Religion and Political Civility: The Coming Generation of American Evangelicals

By and large, the reaction to the activities and pronouncements of the New Christian Right has been strongly negative. Emerging out of the reaction are various accusations that Evangelical Christianity represents a serious threat to the liberal traditions of democratic tolerance. Few attempts, however, have been made to measure this reaction against empirical evidence. This essay attempts to do just this for an important sub-population within Evangelicalism - a national sample of students attending Evangelical colleges and seminaries - those who will represent the lay and professional leadership of Evangelicalism in the coming generation. The broader implications of the Evangelical case are then discussed. In virtually all of the world religions, there are representative orthodoxies which are presently engaged in aggressive political action - Soga Gakkai in Buddhism, Rashstriya Swayam Savek in Hinduism, the Gush Emunim, Edah Haredit and Naturei Karta in Judaism, the Muslim Brotherhood and myriad other fundamentalist organizations and movements in Islam. In all cases, there is a wide-scale accusation that these groups represent a retrogressive political force, whose extremist policies and often violent political measures undermine national democratic processes and even international stability. In the United States the political initiatives of conservative Protestantism or Evangelicalism (through the New Christian Right) has prompted similar reactions. This study is concerned with the extent to which conservative Protestants in America present a viable threat to liberal democratic traditions of political tolerance. The special empirical focus here is the coming generation in American Evangelicalism, those who will constitute the rank and file as well as the professional leadership of conservative Protestantism in the next generation. In making this analysis, questions will be raised about the degree to which the Evangelical case can be seen as paradigmatic for all religious orthodoxies in advanced industrial societies.