Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?
"Do Evangelical activists control the Republican Party? Do secular activists control the Democratic Party? In Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?, Ryan Claassen carefully assesses the way campaign activists represent religious and non-religious groups in American political parties dating back to the 1960s. By providing a new theoretical framework for investigating the connections between macro social and political trends, the results challenge a conventional wisdom in which recently mobilized religious and Secular extremists captured the parties and created a God gap. The new approach reveals that very basic social and demographic trends matter far more than previously recognized and that mobilization matters far less. The God gap in voting is real, but it was not created by Christian Right mobilization efforts and a Secular backlash. Where others see culture wars and captured parties, Claassen finds many religious divisions in American politics are artifacts of basic social changes. This very basic insight leads to many profoundly different conclusions about the motivations of religious and non-religious activists and voters"-- "This book provides unprecedented information about the rising tide of Evangelical political activists on the right and the rising tide of Secular political activists on the left. "God gap" scholarship argues that Evangelicals and Seculars captured opposing parties, and created a religious divide between the "Godless" and the "pious." This book introduces a new paradigm for understanding change among political activists - the representation-based model. This model offers a new way of looking at recent trends that reveals that basic demographic forces matter far more when it comes to understanding the rise of Evangelical Republican activists and Secular Democratic activists, and that mobilization matters far less"--