the elusive link between conservative protestantism and conservative economics

Social

Social Science Research 36 (2007) 673–687

www.elsevier.com/locate/ssresearch

ScienceRESEARCH

The elusive link between conservativeProtestantism and conservative economics q

Jacob Felson *, Heather Kindell

Pennsylvania State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802, USA

Available online 16 January 2007

Abstract

Research on the political attitudes of conservative Protestants has yielded inconsistent results. Weknow that conservative Protestants (CPs) tend to be more socially conservative than members ofother religious groups and have tended to vote Republican in recent years, but we are less certainof their attitudes toward the size and role of government in matters unrelated to religion. Despitetheoretical expectations and qualitative research supporting a link between conservative Protestant-ism and conservative attitudes about the size and role of government, quantitative work has failed tofind a consistent relationship. The present study interprets conservative Protestant issue preferencesin the context of research on non-attitudes, arguing that we should not expect ideological constraintamong the less educated segment of the population. However, among better educated members ofthe population, we should expect to find ideologically consistent attitudes. Results from the GeneralSocial Survey suggest that better-educated evangelical Protestants are consistently more economical-ly conservative than other Protestants. Among Protestants with lower levels of education, there is noconsistent relationship between conservative Protestantism and economic policy preferences. Sincethe better educated are disproportionately politically active, politicians may be especially likely topay attention to their interests. This may help to explain why the Republican coalition between socialand economic conservatives has endured for several decades and shows no signs of abating.� 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Politics; Religion; Attitudes; Conservative protestants; Education

0049-089X/$ - see front matter � 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.12.002

q The authors thank Amy Adamczyk, Duane Alwin, Richard Felson, Roger Finke, and Eric Plutzer forcomments and suggestions.

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Felson).

mailto:[email protected]

674 J. Felson, H. Kindell / Social Science Research 36 (2007) 673–687

It is well known that conservative Protestants (CPs) are more socially conservative thanmembers of other religious groups (Kellstedt and Smidt, 1993). People in general tend tobe relatively consistent and ideologically motivated in answering questions about socialissues (Carmines and Stimson, 1980; Converse and Markus, 1979), particularly questionsabout abortion (Jelen and Wilcox, 2003).

There is much less consensus, however, regarding the economic attitudes of conserva-tive Protestants.1 While conservative Protestant scholars vary in their economic attitudes(Iannaccone, 1993), the most visible and politically influential CP leaders have tended tobe economically conservative since the rise of the Christian Right in the 1970s (Gay,1991, p. 10–21; Hollinger, 1983; Iannaccone, 1993; Marsden, 1972). CP seminarians inrecent years have tended to be economically conservative as well (Olson and Carroll,1992).

Although the economic attitudes of CP leaders are relatively well-understood, the atti-tudes of non-elites are less clear. Some researchers have concluded that CPs tend to be eco-nomically more liberal than the general population in the United States (Pyle, 1993;Iannaccone, 1993; Will and Cochran, 1995; Davis and Robinson, 2001),2 while others haveconcluded that they are more economically conservative (Smith et al., 1998, p. 187–189;Barker and Carman, 2000)3 or that there are few if any differences between CPs and otherAmericans in their economic attitudes (Wuthnow, 1973; Hart, 1992). Other research sug-gests that the relationship between religion and conservatism depends on other factors.Kohut et al. (2000, p. 41–44), for instance, found that churchgoing CPs tend to be moreeconomically conservative than mainline Protestants while non-attending CPs tend to bemore economically liberal than mainline Protestants.

Resolving the inconsistencies in this body of research is important for understandingwhether the current Republican Party platform reflects the opinions of a politically unifiedgroup of people who are conservative across the board or, instead, a coalition betweensocial and economic conservatives who share some attitudes but disagree on issues of less-er salience to each. The issue is also important for understanding the distribution of polit-ical attitudes in the US population. By incorporating insights from the literature on eliteand mass opinion, this paper will attempt to resolve inconsistent findings regarding thepolitical attitudes of CPs. Specifically, we argue that there is a strong relationship betweenconservative Protestantism and economic conservatism only among the better educatedsegment of the population. We find evidence to support this idea using a wide array of eco-nomic attitude measures from the General Social Survey (GSS).

According to Converse’s theory of mass opinion (1964), ideology is limited to a relative-ly small group of people who are politically knowledgeable. Most people do not have con-sistently liberal or conservative attitudes or stable attitudes about many political issues(Stimson, 1975; Levitin and Miller, 1979; Converse and Markus, 1979). If this is true,

1 In this paper, economic conservatism and liberalism refer to attitudes about the proper size and role ofgovernment, including attitudes about economic redistribution, business and environmental regulation, and themilitary.

2 Pyle found significant differences among conservative Protestant denominations, but it is unclear whether hisfindings reflect socioeconomic differences between denominations because Pyle did not control for income.

3 All but one study of conservatism Protestantism and economic conservatism use cross-sectional data. The oneexception, Barker and Carman (2000), found that converts to conservative Protestantism tended to become moreeconomically conservative following conversion.

J. Felson, H. Kindell / Social Science Research 36 (2007) 673–687 675

we would not expect CP elites and masses to agree on political issues that lack a directconnection to religion. Rather, we would expect a consistent political ideology to charac-terize well-educated and politically sophisticated CPs.

The relationship between education and political ideology might be partiallyexplained by a greater likelihood for people to have attitudes about issues which theyunderstand, or at least think they understand. Even a basic comprehension of economicpolicy issues requires both abstract thinking skills and the confidence to form opinionsabout issues that do not directly impinge on one’s own life, both of which can be devel-oped through education. More educated people may also be likely to pay more attentionto politics, and to be more aware of what attitudes they are expected to have if theyalign themselves with a particular (either liberal or conservative) ideology. For these rea-sons, more educated people may tend to have a deeper, more conceptual understandingof politics that allows them to organize their political attitudes into an ideologicalsystem.

In addition, research by Nie et al. (1996) has shown that education is linked to bothverbal proficiency (scores on a vocabulary test) and social network centrality (beingknown by politically influential people), both of which are related to higher levels of polit-ical engagement. The authors argue that more verbally proficient individuals are betterable to understand the implications of political events. Social network centrality, theyargue, leads both to easier access to political information and a greater incentive to accu-mulate information about political issues.4

In the four decades since its initial articulation, Converse’s theory of mass opinionhas received considerable support (Delli Karpini and Keeter, 1996, Chapter 6; Jennings,1992; Zaller, 1992). Less politically sophisticated people may have liberal or conservativepredispositions, but lack the political knowledge necessary to consistently link these pre-dispositions to survey questions on policy issues (Zaller, 1992, pp. 53–75; but see Goren,2004). Further, surveys eliciting verbatim responses have revealed that attitudes aboutmany political issues are related to recent news reports and/or personal experiences(Feldman, 1988; Zaller, 1992); matters related to government redistribution are generallyconsidered ‘‘hard issues’’ that are obscure to most people (Carmines and Stimson, 1980).Measurement error is often high for responses to questions about government spending;the correlation between measures in consecutive waves is often no higher than the cor-relation between measures in alternate waves (Converse and Markus, 1979). By contrast,people are more consistent and ideologically motivated in answering questions aboutsocial issues. Questions about social issues are generally thought to be ‘‘easy issues,’’(Carmines and Stimson, 1980), since they tap into more familiar topics like familyand sex.

In fact, several researchers have found that the effect of conservative religious beliefon economic attitudes depends on level of education (Tamney et al., 1989; Clydesdale,1999). Most notably, Clydesdale (1999) found that college-educated Bible literalistsare more economically conservative than other Americans, while less educated Bible lit-

4 The relationship between education and economic attitudes among CPs may also be influenced by selectionfactors. For instance, it may be that individuals who are more interested in politics are more likely to go on toobtain higher degrees, or those who are more facile and interested in abstract ideas may be both more likely to beaware of politics and more likely to go to college. Thus, it is likely that the relationship between education andpolitical awareness is only partially causal.


eralists are more liberal. He argued that, because college-educated CPs are less numerousthan those without a college education, Biblical conservatism is generally associated witheconomic liberalism. Those who do have college degrees, he argued, are more econom-ically conservative as a result of their own self interest as economically privileged mem-bers of society.

Clydesdale’s analysis is problematic for several reasons. First, he did not examine theeffect of conservative Protestantism separately by race, despite the fact that black andwhite faith communities have historically applied theology to politics in very differentways. For instance, unlike white clergy, black ministers often combine otherworldly the-ology with advocacy of liberal economic causes (Lincoln and Mamiya, 1990).

Second, while the majority of Bible literalists in Clydesdale’s analysis are Protestant,this category also includes Catholics, Jews, members of other religious groups, and thosewho report no religious affiliation. We argue that one cannot evaluate the meaning of ‘‘Bi-ble literalism’’ outside the context of a religious reference group, particularly in under-standing economic attitudes. The Bible is vague about economic policy matters andpolitical philosophy and leaves its followers ample room for interpretation (Berger,1990). Rather than drawing direct conclusions from Biblical precepts, individuals arelikely to interpret biblical messages about economic issues through the prism of their reli-gious reference group.

Finally, Clydesdale’s argument that college-educated CPs are economically conserva-tive due to their economically privileged position in society cannot explain the interactionbetween education and conservative Protestantism. Even if education is related to eco-nomic conservatism, this fact would not explain why college-educated CPs are more con-servative than those with lower levels of education. Explanations of interactions must takeaccount of all variables in the interaction, but Clydesdale’s explanation only accounts forthe effect of education.

In the present study, we analyze the economic attitudes of college-educated and less-ed-ucated religious adherents separately by race and religious affiliation, focusing on the eco-nomic attitudes of conservative Protestants. We find that inconsistencies in previousresearch can be resolved by applying Converse’s (1964) theory of mass opinion; our anal-yses show that ideological constraint exists only among the more educated. Unlike Clydes-dale (1999), we argue that these ideological differences can best be explained as a result ofdifferences between level of political knowledge and sophistication among more and lesseducated CPs, rather than differing economic interests. Most of the analyses presentedhere will be restricted to white Protestants, since the results of research examining theviews of other major religious groups in America—black Protestants, Jews and Catho-lics—are unambiguous (Hart, 1992, Chapter 10).5 However, to put the political views ofwhite Protestants in perspective, we also compare their attitudes with those of othergroups.

5 Past researchers have included blacks in their analyses, controlled for race, and examined the impact ofconservative theology (measured as Bible literalism) on economic attitudes for all religious groups in the sameanalysis. As we have said, this is a problematic approach. Considering the political differences between black andwhite conservative Protestants, the association between conservative theology and conservative economics amongwhites seems to have less to do with any inherent logical connection and more to do with particular religiousworldviews shaped by religious and political allegiances and antagonisms.


1. Data and methods

In the following analyses, we compared adjusted means for college-educated and less-educated white CPs and non-CPs for fifteen survey items gauging respondents’ economicattitudes. Our analyses are based on the General Social Survey, a nationally representa-tive, cross-sectional survey of US households. The survey was conducted almost every yearfrom 1972 to 1994, and biennially from 1994 to 2004. Respondents are weighted accordingto their inverse probability of selection, equal to the number of adults in each household.

Following previous research in this area, we measured conservative Protestantism asBible literalism, the belief that the Bible is inerrant. While Bible literalism taps into onlyone dimension of conservative Protestantism, the question concerning Bible literalism isoften used to define conservative Protestants. Since the purpose of this analysis is to rec-oncile past research, rather than refine the way in which conservative Protestantism ismeasured, Bible literalism is an appropriate measure of conservative Protestantism here.As in most previous research, this measure was dichotomized between respondents whoindicated they believed that ‘‘the Bible is the actual word of God, to be taken literally wordfor word’’ and respondents who indicated they believed the Bible was either ‘‘inspired byGod’’ or ‘‘a book of fables.’’

In each year of the GSS, many questions about government size and scope are asked ofa randomly selected subset of respondents. In order to maintain large sample sizesthroughout our analyses, we utilized questions that were asked in multiple years. Threequestions probing general issues of government scope were chosen: ‘‘On the whole, doyou think it should or should not be the government’s responsibility to: (1) reduce incomedifferences between the rich and poor; (2) provide a job for everyone who wants one; (3)provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed?’’

In addition, we included a set of twelve more specific questions tapping respondents’attitudes toward government spending. ‘‘Are we spending too much money, too littlemoney, or about the right amount on: (1) improving and protecting the environment;(2) improving and protecting the nation’s health; (3) solving the problems of the big cities;(4) halting the rising crime rate; (5) dealing with drug addiction; (6) improving the nation’seducation system; (7) improving the conditions of blacks; (8) military, armaments anddefense; (9) foreign aid; (10) welfare; (11) social security; (12) mass transportation?’’

Respondents who favored less government spending are coded as more conservative onall items except the measure of military spending preference; respondents who favoredmore government spending on the military are coded as more conservative. There are gen-erally low to moderate correlations between the items.6 The means we present on theseitems are adjusted for differences in income (measures in inflation-adjusted 1986 dollars),gender, region (south/non-south), and birth cohort.

To put these comparisons of Protestants in perspective, in the final analysis we presentregressions of an index of economic conservatism for all large religious groups in the US.In these regressions, we control for demographic characteristics on which religious groupsdiffer: family income (in estimated dollars adjusted for inflation), gender, Southernresidence, and birth cohort.

6 High correlations between measures are not expected in the general population, since high correlations implyconsistent ideological thinking that is lacking in the general population (Converse, 1964; Zaller, 1992).


The economic conservatism index used to compare all religious groups is calculated bystandardizing each of the twelve items listed above, averaging them together to create acomposite measure, and then standardizing this composite.7 We examined interactionsbetween each religious group and earning a bachelor’s degree. We used a dichotomousmeasure of education because we are applying Converse’s theory that public opiniondichotomizes between elites and masses. For this analysis, we used Bible literalism to clas-sify Protestants as either conservative or non-conservative. All other religious groups aredefined according to the Steensland et al. (2000) denominational classification scheme.

In the following analyses, missing values were handled with a multiple imputation tech-nique pioneered by Rubin (1987). Multiple imputation was implemented in Stata with theICE user-written program (Royston, 2005; van Buuren et al., 1999).

2. Results

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for the variables used in these analyses. Table 2 pre-sents the results of two-tailed t-tests comparing the mean economic attitudes of Bible literal-ists and non-literalists, adjusted for differences between these groups on income, gender,southern region and birth cohort. Among those respondents without a bachelor’s degree,as presented in the first five columns of Table 2, Bible literalists are significantly more liberalthan other Protestants on three items and significantly more conservative on four items. Lit-eralists reported more liberal attitudes for two out of the three general items (reduce incomedifferences and provide a job for everyone) as well as for one of the specific items (social secu-rity spending). They reported more conservative attitudes for education, military spending,the environment, and mass transit. For the remaining eight items, Bible literalists and non-literalists did not differ significantly in their economic attitudes.

The results of this analysis suggest that the relationship between Bible literalism andeconomic liberalism cannot be simply summarized in terms of liberal-conservative ideolo-gy for those with less than a college education. Comparisons of unadjusted means amongless-educated respondents (not shown) revealed similar patterns to those shown in Table 2,except that less-educated Bible literalists were more liberal on issues concerning redistribu-tion from rich to poor (reducing income differences, providing jobs, providing for theunemployed, welfare, foreign aid, and social security). These differences may be due tothe fact that less educated literalists tend to make lower incomes than less educatednon-literalists and are therefore more supportive of redistribution.

The results for respondents with a bachelor’s degree are presented in columns sixthrough ten of Table 2, suggesting a much more consistent relationship between Bible lit-eralism and economic attitudes. Literalists are more conservative than other Protestantson every item in the sample, although the differences are not statistically significant for fiveof the fifteen items.8

7 The alpha for the twelve item index is about 0.67. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that a singlelatent variable cannot adequately account for the relationships between the twelve measures. Judging by a varietyof standard fit indices, a one-factor model of the polychoric correlations between the measures fit poorly in avariety of configurations. Thus, we conceptualize the composite measure of economic attitudes as an index ratherthan a scale.

8 Comparisons of unadjusted means yielded similar results, except that the unadjusted mean for college-educated literalists on attitudes toward dealing with drug addiction was significantly higher than the unadjustedmean for college-educated non-literalists.

Table 1Descriptive statistics

N Mean SD Min Max

Economic attitudes

Reduce income differences between rich and poor 1817 2.788 1.049 1 4Provide a job for everyone who wants one 2260 2.910 0.972 1 4Provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed 1382 2.663 0.905 1 4Improving, protecting environment 3989 1.495 0.659 1 3Improving and protecting the nation’s health 4031 1.404 0.610 1 3Solving the problems of the big cities 3571 1.707 0.735 1 3Halting rising crime rate 4013 1.386 0.587 1 3Dealing with drug addiction 3989 1.450 0.631 1 3Improving the nation’s education system 4049 1.411 0.618 1 3Improving the conditions of Blacks 3801 1.971 0.696 1 3Military, armaments, and defense 3994 1.923 0.710 1 3Foreign aid 3994 2.668 0.562 1 3Welfare 3999 2.380 0.730 1 3Social security 7696 1.553 0.621 1 3Mass transportation 7088 1.783 0.634 1 3

Variables used in regression analysis

Index of Economic Conservatism 12699 0.000 1.000 �2.653 4.728Real income (2002 dollars) 12699 31.388 29.070 0.294 141.038Female 12699 0.547 0.498 0 1Southern region 12699 0.180 0.384 0 1Birth cohort 12699 1949.016 18.391 1895 1986White Protestant Literalist 12699 0.167 0.373 0 1Black Protestant 12699 0.105 0.306 0 1Catholic 12699 0.299 0.458 0 1Jewish 12699 0.024 0.152 0 1Other religion 12699 0.068 0.252 0 1Unaffiliated 12699 0.127 0.333 0 1Bachelor’s degree 12699 0.220 0.414 0 1

Higher numbers indicate more conservatism.All analyses weighted by the number of adults in household.Analysis limited to white Protestants for all years in which questions were available.


Among college-educated Protestants, literalists prefer less government spending thannon-literalists on many issues. They tend to favor decreases in government spending onreducing income inequality, environmental protections, health care, urban issues, educa-tion, improving the conditions of blacks, foreign aid, welfare, and mass transportation.Consistent with ideological expectations, college-educated literalists prefer more spendingon the military relative to college-educated non-literalists.

The remaining five items (providing a decent standard of living for the unemployed,government jobs for everyone who wants one, halting the rising crime rate, dealing withdrug addiction, and social security) showed no significant differences between groups.For the question of providing a decent standard of living for the unemployed, however,the relationship approaches significance (p = 0.09). The failure to achieve statistical signif-icance for this item may be due to the fact that it is based on a smaller sample includingonly 55 college-educated literalists.

We obtained similar results using the Steensland et al. (2000) denominational classifica-tion scheme in place of Bible literalism to distinguish conservative and non-conservative

Table 2Comparison of adjusted means for economic attitudes of Bible literalists and non-literalists by level of education

Less than college degree College degree or more

Non-Lit. N Literalists N p-value Non-Lit. N Literalists N p-value

Reduce income differences between rich andpoor

2.721 786 2.588 620 0.023* 3.061 332 3.425 79 0.000**

Provide a job for everyone who wants one 2.875 1003 2.738 765 0.007** 3.156 402 3.288 90 0.208Provide decent standard of living for the

unemployed2.618 617 2.525 471 0.124 2.847 239 3.069 55 0.092

Improving, protecting environment 1.479 1731 1.530 1366 0.044* 1.426 716 1.752 176 0.000**

Improving and protecting the nation’shealth

1.363 1736 1.408 1401 0.060 1.436 713 1.628 181 0.002**

Solving the problems of the big cities 1.716 1538 1.710 1194 0.865 1.666 673 1.815 166 0.027*

Halting rising crime rate 1.368 1730 1.350 1392 0.461 1.451 710 1.534 181 0.141Dealing with drug addiction 1.440 1716 1.406 1395 0.177 1.522 699 1.561 179 0.518Improving the nation’s education system 1.405 1747 1.461 1405 0.025* 1.327 717 1.487 180 0.010**

Improving the conditions of Blacks 1.987 1629 2.030 1325 0.131 1.786 676 2.084 171 0.000**

Military, armaments, and defense 1.901 1724 2.032 1374 0.000** 1.706 715 2.109 181 0.000**

Foreign aid 2.716 1728 2.675 1383 0.057 2.548 703 2.682 180 0.007**

Welfare 2.370 1740 2.359 1376 0.706 2.356 701 2.569 182 0.000**

Social security 1.519 3332 1.447 2675 0.000** 1.768 1356 1.810 333 0.336Mass transportation 1.791 3068 1.857 2353 0.000** 1.634 1352 1.817 315 0.000**

Higher numbers indicate more conservatism.Analysis limited to white Protestants for all years in which questions were available.Missing cases were deleted listwise.Means were adjusted to control for real income, gender, region (south/non-south), and birth cohort.

* p < .05.** p < .01.

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Protestants (analyses not shown). However, the differences between college-educatedEvangelical and Mainline Protestants were less pronounced than the differences betweencollege-educated literalist and non-literalist Protestants.

In Table 3, an index of economic conservatism is regressed on dummy variables foreach religious group, a dummy variable indicating attainment of a bachelor’s degree,and interactions between bachelor’s degree and each religious group.9 Non-literalist Prot-estant was the reference group. The results of this regression are also shown in Fig. 1,which displays predicted scores on the standardized scale of economic conservatism, withcontrol variables held at their means. Fig. 1 presents the 95% confidence intervals for theadjusted means of each religious group on economic conservatism.10 College-educatedwhite CPs are at least 0.15 standard deviations higher than the mean, and at most overone-half a standard deviation above the mean. The 95% confidence intervals for threegroups—college-educated white CPs, less educated non-conservative Protestants and col-lege-educated Catholics—show some overlap. All other groups are significantly more lib-eral than college-educated CPs.

The attitudes of black Protestants and Catholics also differ along educational lines.More educated black Protestants have significantly more liberal economic attitudes thanless educated black Protestants. Likewise, college-educated Catholics are significantlymore conservative than those without a bachelor’s degree. More educated Catholicsmay be more economically conservative than less educated Catholics because they aremore attuned to discourse among Catholic political elites, many of whom have beenaligned with the Republican Party in recent years despite the fact that the Catholic Churchhas historically been sympathetic to social welfare. The pattern for Catholics is more dif-ficult to explain than the pattern among black and white Protestants, whose elites areunequivocally liberal and conservative, respectively.

3. Discussion and conclusion

These results support the idea that the ideological connection between Protestant reli-gion and economic attitudes is the province of the better educated. Highly educated CPsare more conservative on ten out of the fifteen items examined,11 and two of the five itemsfor which we find no differences are ambiguous with respect to ideology. For example,social security is largely a middle-class entitlement program with muted ideological differ-ences between liberals and conservatives. A lack of distinctiveness among college-educatedBible literalists on this issue may represent bipartisan support for social security ratherthan attitude inconsistency among college-educated respondents.

9 A Wald test of the significance of all interactions between religious grouping and bachelor’s degree wassignificant (F = 4.98, p < 0.0001).10 The numbers in Fig. 1 were calculated according to procedures described in Kam and Franzese (2006, pp.75–

76). We generated adjusted means (predicted values) from Model 2 of Table 3 as y_ ¼ M b

_, where M is a matrix

composed of row vectors for each predicted value, each of which contains values of the independent variables. b_

is the column vector of coefficients from the model. Standard errors were calculated for the adjusted means as the

square roots of the diagonals of the variance-covariance matrix of y_

. V ðy_Þ ¼ V ðM b_Þ ¼ MV ðb

_ÞM where V ðb

_Þ is

the variance-covariance matrix of the coefficients obtained from the regression model.11 In analyses not shown, we also found that conservative Protestants with graduate education (twenty years of

schooling) are even more economically conservative than CPs with college education.

Table 3Regression of economic conservatism index on religious groupings

Model 1 Model 2

b SE b SE

Real income (2002 dollars) 0.001** 0.000 0.001** 0.000Female �0.177** 0.020 �0.176** 0.020Southern region �0.032 0.028 �0.031 0.028Birth cohort �0.004** 0.001 �0.004** 0.001White Prot. non-literalist (reference) — — — —White Protestant literalista 0.012 0.034 �0.046 0.037Black Protestanta �0.533** 0.036 �0.535** 0.039Catholica �0.121** 0.027 �0.166** 0.031Jewisha �0.493** 0.067 �0.534** 0.103Other religiona �0.083+ 0.045 �0.079 0.054Unaffiliateda �0.055 0.035 �0.046 0.041College education 0.041 0.025 �0.050 0.046Prot Literalist * college 0.345** 0.120Black Prot * college �0.159+ 0.090Catholic * college 0.190** 0.063Jewish * college 0.118 0.135Other * college �0.004 0.099Unaffiliated * college �0.043 0.077Constant 8.347** 1.119 8.677** 1.121R-squared 0.046 0.049

Higher values indicate more conservatism.Missing data handled by multiple imputation.Analysis is weighted by number of adults in the household.N = 12699.

a Reference category is non-Literalist Protestants.* p < .05.** p < .01.+ p < .10.

CE Black Prot

LE Black Prot

LE Jewish

CE Jewish

LE Catholic

CE None CE other

LE Other

CE Non-cons Prot

LE None LE CP

CE Catholic

LE Non-cons Prot

CE Cons Prot

-.7 -.6 -.5 -.4 -.3 -.2 -.1 0 .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7CE=college-educated LE=less educated

Fig. 1. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals for economic conservatism by religious group and education.



Another issue on which Bible literalists are not distinctive, drug addiction, might alsobe ambiguous with regard to ideology. The issue of spending on drug addiction maytap into conservatives’ law and order mentality if they believe that spending more moneyon dealing with drug addiction will lead to higher rates of incarceration for wrongdoers. If,on the other hand, CPs believe that money spent on drug addiction will be used for expen-sive treatment programs, they may support much lower levels of spending.

The general conclusion that college-educated CPs are more economically conservativethan college-educated non-CPs holds true regardless of whether we adjust for composi-tional differences between the groups, or whether conservative Protestantism is measuredwith beliefs about the Bible or with denominational grouping. Relationships between vari-ables among the less well educated, on the other hand, are too inconsistent to be the basisfor broad generalizations.12

These results assist in resolving inconsistencies in the literature on the political beliefs ofconservative Protestants. Hart’s (1992) conclusion that CPs’ economic ideology is no dif-ferent from that of other Americans is true only for less well-educated conservative Prot-estants. As Converse (1964) and Zaller (1992) theorized, we do not find ideologicalconstraint in the less educated part of the population. Better-educated CPs, however, dis-play the same conservative tendencies found among Fundamentalist and Evangelical elitesin historical work by Gay (1991), Hollinger (1983), and Marsden (1972).

Distinguishing conservative Protestant views by level of education is an essential steptoward understanding contemporary political alliances between CPs and secular Republi-cans. In the political process, the opinions of the better educated may matter the most.Political scientists have shown that the most active participants in the political processtend to consist of more highly educated members of the public. Because the well-educatedare more likely to vote and express themselves in public, their interests are more likely tofind favor in Washington (Delli Karpini and Keeter, 1996; Verba et al., 1996). Since lesswell-educated CPs are generally not opinionated about economic issues, the signal whichemerges from the grassroots and is heard by political elites will be the more consistent con-servative ideology of the better educated.13

That said, economic attitude tendencies run deeper for several other religious groups.Regardless of their level of education, black Protestants and Jews tend to be quite liberal,as shown in this analysis and many others (e.g. Kohut et al., 2000). College-educated blackProtestants are significantly more economically liberal than less-educated black Protes-tants, providing support for the idea that ideology is the province of the college-educated.Still, less-educated black Protestants are substantially more liberal than white Protestantsand Catholics, while less-educated white CPs are only slightly right of center.

Why would ideology depend so heavily on level of education for conservative Protes-tants when the differences are less pronounced for black Protestants and nonexistent for

12 We also compared means on the fifteen economic attitude items among respondents in four groupscategorized according to highest level of education attained: no high school degree, high school degree, somecollege, and bachelor’s degree/above. The number of measures on which Bible literalists were significantly moreconservative than non-literalists rose monotonically with level of educational attainment.13 The largest CP political organization, the Christian coalition, seems aware of CPs’ economic conservatism. On

the widely distributed voter guide for the 2000 Presidential election, which featured candidate comparisons on arange of issues, candidates’ economic issue preferences were listed first, before positions on such issues as abortion(guide printed in Wald, 2003, pp. 236–237).


Jews? The reason may have to do with the fact that there is an ethnic as well as a religiouscharacter to both black Protestant and Jewish identities. While white CP identity is basedmainly on a religious belief system, black Protestant and Jewish identity may have as muchto do with ethnic culture as with religion. Perceptions of prejudice and discrimination arecentral aspects of black culture and, to a lesser extent, Jewish culture. Historical persecu-tion in general, and the Holocaust in particular, are defining aspects of Jewish culture. Theself-images of these groups are influenced by histories of adversity as disliked minorities.Regardless of whether they follow politics, people who identify with minority groups thathave experienced deprivation may see a greater need for government intervention onbehalf of the poor. On the other hand, Protestants have long been members of the major-ity faith in the US, so the connection between religious identity and political attitudes isless straightforward.

By contrast, the political ideologies of college-educated CPs may have relatively recentorigins.14 Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, conservative Protestantdenominations and Republican legislators moved toward a pro-life consensus. The politici-zation of social issues in the 1960s and 1970s spawned the Religious Right movement in themid-1970s that mobilized behind Republican pro-life candidates (Wilcox, 1992). In part dueto new partisan divisions on abortion following Roe v. Wade, conservative Protestants as agroup have shifted from majority Democratic Party membership to majority Republicanmembership over the last thirty years (Kellstedt and Noll, 1990). Given these changes, it ispossible that better educated CPs have been increasingly influenced by their Republicanallies on economic issues. In support of this idea, we found evidence that better-educatedCPs have become more economically conservative over time. The three-way interaction ofCP · bachelor’s degree · survey year has a significant effect on the index of economic conser-vatism when it is added to the regression equation in Table 3.

Conservative Protestants may adopt the economically conservative policy positions ofthe Republican politicians they favor primarily due to these candidates’ positions on socialissues. In recent years, Congress has been ideologically polarized such that there are veryfew congressmen or Senators who are conservative on social issues but liberal on economicissues, or vice-versa (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997). When CPs support socially conservativecandidates, they are almost always also voting for candidates who espouse an economical-ly conservative agenda. The economic attitudes of CPs may be influenced by their favoritepoliticians.

As CPs have become enthusiastic Republican partisans for social reasons, they mayhave adopted conservative economic positions to avoid cognitive dissonance. However,Republican partisanship does not completely explain CPs’ economic conservatism. Theeffect of the interaction between education and Bible literalism remained significant withthe inclusion of dummy variables measuring partisanship. Results were also substantiallyunaltered when we included a single variable measuring partisanship and an interactionterm between partisanship and earning a bachelor’s degree.

Conservative Protestants may find conservative arguments about the welfare state par-ticularly attractive at a time when the secular state is seen as imposing on religious free-doms and obstructing the ability of parents to pass on religious values. Many CPs havecome to perceive government institutions as hostile to religious values as courts have ruled

14 This idea was suggested by an anonymous reviewer.


in favor of legal abortion and against the public display of religious symbols, and asschools have permitted the teaching of evolution and sex education (Sikkink, 1999). Forthese reasons, CPs may see government as a meddlesome or even dangerous force thatneeds to be curbed.

White CPs’ political attitudes may spring from religious identity and church member-ship rather than direct interpretation of scripture; research has shown that the Bible canbe interpreted in different ways to support radically different agendas (Bartkowski,1996). There may be little or no direct relationship between religious beliefs and politicalattitudes among CPs. Rather, the political attitudes of conservative Protestants may be theresult of having at least a passing awareness that CP elites generally adopt conservativepositions in political debates.

The better educated will be most aware of the white conservative Protestant dislike oflarge secular government and most tuned into elite voices who echo this sentiment. Better-educated CPs may also be more likely to link interviewers’ questions with their own politicalpredispositions (Zaller, 1992). Hence, future research may find that the political attitudes ofCPs do not depend on level of piety per se, but rather on the strength of religious group iden-tity as well as the ability and desire to strive for attitude ‘‘consistency’’ as defined ideologicallyby religious and political elites. CPs will be politically conservative to the extent that conser-vative Protestantism is an exclusive subculture that tunes in conservative voices and tunes outliberal ones. For example, conservative Protestants may be more likely to watch Fox News,where conservative viewpoints are given voice. In the process, better-educated CPs willabsorb conservative economic attitudes from a select group of elites.

The analysis of conservative Protestants presented here suggests that many college edu-cated CPs are not ideologically conflicted in their support of Republicans. Some have sug-gested that the Republican alliance between social and economic conservatives is fragile,arguing that CPs will become increasingly disillusioned with the Republican party andstop voting for Republican candidates when Republicans fail to win political victorieson abortion and other issues important to social conservatives. This analysis has shown,however, that CP support for Republicans cannot simply be reduced to single issues likeabortion and gay marriage.15 The CPs who are most likely to vote are the college educat-ed, and they are politically conservative across the board (Verba et al., 1996).

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the elusive link between conservative protestantism and conservative economics

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