar data
collection techniques, many of the
same attitudinal, behavioral, and
background items, and similar
analysis techniques were repeated.
One of these
longitudinal studies measured several
civil religion variables unique to the
analysis to be conducted here.
Therefore, for the present study, data
was collected from voting-aged adults
during October and early November just
prior to the 1984 presidential,
senate, house, state, and local
elections. To draw the sample,
the 1980 U.S. Census tracts for
Raleigh were ranked according to their
percentage of high school
graduates. A randomly selected
tract on this ranked list was taken as
a starting point, and eleven tracks
were selected systematically
throughout the list. These
eleven selected tracts were the basis
for random samples of city
blocks. Volunteer data
collectors worked their ways around
each of these blocks, starting at one
corner and stopping at every third
residence to drop off a
questionnaire. The data
collectors returned at a later time to
pick up the questionnaires.
Along with this drop-off and pick-up
method of distribution, efforts were
made to match the race of the
volunteer data collectors with the
predominant race residing in each
tract (Bell 1989:7). These two
actions may help account for the
excellent return rate of 98 percent of
those with whom questionnaires were
given. A total of 349
respondents were obtained by the time
data collection had to be terminated
immediately before election day.
The questionnaire
was constructed to draw on the
religious and political dispositions
of the respondents along with basic
demographic and socioeconomic
background information.
Political variables covered such
things as party affiliation and
preference, political inclinations,
and voting behavior. These
variables were mirrored in the
religious items (Wimberley 1978) that
covered religious affiliation,
preference, inclinations, and
behaviors. The demographic and
socioeconomic data collected included
gender, race, occupation, age, marital
status, geographic history, income,
and education.
Presidential
candidate preference. The
dependent variable at issue is the
respondents' choices between the
majority parties' presidential
candidates, Democrat Walter Mondale
and Republican Ronald Reagan. A
total of 42 respondents who preferred
neither candidate, or who were
undecided, and those not stating a
preference were omitted from this
analysis. This narrows the
presidential analysis sample to 307
members. In other words, no
missing data assignments were made to
the dependent variable. To measure the
presidential candidate preferences,
the 169 choosing Mondale are coded as
0; the 138 respondents for Reagan are
scored as 1.
Civil religious
index. Among the items on
the questionnaire were a series of
Likert-type, agreement-response items
that had been developed with various
samples in previous studies (Wimberley
et al., 1976; Wimberley 1976; 1979;
Christenson and Wimberley 1978) and
found to be useful indicators of civil
religious beliefs. The items
used here are:
The flag of the
United States is a sacred symbol.
God can be known
through the historical experiences
of the American people.
We should respect a
president's authority since it comes
from God.
In this country,
people have equal, divinely given
rights to life, freedom, and a
search for happiness.
In America, freedom
comes from God through our system of
government by the people.
Principal axis factoring shows that
these five items converge to suggest a
single civil religious
dimension. Because only one
factor was extracted from this set of
statements, the factor was not
rotated. The items' factor
loadings on this dimension were all
fairly high and ranged from .540 to
.755. In the order these five
items are presented in the previous
paragraph, these loadings are .540,
.666, .586, .620, and .755
respectively. Cronbach's alpha
reliability for these items is .771
and in the conventionally acceptable
range for an index of so few
items.
In each of the
statements, the agreement alternatives
are coded on a continuum from 0 =
Strongly Disagree to 1 = Disagree, 2 =
Uncertain, 3 = Agree, and 4 = Strongly
Agree. Missing data for each item were
assigned the item's mean. The values
of these items are summed to create a
civil religious index. The
summed index scores range from 0 to 20
and provide an index running from 0
for the lowest level of civil
religious beliefs when a respondent
strongly disagreed with all of the
items, to the highest level and score
of 20 representing strong agreement on
all of the civil religious belief
statements.
Perceptions of the candidates'
civil religiosity. A
second civil religion measure is based
on each respondent's perception of the
civil religiosity of the two major
candidates. The items that
comprise this measure are unique to
this wave of the community-study data
and are essential to testing the last
two hypotheses in this analysis.
After asking a respondent how he or
she personally reacted to the five
civil religious index items described
previously, the respondent was then
asked, "Regardless of your own
opinions," which presidential
candidate would be "more in agreement"
with each civil religious measurement
item? The candidate a respondent
picked more often is scored as the one
the respondent perceived to be more
civil religious.
If the candidate
who received the most choices was
Mondale, the candidate-perception
measure was scored as a -1. If
Reagan received the most choices, the
score assigned was +1. In other
words, the candidate who is perceived
to be more civil religious on the most
items is assigned a non-zero
score. The use of negative or
lower scoring values to designate
Mondale and positive or higher scoring
values to designate Reagan helps to
assure that such low to high scores
will correlate or regress positively
with the dependent variable's
candidate preference scores that are
also coded as low for Mondale and high
for Reagan. This system will be
used in the scoring for several other
independent variables in this
analysis. This helps to make positive
and negative correlation and
regression coefficients more directly
and consistently interpretable in the
analysis to follow.
If there was
missing data on as many as four of the
five perception items, the candidate
who received a majority of civil
religious perceptions on the item or
items a respondent did answer are
scored as the candidate perceived to
be more civil religious. A score
of 0 indicates that the respondent did
not answer either one or three of the
perception items and that the
candidates were tied at 2:2 or
1:1—having answered a total of four or
two, respectively, of the five
perception items—on the remaining
items. Because there is an odd
number of five items used to measure
civil religious beliefs, other numbers
of tied items are not possible.
If a respondent failed to check any of
the five perception items, this
response pattern is classified as
missing data for the entire candidate
perception measure.
Respondent-candidate
congruence on civil religiosity.
To test the third hypothesis, a final
measure of civil religiosity is
created here to show the
correspondence or congruence, between
each respondent's personal civil
religiosity and the perceived civil
religiosity of each of the two major
candidates. In other words, the
congruence measure indicates the
candidate with which a respondent
agrees more on civil
religiosity. This third measure
of civil religiosity is based on the
respondents' agreements and
disagreements with the five civil
religious statements described earlier
plus the five items on how respondents
perceived the civil religiosity of the
major presidential candidates.
Similar to the
scoring technique for the
candidate-perception measure, the
candidate with whom the respondent is
congruent on a majority of the civil
religion belief statements is the
candidate who is scored most
congruent. For example, if
candidate Mondale was congruent with a
respondent on most of the civil
religious beliefs, the congruence
measure is scored as -1. When
Reagan was congruent with a respondent
on most of the items, the score is
+1.
To be congruent, a
respondent's own civil religiosity on
an item has to match the perceived
civil religiosity of a candidate in
regard to the same belief
statement. For example, a
respondent would be congruent with
Reagan on a particular civil religious
belief item if he or she "Agrees" or
"Strongly Agrees" with that item and
also thinks that Reagan is more civil
religious than Mondale on that
item. A second way in which a
respondent could be more consistent
with Reagan would be when he or she
"Strongly Disagrees," "Disagrees," or
is "Uncertain" on one of the civil
religion items, but thinks Mondale
would be more in agreement
with the item. In either case,
the respondent-candidate congruence
favors Reagan.
If a respondent did
not answer a specific civil religion
item or did not answer a candidate
perception question for that item,
this was treated as missing
data. However, the congruence
score can still be established from
the majority of the matches on any
remaining items a respondent
answered. When there was missing
data on all five item-pairs, the case
was coded as having missing data for
the entire congruence measure.
Religious
and political control variables.
Other questionnaire items provided
information on additional political
and religious positions of the
respondents. These items include
both behaviors and beliefs that are to
be used as controls in statistical
analyses of the hypotheses in order to
help ensure the civil religious
effects are not due to other such
factors.
Corresponding
political and religious dimensions of
behaviors and beliefs were found in
previous analyses of data from one of
the earlier longitudinal surveys of
the community sampled here (Wimberley
1978). From those findings,
measures of church membership, church
attendance, and political party
preferences were adopted for use in
this study, along with items measuring
liberal-conservative political beliefs
and liberal-conservative religious
beliefs. The conceptual basis of
these measures may be traced back to
the rites, beliefs, and groups sharing
them as described by Durkheim ([1912]
1965:51-53).
The political
belief and religious belief measures
in this study have parallel,
three-point, 0, 1, and 2 codes for
response categories that run from
"Liberal" to "Moderate" and to
"Conservative" respectively.
Whether one is a church member is a
measured simply as "No" or "Yes" and
is scored as 0 or 1. Church attendance
is measured as three categories in
which "never" and "a few times a year"
are the low category, "at least once
per month" and "every week" are the
mid category, and "more than once a
week is the highest category. A
three-point political party preference
variable is scored into its implicit
categories: Democrats were
assigned the lowest coded value, those
claiming "neither party" received the
mid-value, and Republicans were coded
highest.
Analysis
categories. Several of the
independent variables inherently have
three-point value levels given the
nature of the measures upon which they
are based. As it turns out, this
helps put the independent variables on
a similar footing and helps make their
regression coefficients more
comparable in their
interpretations. As indicated in
the preceding variable descriptions,
civil religious perceptions of the
candidates, respondent-candidate
congruence on civil religiosity,
political party identification,
political conservatism, and religious
conservatism are examples. In
addition, the civil religion index
readily collapses into scores for
agreement, disagreement, and mid-level
stands on civil religious
statements. And, as shown among
the control variables described above,
church attendance readily lends itself
to three ordinal rankings.
Consequently, all
of the independent variables except
church membership—which is naturally a
yes-no dichotomous variable—are
measured as three-point
variables.
Analyses and
Results
Basic relationships. Statistical
correlation analyses are a beginning
point for assessing any connections
between civil religiosity and
presidential voting preferences.
The first and most basic question is
whether there is a relationship
between a respondent's civil
religiosity and the preference for a
particular presidential
candidate? The answer from the
bivariate correlation analysis is
yes. The Pearson's r correlation
coefficient for the data analyzed here
is .277 with a statistical
significance exceeding .001.
Table 1.Logistic
Regression Models of Civil
Religiosity and Other Predictors of
Preferences Between Presidential
Candidates, N = 307.
Predictors
Correlation
with Candidate Preference
Model A
Model B
Model C
Model D
Model E
Model F
1.559
1.595
1.381
1.456
1.279
1.547
Civil
Religiosity Index (CR)
.277***
(.444)
(.318)
(.323)
(.376)
(.246)
(.436)
3.428***
3.248***
3.271***
3.280***
3.254***
3.045***
Perceived
CR of Candidate
.317***
( 1.232)
( 1.189)
( 1.185)
( 1.190)
( 1.180)
( 1.113)
3.708***
3.450***
3.444***
3.443**
3.306***
2.523***
CR
Congruence with Candidate
.416***
(1.310)
(1238)
(1.237)
(1.236)
(1.196)
(.925)
2.230***
2.240***
2.422
1.110
1.361
Religious
Beliefs
.346***
(.802)
( .807)
(.885)
(.104)
(.308)
.956*
1.405
1.231
1.884
Church
Member
.027
(-.045)
(.340)
(.208)
(.633)
.661
.595
.705
Church
Attendance
.003
(-.415)
(-.519)
(-.350)
6.983***
4.169***
Political
Beliefs
.553***
( 1.943)
( 1.428)
5.954***
Party
Preference
.649***
( 1.784)
Nagelkerke R²
.390
.425
.425
.434
.559
.693
The first value is the odds
coefficient; the second value in
parentheses is the log odds
coefficient. *p<.05, **p<.01,
***p<.001
Therefore, the
basic, bivariate correlation between
one's personal civil religiosity and
the preference for a particular
presidential candidate is found to
hold with this data in absence of any
control variables. This is
consistent with the findings from
earlier correlation and regression
analyses of the Nixon-McGovern race
(Wimberley 1980). In the present
analysis of the Reagan-Mondale race,
Ronald Reagan more often attracted the
potential voters who scored highest in
civil religiosity.
Given that civil
religious people do prefer one
candidate more than the other, why is
this the case? Although this
connection between civil religiosity
and candidate preference exists and
favors Reagan, it is not immediately
apparent whether this is because
Reagan was perceived to be the more
civil religious candidate. In
other words, is there an empirical
relationship between the perceived
civil religiosity of the presidential
candidates and the preference of one
candidate versus the other?
Judging from a correlation of .317
having statistical significances less
than .001, the answer is again
yes. This suggests a stronger
link with Reagan as the candidate most
often perceived to be more civil
religious. Furthermore, the
congruence between the respondent's
civil religiosity and his or her
perception of the candidates' civil
religiosity is also notably strong at
.416 and again statistically
significant at less than .001.
Basically, Reagan
tends to have been chosen by those who
are more civil religious, those who
perceive Reagan to be more civil
religious than Mondale, and those who
feel compatible with Reagan's
perceived civil religiosity. The
question remains, however, whether
these three zero-order correlations
will hold up when each relationship is
analyzed while controlling for the
effects of the remaining two civil
religious measures and other control
variables in regression analyses.
Regression
models. To further test
the hypotheses in the presence of
controls for the effects of other
political and religious variables that
may statistically influence
preferences for presidential
candidates, a series of six regression
models are formulated to look at the
relationship between civil religiosity
and candidate choice in presidential
elections. The models start with
the three civil religious measures as
the independent variables in Model A
and successively add a religious or
political control variable to the
predictions of candidate choice in
each succeeding model. Since
candidate preference is a dichotomous
nominal dependent variable—i.e.,
Mondale or Reagan—these regressions
are analyzed by logistic regression
techniques rather than ordinary least
squares regressions in order to avoid
violating the assumption of
homoscedasticity in the statistical
relationships.
Model A.
In the first regression model tested,
Model A of Table 1, only the three
independent variables representing the
civil religion measures are
tested. Of these three
predictors of relationships with
presidential candidate choice, only
two are statistically
significant. Specifically, the
respondents' perceptions of the
candidates' civil religiosities and
the congruence of the respondents' own
civil religiosity with this perception
are statistically significant when the
effects of the other two civil
religious indicators are held
constant, or controlled, in the
logistic regressions.
Perceptually, the presidential
candidate who certain respondents see
as the more civil religious is about
3.4 times more likely to be
favored. Respondents having
civil religious views more congruent
with a particular presidential
candidate are about 3.7 times more
likely to vote for that
candidate.
Accordingly, in
Model A, the first hypothesis that the
more civil religious respondents will
prefer one candidate more than the
other—does not hold when the effects
of the candidates' perceived civil
religiosity and the congruence between
the respondents and candidates are
held statistically constant. The
other two hypotheses, however, are
supported by highly significant
regression coefficients. We
shall also see this pattern of support
for hypotheses two and three repeated
in all the other regression models to
be analyzed here.
Model A also has a
Nagelkerke R² of .390. The
Nagelkerke R² (also known as Cragg
& Uhler's R²) attempts to estimate
a pseudo R² for logistic regression
that is analogous to the R² used as a
goodness-of-fit measure in ordinary
least squares regression. As such,
this simulated version of an R² varies
from 0.0 to 1.0 with higher values
indicating better model fit. If
this was an ordinary-least-squares
regression, a value of .390 would mean
that approximately 39 percent of the
statistical variation in the candidate
choice is explained by these three
independent variables. However,
these pseudo R² statistics should not
be interpreted the same way as an
ordinary-least-squares R² and are only
included here to give a general
indication of goodness-of-fit between
the models.
Model B.
The regression impacts of civil
religious perceptions and congruence
remain about the same as found in
Model A, once religious beliefs are
added to the regression equation as a
control variable. The influence
of religious liberalism-conservatism
is also highly significant
statistically. The predictive
clout of religious ideology, as
estimated by its logistic regression
odds coefficient, indicates that
conservative believers were about 2.2
times more likely to prefer Reagan
while liberals favored Mondale at the
same rate. Although religious
belief is a statistically significant
predictor of presidential candidate
preference in Model B, the predictive
ability of the respondents' own civil
religiosity index scores remains flat
as first noticed in Model A, and as
will be observed in the other
presidential-candidate regression
models. With the inclusion of
religious beliefs into this
four-predictor regression model, the
Nagelkerke R² increases to .425.
Models C and D.
Introducing the additional control
variables of church membership and
church attendance in Models C and D
respectively show little improvement
in the predictive power of the civil
religious measures representing the
three hypotheses. While
statistically significant at the .05
level, the odds coefficient related to
church membership approaches 1.0,
indicating it has a very small effect
on candidate choice. Once church
attendance is brought into the
equation, neither of the church
variables or religious beliefs have a
significant effect. This is reflected
in the Nagelkerke R² rising ever so
slightly to .434 in Model D.
Model E.
When political beliefs (liberal or
conservative) are introduced into the
analysis in Model E, it is indicated
that political conservatives were
nearly 7.0 times more likely to favor
Reagan just as liberals were more
likely to prefer Mondale. The
lack of statistically significant
influences of liberal-conservative
religious beliefs, church membership,
and church attendance suggests that in
absence of the political beliefs
variable as a control from Models B,
C, and D, the three church-religious
factors were essentially carrying and
masking the influence of political
beliefs.
However, the
presence of the political belief
variable in Model E does not detract
from the predictive power of the
candidates' perceived civil
religiosity or the civil religious
congruence of the respondents and
candidates. The Nagelkerke R²
for Model E is .559
Model F.
Only four of the independent variables
are statistically significant in the
final model: Perceived candidate
civil religiosity,
respondent-candidate civil religious
congruence, political beliefs, and a
new control for the respondents'
political party affiliation.
Party affiliation has a logistic
regression coefficient of almost
6.0. This means one is about six
times more likely to favor the
candidate of his or her own
party. This coefficient
consequently provides a standard of
comparison for other three-point
predictor variables in the
models. Although it comes as no
surprise that political party identity
is a strong indicator of candidate
preference in Model F, the predictive
power of candidates' perceived civil
religiosities, civil-religious
congruence, and of political beliefs
is only slightly lowered by the
presence of partisan identity in the
Model F equation.
Model F, the full
model containing the three civil
religious predictors, the
church-religion controls and the
political control variables, produces
a Nagelkerke R² of .693.
Overall, political
partisanship is the major predictor of
presidential voting preferences and
political liberal-conservative beliefs
also factor heavily into the equations
for choosing between presidential
candidates. None of the
traditional church-religious variables
have a statistically significant
effect in the full model. The
important finding for the hypotheses
tested here, where the possible
effects of the civil religious
variables are tested here along beside
church-religious and political control
variables, is that two of the three
civil religious variables are found to
show significant and appreciable
effects on presidential voting
preferences.
Both the civil
religious perceptions of the
candidates and civil religious
congruence between the candidates and
the respondents are statistically
significant predictors at the .001
level in final Model F and in Models A
through E that precede it. These
significant findings first suggest
that, as measured here,
people—regardless of their own civil
religious commitment—may be about
three times more likely to vote for a
presidential candidate they perceive
to be more civil religious.
Secondly, people may be about two and
one-half times more likely to favor a
presidential candidate who they
believe is more in line with their own
type of civil religious views.
Also, these
findings suggest that the traditional
religious indicators of church
membership and church attendance have
only small and statistically
insignificant effects on presidential
voting choices when civil religious
and political factors are taken into
account. The standardized,
log-odds coefficients—shown in Table 1
in parentheses—yield the same
interpretations as the logistic
regression coefficients discussed for
these analysis models.
Conclusions
What is the role of civil religion in
presidential elections? Judging
from our correlation and logistic
regression analyses, civil religion
does have a role in the politics of
choosing a president in the United
States. The evidence shows that
civil religious variables do correlate
with choices between presidential
candidates. And when customary
political and religious predictors of
candidate preference are added as
controls on civil religiosity's
impacts, certain civil religious
factors retain their importance.
In other words, the impacts of civil
religion are not to be explained away
entirely by other types political and
religious factors commonly used to
predict voter choices in presidential
elections.
More importantly,
these results show that one's
perception that a presidential
candidate is more civil religious than
another has a major impact on who a
potential voter prefers to be
president. Basically, a person
strongly tends to prefer the
presidential candidate whom he or she
believes to be the most civil
religious. This finding is even
more impressive, according to the
analyses at hand, in that it does not
matter so much about one's own civil
religiosity. Regardless of one's
own civil religious beliefs, major
church-religious orientations or
political orientations, one is very
likely to favor the candidate seen as
the more civil religious and/or more
congruent with one's own civil
religious beliefs. This research
suggests that prospective voters may
be about three times more likely to
prefer a presidential candidate who is
perceived to be more civil religious
and about two and one-half times more
likely to favor a presidential
candidate who is perceived to be
congruent with the voter's own civil
religiosity.
The statistically
significant predictors of a
prospective voter's choice for a
presidential candidate also includes
the prospective voter's
liberal-conservative political beliefs
and political party affiliation.
For example, a politically
conservative voter is more likely to
choose a politically conservative
candidate, and a voter who identifies
with a particular political party is
more likely to choose a candidate of
the same party. But regardless
of the voter's own level of civil
religiosity, he or she is more likely
to prefer the presidential candidate
who is seen to be more civil religious
and who is civil-religiously congruent
with the voter.
Furthermore, this
study suggests that it is not just
religion in general that voters want
to see in a presidential
candidate. Rather, it is how the
candidates are perceived to believe in
civil religion and to have the same
civil religious beliefs as the voters
that is important to many
voters. Beliefs that a divine
being transcends the denominational or
sectarian religions in the nation,
justifies the existence of the nation,
is the ultimate authority and basis
for the nation's laws and freedoms,
may provide guidance for the nation,
and has the power to judge and bless
or punish the nation.
The evidence at
hand suggests that civil religion's
impact on candidate choice overwhelms
the influences of church-related
religious identity, behavior, and
beliefs. In other words, this
research finds the perception of a
candidate's civil religiosity may be
what primarily drives voting choices,
instead of church-religious factors
such as church membership, attendance,
or liberal-conservative religious
beliefs that are customarily measured
in studies of voting choices.
Also, when
political liberal-conservatism and
political party affiliation are
introduced into the statistical
analysis as controls on church
membership, church attendance, and
religious beliefs, these church
religious factors lose their clout in
predicting one's preference for a
presidential candidate. For
example, the role of religious
conservatism fades in the presence of
one's political conservatism.
But the importance of civil religious
perceptions of the candidates and
voter-candidate congruence on civil
religion are not explained away by
other religious or political factors
however important the latter are in
the statistical analyses reported
here.
We suggest
that civil religious findings of this
study have implications for other
presidential elections that
follow. The pattern of findings
observed in the present research fit
with the social scientific
conceptualization of civil religion
(e.g., Bellah 1967) and fit with other
empirical research on civil
religiosity to date (e.g., Wimberley
1980). Historically, we know
that presidents beginning with George
Washington have made civil religious
appeals in their public speeches
(e.g., Bellah 1967). This
current study helps connect these
appeals with the public's civil
religious perceptions of other
candidates for the office of U.S.
president.
Much has been made
of voters' moral values in recent
presidential elections, but
essentially nothing is said about one
of the most important American
political and religious values:
civil religion. We do not know
the role of civil religion in more
recent presidential races, though
moral values were depicted by
exit-poll data to have been a major
factor in determining the race between
Bush and Kerry (Cable Network News
2004).
To our knowledge,
however, no other research has
collected data on civil religiosity of
the voters other than the
Nixon-McGovern race in 1972, or the
perceived civil religiosity of
presidential candidates or the
voter-candidate civil religious
congruence in any elections before or
after Wimberley's 1984 study.
Therefore, the empirical answer to the
role of civil religion in other
presidential elections has not been
gauged, and it remains unknown if not
unknowable.
Of course, this
analysis reports the results of just
one study of one U.S. community during
one presidential election. Party
partisanship is the mainstay indicator
in other studies and voting polls in
presidential elections. Any
factor that compares favorably to
voters' political party affiliations
in predicting preferences for
presidential candidates is a concept
to be taken seriously. In this
case, a candidate's perceived civil
religiosity and voter-candidate
congruence in civil religiosity remain
statistically significant with notable
regression impacts after the effects
of political partisanship and
liberal-conservative political beliefs
are controlled.
More importantly,
the results of this study are
consistent with what has been
conceptualized about civil religion in
general and conceptualizations of
civil religion and the presidency in
particular (e.g., Bellah 1967; 1970;
1974; 1975; 1980; 1998; Marty 1974),
plus with what has been found in the
limited body of empirical research on
civil religion and political behavior
that led to this study (Wimberley
1980; Wimberley and Christenson
1982). Therefore, we posit that
civil religion has played a
significant and substantive role in
more recent presidential elections and
will likely do so in future
presidential elections.
We hope that new
research and theoretical refinements
will continue to explore, predict, and
explain civil religion's relative
importance in comparison with other,
customary types of political and
religious beliefs and behaviors used
to study the electorate. Given
the potential importance of
presidential and other voting choices,
the conceptualization and research of
civil religiosity to date may be just
the start. More generally,
unless there is more empirical,
social-scientific research on the
concept of civil religion, it risks
collapsing from the weight of its own
extensive conceptualization and
claims. Civil religion's
empirical role in voter decisions
among prospective candidates appears
to be a good place to continue.
Footnotes
* Editor's
Comment. There are two
footnotes to this paper.
The first one below is from the
original paper, thanking those
who were helpful in getting the
information needed to finish the
analysis. But the second
footnote tells us why this is
Ron Wimberley's last paper, and
why its publication was
delayed. Ron Wimberley was
on the board of Sociation
Today from its first issue
and worked reading papers and
making suggestions until his
untimely death. Given the
results of the last presidential
election, the insights of this
article are especially
relevant. We are lucky
that the analysis presented in
Table 1 is now available for us
to read. George Conklin,
January 2017.
(1) Based on a paper presented at the
meeting of the Southern Sociological
Society, Richmond, VA, April
2008. The authors especially
appreciate the assistance of Druscie
Simpson of the North Carolina State
Archives, who helped facilitate
retrieving the original electronic
data file for this project; Alisha
Curry who assisted in the latter
phases of the research; and Dale
Wimberley and Steve McDonald who
offered suggestions on the
interpretations of the analysis.
The authors, of course, are
responsible for the research and
interpretations involved.
(2) A Brief Explanatory Note
about "The Role of Civil
Religion in Choosing a President."
In many ways, this article is a
missive from the past. A little
known fact about Ronald Wimberley was
that in the 1980s he became the
leading quantitative expert in the
study of civil religion. Even after
the fashion for civil religion
lessened in sociology, he maintained
an interest in it that he shared with
me as a doctoral student. After
my graduation, we slowly began to
envision a series of articles looking
at voting patterns using datasets that
he and I had gathered. These
datasets were (and are still) unique
in the questions asked and this
article was to be the first of the
series. We planned to follow it with
others dealing with the influences of
civil religion, political beliefs, the
media, and the opinions of friends and
family on national and state
elections.
Ronald Wimberley
had told me that he had made his final
revisions to this paper before he died
in 2011, but events prevented him from
ever sending it to me. In the months
after, his family and I unsuccessfully
attempted to find the revision, and a
series of electronic failures and file
losses on my part led me to give up on
finishing the article. However,
this past spring when I changed
offices at my university, I found a
printed copy of one of the last
versions. There are things that I
would want to do differently now, but
this paper is essentially what we
planned five years ago. As I have gone
through it, I am surprised how much of
it I hear in his voice.
Donald Woolley December 2016
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The Editorial Board of Sociation
Today
Editorial Board:
Editor:
George H. Conklin,
North Carolina
Central University
Emeritus
Robert Wortham,
Associate Editor,
North Carolina
Central University
Board:
Rebecca Adams,
UNC-Greensboro
Bob Davis,
North Carolina
Agricultural and
Technical State
University
Catherine Harris,
Wake Forest
University
Ella Keller,
Fayetteville
State University
Ken Land,
Duke University
Steve McNamee,
UNC-Wilmington
Miles Simpson,
North Carolina
Central University
William Smith,
N.C. State University