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The religious left in contemporary America has been under-studied compared to the religious right. It is argued that the most pertinent characteristics for understanding the nature of this collectivity are those that distinguish its members from other political liberals. Data from the 1996 National Election Study are analyzed to compare religious and secular liberals. Liberalism is operationalized by self-described political ideology, and religious and secular respondents are differentiated on the basis of several dimensions of religious commitment: worship attendance, personal prayer, bible reading, and self-described religious salience. The religious liberals are disproportionately nonwhite and less educated. Net of race, they are slightly more likely to be “New Class” professionals.
The dependent variables are attitudes on distinct political issues. As expected, religious liberals are more traditionalist on the “cultural” issues of abortion and prayer in schools—though not on gay and lesbian job rights. They also display disproportionate opposition to capital punishment and the welfare “child cap.” However, there is limited evidence that their greater liberalism on these latter two issues can be traced to pro-life abortion ideology, as hypothesized by some scholars. Religious liberals are not more dovish on “peace” issues (defense spending and use of military force) than secular liberals, contrary to some scholarly depictions. It is concluded that there are relatively few important attitudinal differences between religious and secular liberals.
Further analyses examine whether several social-structural determinants of political attitudes differ for religious and secular liberals. Among factors that receive attention are occupational prestige, formal group membership, and group identification. Again, relatively few differences are found. One exception is group identification, which has varying effects for secular and religious liberals. Identification with socially marginalized groups—operationalized as warmth toward the groups—is generally a stronger predictor of liberal attitudes for the secular respondents. However, identification with poor people more strongly predicts liberalism among their religious counterparts. This latter finding may reflect biblical exhortations of compassion toward the poor, translated into feelings of solidarity, by religious liberals.