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Religion and American Democracy
| Article
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19115 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
7,484 Words |
| Author
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A. James Reichley
A. James Reichley is a retired senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. |
Religion has always played a powerful and profound role in American politics. This is true both in the sense that churches and other religious groups have, at least on certain issues, substantially influenced public policy and in the sense that religious belief has been a major source of the values, social attitudes, and moral assumptions on which American democracy is based.
At the policy formation level, the role of religious interest groups, measured in terms of direct participation, has never been more active than it is today. Offices on or near Capitol Hill in Washington representing the mainline Protestant denominations (Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopalian, United Church of Christ), and some smaller denominations campaign vigorously for a wide variety of causes, ranging from abandoning nuclear deterrence to saving the family farm. The Roman Catholic Church, the nation's largest single denomination, after long maintaing a low profile in national politics, has plugged into forceful involvement, first to secure enactment of a constitutional amendment to prohibit abortion, and more recently to exert influence on a range of economic, foreign policy, and military issues. The black Protestant churches, many of which formed originally as a result of recial discrimination in their parent denominations, continue to provide political leadership on civil rights and social justice issues, and increasingly take stands on other domestic and foreign policy concerns. Jewish social agencies, most of which are not tied directly to denominational bodies but which take moral direction from Jewish religious tradition, lobby in Washington and mobilize public opinion among their national constituencies with political skill and organizational efficiency as yet unmatched by other religious interest groups. White evangelical Protestants, about one-fifth of the total national population and long the "sleeping giant of American politics," have switched from traditional political passivity to sometimes clamorous activity, even to the extent of providing the base for a political "movement" aimed at gaining control of the Republican Party--and ultimately the national government. Political involvement by other significant religious groups, including the Mormons, the Orthodox churches, and various Islamic bodies, have been more selective but generally are rising.
Perhaps all these signs of direct political participation by religious interest groups are to some degree misleading. It may be that as the religious groups increasingly go public in their political activities, they lose some of the access they, or their leaders, formerly enjoyed the through the back corridors of political power. Such a change may well serve the
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