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CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CONSERVATIVES:
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OPINIONS REGARDING THE RESPONSIBILITY OF POVERTY

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CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CONSERVATIVES: STRUCTURES OF GENDER
IDEOLOGY IN THE FORMATION OF OPINIONS REGARDING THE
RESPONSIBILITY OF POVERTY

By

Elisabeth Waeckerlin

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Sociology

2009

 

ABSTRACT
CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CONSERVATIVES: STRUCTURES OF GENDER
IDEOLOGY IN THE FORMATION OF OPINIONS REGARDING THE
RESPONSIBILITY OF POVERTY
By
Elisabeth Waeckerlin

Scholarly writing is inconclusive as to whether religious conservatives are also
socially and politically conservative. Research has been done with respect to religious
conservatives’ dogma, family values, and gender relations in association with their
political attitudes and behavior. This study however, investigates the association between
the structure of the conservatives’ religious beliefs and their ideologies about morals and
gender relations and how this association translates into views about the causes of
poverty.

This study accounts for the comparison of Catholic and Protestant religious dogma
and moral ideologies on the one hand and views about the reasons for poverty on the
other, in a new perspective. The association between dogma, moral ideology and
economic attitudes is framed in the concept of ahistorical religiosity. This concept
maintains that Catholic and Protestant conservatives’ moral values, as the major
component of their religious world views, are ahistorical and based on distinct
ideological structures. The perspective of ahistorical religiosity proposes that Protestants’
moral values are based on a hierarchical gender ideology while Catholics’ moral values
are based on sexual morality.

This project was carried out through a survey method. Data was collected by

distributing questionnaires to Catholic and Protestant churches and Right to Life

 

pregnancy organizations, where volunteers for participation in the study were searched
for and located. The churches and pregnancy organizations to which the surveys were
distributed are all located in mid-Michigan.

This study finds that Catholic conservatives’ sexual morality is associated with their
abortion attitudes. It is then their abortion attitudes that are linked to their ahistorical
religiosity. For Protestant conservatives, their gender ideology, in addition to their
abortion attitudes, is linked to their frequency of Bible reading, and it is the frequency of
Bible reading that is associated with their ahistorical religiosity.

In addition this study reveals that both Protestant and Catholic conservatives have
the opinion that individualist responsibility is the cause for poverty - as against structural
and political causes. Neither Protestants’ or Catholics’ views about the causes for poverty
are mediated through their ahistorical religion, though; but in the case of the Protestant
conservatives, their views about the individualist causes of poverty are associated with
their hierarchical gender ideology. In relation to the Catholic conservatives, it is their
sexual morality that is associated with their views about the individualist responsibility

for poverty.

DEDICATION

Meinen Eltem zu Eigen

Anna Marie Hatt Waeckerlin
Oskar Waeckerlin-Han (1913 — 2005)

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was successful because of the help of many people. This
dissertation would not be in existence, however, without the support of Prof. Steven
Gold, my major advisor and academic guide. I am very grateful to Prof. Gold for his
indispensible guidance in all aspects of this project, and for his insistence, encouragement
and patience during the writing of this dissertation.

I would also like to thank the members of my academic committee. First and
foremost I would like to thank Prof. Gene Burns for his ability to read structure into
chaos and I would like to thank Prof. Ralph Pyle for his insisting questions about
concepts during the writing process of this dissertation. The structuring comments of
Prof. Toby TenEyck on the writing of this project are much appreciated and Prof. David
Bailey is thanked for his advice and suggestions on this dissertation. Furthermore I would
like to thank Dr. Mary Helen Maclnnes for her clear and guiding advice during the data
analysis of this project. Also I would like to thank Dr. Randy Fotiu for his advice in the
early stages of my data analysis. My special thankfulness is finally due to Prof. Naihua
Zhang fi'om the Florida Atlantic University for her indispensible help during the writing
of this dissertation. Without her help, too, this dissertation would not be in existence.

Thanks also to Prof. Phyllis Puffer from the Big Sandy College, Kentucky for her
insightful ideas regarding my questionnaire construction. Lucinda (Lucie) Gonzalez is
thanked for reading early drafts of my questionnaire and Tanja Strong is much
appreciated for collecting data for my pilot study. Finally I would like to thank Dr. Leslie

Behm at the MSU Libraries for giving her expertise on the writing of EndNote and I

would like to thank Dr. Jack Carmichael and Elena Adkins for their expertise on editing

this project short notice.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................... x

INTRODUCTION
Research Statement ...............................................................
Purpose of the Study ..............................................................
Methods .............................................................................
Findings .............................................................................
Outline of the Project ............................................................. 1

0&0qu

CHAPTER 1
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR
Strict Religious Dogma: The Fundamentalist Context of Morality. . . . . 12
Protestant Conservative Dogma: Morality against

Apocalypse and Sin ..................................................... 15
Catholic Conservative Dogma: Moral Militancy for Grace
through Obedience to Church Hierarchy ............................. 16
Religious Salience in Ahistorical Religiosity: The Importance of
Sexual Morality .................................................................... 18
Catholic Ahistorical Religiosity ........................................ 18
Sexual Morals as Power Structure of the Catholic
Hierarchy ........................................................ 20
Protestant Ahistorical Religiosity ..................................... 23
Biblical Control over Sexual Morality: Gender
Hierarchy as Means of Salvation ............................ 25
Religious Salience: A Conservative Factor in the Current
Historical Context ............................................. 29
Salience: A Source of Meaning and Attitude Construction ........ 30

CHAPTER 2
THE FACTOR GENDER IDEOLOGY
The Transformation form Traditional to Negotiated Gender
Relationships ....................................................................... 35
The Theory of Gender Relations '
Cultural and Interpersonal Factors of the Gender Systems

Approach ................................................................. 39
The Culture of Domesticity ........................................... 40
Catholic and Protestant Cultural Context of the
Domestication of Sexuality .................................. 43

Gender Division of Labor and the Concept of Neo-Patriarchy 47
Sexual Morality within the Transformed Gender
Relations ........................................................ 51

vii

CHAPTER 3

ECONOMIC ATTITUDES
Protestant Conservatives’ View of Public Institutions ....................... 55
Empirical Finding ....................................................... 58
Catholic Conservatives: Empirical Findings .................................. 63
Catholic Bishops’ Socio-Politics ................................................ 68
Pope John Paul II’s Socio-Politics .............................................. 69
Religious Conservatives and Social Class ..................................... 73
Hypotheses ................................................................................... 77
Ahistorical Religiosity ............................................................ 77
Neo-Patriarchy ..................................................................... 79
Responsibility for Poverty ....................................................... 81
Summary of Hypotheses ......................................................... 85
CHAPTER 4
METHODS
Description of Data ............................................................... 91
Data Collection .................................................................... 94
Construction of Variables ........................................................ 101
Dependent Variables .................................................... 101
Independent Variables .................................................. 106
Control Variables ........................................................ 1 13
CHAPTER 5
DATA ANALYSIS
Ahistorical Religiosity ............................................................ 12 l
Protestant Frequency of Bible Reading .............................. 127
Demographic Influences ...................................... 130
Catholic Abortion Attitudes ............................................ 131
Demographic Influences ...................................... 132
Neo-Patriarchy
Distribution of Household Labor between Men and Women. . 137
Demographic Influences ...................................... 138
Views about Gender Relations ........................................ 141
Demographic Influences ...................................... 144
Responsibility for Poverty ....................................................... 149
Demographic Influences ...................................... 154
Summary of Findings ............................................................. 157
CHAPTER 6
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ...................................................... 160
Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to Ahistorical
Religiosity .......................................................................... 161
Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to Neo-Patriarchy ....... 163
Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to Responsibility
for Poverty ......................................................................... 166

viii

Limitations and Further Research ............................................... 168

APPENDIX A: Questionnaire ............................................................ 174 '
APPENDIX B: Churches, Activist Groups, and Pregnancy Centers for Data

Collection ..... ' ............................................................ 184
REFERENCES .............................................................................. 194

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Protestant Denominations .......................................................
Table 2 Description of Variables Used in the Analysis ................................

Table 3 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Ahistorical
Religiosity .........................................................................

Table 4 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Ahistorical Religiosity ..........

Table 5 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Frequency of Bible
Reading ............................................................................

Table 6 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Frequency of Bible
Reading Controlling for Demographic Characteristics .....................

Table 7 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Abortion Ideology .................

Table 8 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Abortion Ideology
Controlling for Demographic Characteristics .................................

Table 9 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Domestic
Work Distribution.................' ...............................................

Table 10 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Domestic
Work Distribution Controlling for Demographic Characteristics. . . . .

Table 11 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Gender Ideology

Table 12 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Gender Ideology Controlling
for Demographic Characteristics ..............................................

Table 13 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Gender Ideology Controlling
for Demographic Characteristics ..............................................

Table 14 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Economic
Attitudes ..........................................................................

Table 15 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Economic Attitudes ............

Table 16 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Economic Attitudes
Controlling for Demographic Characteristics ................................

97

114

125

127

129

129

133

133

138

139

143

145

145

151

152

153

Table 17 Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Economic Attitudes

Controlling for Demographic Characteristics ................................ 153
Table 18 Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Economic Attitudes

Controlling for Gender, Lower Education and Lower Income ............ 156
Table 19 Churches .......................................................................... 185
Table 20 Pregnancy Centers and Activist Groups ...................................... 191

xi

INTRODUCTION

Research Statement

Over the last decade, new media coverage has been given to religious conservatives
as major players in presidential elections. In the view of some of the scholarly writings
(Saunders and Abramowitz 2007) it is argued that the religious Christians influence
American politics towards political conservatism. Some newer research doubts this claim
(Smith 2001). Furthermore, it has been argued that conservative religion does not always
coincide with conservative politics (Johnson and Tamney 2001), and issues that have
been linked to conservative religion—such as anti-abortion—have been considered to be
not conservative at all (Hendershott 2006). Also, some literature has shown that women
in religious conservative communities are not simply submissive to the men in their
families and religious institutions but have managed to find niches within Which they can
empower themselves in their everyday lives (Brasher 1998). This study examines the role
that gender ideology and sexual morality play in relation to the formation of economic
attitudes of religious conservatives. The objectives of the study are to examine the
concept of morality for Protestant and Catholic conservative dogmas. This work inquires
the question: How are these dogmas associated with gender ideology and then
transformed into opinions and interpretations about the causes of poverty?

Religious conservatives have been linked to conservative moral concerns in
scholarly debates and through media coverage for several decades now. Their concerns
are based on what they see as the production of a general sexual promiscuity that has

advanced since the advent of feminist and other liberalizing movements that developed

starting in the 19605 (Marsden 2006; Stonecash 2007). These liberalizing movements
have put power relations -— not only between the genders but also between employer and
employee, parents and children, government and their citizens -- into question. As a
consequence, religious conservatives and their moral concerns have stood out from the
context of the portion of American society that is moving toward relative gender equality
(Riesebrodt 1993).

Among the specific social phenomena that the religious conservatives protest against
are high divorce rates, teenage pregnancy, sex education in the public schools, abortion
and gay marriage. Especially, their struggle against legalized abortion has been
representative for all of these moral protests (Ferree et al. 2002), and their stance against
abortion is central in their defense of what they see as traditional values. Conservative
Christians have portrayed the existence of legal abortion as the origin of the breakdown
of the American nuclear family, which they insist has to be structured as a union headed
by two parents with dependent children and which they define as the backbone of
American society (Stacey 1994) .

It has been a long established fact that people who are against abortion are regular
church attenders and testify to being more religious than those who are pro-choice
advocates (Blancth 1996; Granberg 1978). Most of the research debates find that anti-
abortion is, in general, a conservative phenomenon. The stance against abortion,
however, has also been associated with liberal policies, such as in Catholic social justice
issues. James Kelly (1999) explains Cardinal Josef Bemardin’ 5 life ethic as basically
liberal. Bemadin requested an intervention from which results can be seen in policy

application for both, the unborn life and the life in need of public support. “The hungry

and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker.”(Kelly
1999). Such an encompassing engagement for life that Bemardin followed makes for
specific economic and political positions, such as tax, welfare or healthcare policies.
According to the consistent life ethic of Bemardin, anti-abortion translates into public
programs that are located on the political lefi. Also, the bishops’ opposition against
nuclear armament was seen in line with the opposition against abortion since both
attempt to protect innocent lives (Kelly 1999).

There are others who have participated in the discussion about the liberal features of
abortion. Elizabeth Adel] Cook and her colleagues (1992) link the anti-abortion activism
of Catholics and African Americans with those groups’ opposition to the death penalty,
and Cuneo (1989) found anti-abortion activists coincide with engagement in Civil Rights
issues. Hendershott (2006) insists that anti-abortion is ethnocentric in the first place, since
it is poor women of-color who tend to be most advised to have abortions and abortion
services are located mostly in inner cities or poor neighborhoods.

Purpose of the Study

My study focuses on an argument that seeks to answer why, in fact, moral and anti-
abortion values in the current political context are conservative. For that, I examine
religious conservatives’ view of the placement of the responsibility for poverty whether
they consider poverty a problem caused by individual responsibility or traced back to
structural, political and economic factors. The study focuses on how moral values are
associated with strict dogma and the believer’s gender ideologies and how these are
transformed into economic world views.

A large portion of studies about the religious conservatives was conducted in the

context of the evangelical surge that has occurred over the last three decades. Political
action committees whose leaders and activists were often linked to the Republican Party,
such as the Christian Round Table or Focus on the Family, surfaced in the political
landscape during the 19805 and 905 (Himmelstein 1990).These political organizations
consolidated the Christian conservatives in the movement of the Christian Right. The
writings about the Christian conservatives found they are overwhelmingly Protestant
evangelical and fundamentalist (Walsh 2000), and the follow up studies about these
groups found them morally conservative with conservative views about gender relations.
Some research about the religious conservatives has assessed the relationship
between conservative religious dogma, moral values and economic views about the
causes of poverty in various ways. Protestant conservatism has mostly been assessed
through literal Bible reading and born again status (Guth et al. 1996b; Hunter 1983), two
distinct features of Protestant conservative dogma. In general, the work about the
Protestant conservatives agrees with the finding that their social agenda focuses on moral
politics about abortion, gay rights and public education. The social agenda with respect to
legal abortion emphasizes the limitation and eventual elimination of abortion. In relation
to gays, the agenda opposes laws that protect gays against job and housing discrimination
or advocates laws that prevent gay marriage. In relation to education the agenda wants to
alter the curriculum in the public schools to eliminate sex education (Smith 1997). Clyde
Wilcox and Mark Rozell (2000: 129) found that Protestant evangelicals’ and
fundamentalists’ social agendas were associated with a conservative economic agenda, in
that the members of the religious conservatives were for the elimination of welfare and

for scaling back government on anti poverty programs. Wilcox and Rozell (2000) linked

this appeal for individualist responsibility for economic conditions to the Calvinist
heritage in which the Protestant evangelical dogma is rooted.

Additional research conducted about the religious conservatives has included other
conservative religious groups. Some of the work done has analyzed Catholics’ religious
beliefs and sociopolitical views. Conservatism with respect to Catholics has been less
assessed through specific conservative dogma, and has instead been assessed through
measuring the believer’s relationship to God through commitment to others or through
the believer’s claim to adhere to the religious truth (Jelen 1991b). Also here, adherence to
truth claims was associated with social conservatism, even though some of the social
values, like the anti-abortion, were not found to affect the Catholics’ economic attitudes
in political issues like job security and Republican voting, in contrast with the
evangelicals (Wald 1997). Some research has put the preference for moral values over
economic concerns in relation to voting behavior and has found Catholics’ tend to align
politically with the Republican Party (Rozell and Das Gupta 2006). Other research has
measured religious dogma with personal commitment to ones’ religious devotion and has
found that strict religiosity and political conservatism are related, but more so for
Protestant evangelicals than for Catholics (Green et al. 1996).

Still other studies have concretely used the context of abortion in order to examine
the association between religious dogma, moral values and views about the causes of
poverty. A.J. Blasi (2006) measured this association using religion, moral values and
voting behavior and found that the frequency of church attendance and personal praying
was linked to anti-abortion and anti gay values, which were both strongly linked to voting

for Bush in the 2004 elections. Cook and her colleagues (Cook et al. 1992) also found an

association between gender hierarchical thinking and anti-abortion, even though they
found Catholics were less conservative with respect to political opinions than white
evangelicals. David Leege and Lyman Kellstedt (1993a) explored the individualist
connection (through formal behavior like performing religious rituals) and
communitarian connection to God (through the care for others) in order to identify the
relationship between religious dogma, moral values and political views. They found that
individualist religiosity was related to opposition to abortion, conservative women's
rights and male-female family roles, and was generally associated with Republican voting
preference.

All these studies, which compose in a larger sense the flame of evaluating the
connection between conservative religious dogma, moral values and economic and
political views, have in common that morality is understood as consisting of strong
family values, or social traditionalism. And opposition to sexual permissiveness is based
on women’s roles as they are embedded in gender hierarchy (Balmer 1994).

Research so far has not dealt comparatively with the structure of the beliefs, on
which the association between moral, gender relations and economic views about poverty
is built. This dissertation compares the Protestant and Catholic conservatives’ religious
dogma to understand the structure of the religious beliefs on which moral ideology is
built, and how both religious dogma and moral ideology are associated with the view
about the causes of poverty. This comparison is done through a new perspective. The
association between dogma, moral ideology and economic attitudes is framed in the
concept of ahistorical religiosity. This work will discuss how the Protestant and Catholic

conservatives’ strict dogmas about gender relations are ahistorical and that the ahistorical

feature of the Protestant conservatives’ beliefs is textual. In addition, the present work
will argue that the ahistorical feature of the Catholic conservatives’ beliefs is grounded in
the bureaucratic structure of the Catholic Church.

In order to do this, this study will look at the Protestant belief in the inerrant Bible
and the gender relations portrayed there and the Catholic Churches’ teaching about
sexuality. This study will compare the gender relations revealed fiom the Protestant
inen'ant Bible and the Catholic Church to get an insight in how these gender relations are
transformed into the views about the responsibility of poverty.

Methods

Data were collected through survey methods. Questionnaires were distributed in
Catholic and Protestant churches in the Greater Lansing Area. Furthermore
questionnaires were distributed in Catholic Social Services Organizations and Right to
Life Pregnancy Counseling Services located in the areas between Ann Arbor and
Saginaw and between Grand Rapids and Detroit.

In relation to the churches where the questionnaires were distributed, focus was
given to those religious organizations composed of mainly white members. Studies have
shown, in relation to Protestant evangelicals (Gilens 1999; McConkey 2001; Stacey
1996), that both black and white evangelicals have the same orthodox social values
regarding the protection of the family in opposition to sexual permissiveness, divorce,
gay marriage and especially abortion. African American evangelical Protestants are
concerned about the breakdown of the family, as white evangelicals are, but they do not
search for the causes of the phenomenon entirely in feminism, secular humanism or the

liberal elites. African Americans search for the causes first and foremost, in economic

and social problems (Green et al. 1996: 186).

Antiracist words have not been able to erase the Christian Right's long history of
continuing support for a host of politics that disproportionately hurt Afiican Americans
(Berlet and Lyons 2000: 264). Despite similar gender ideology and religious dogma of
Afiican American conservative Protestants and the Christian Right, the former are
demographically very distinct from the Christian Right (Park and Reimer 2002). Michael
Emerson and Christian Smith (2000) investigated the reason why black and white
evangelicals are not united. White evangelicals are more individualist and less structural
in their explanations of black-white inequalities than other white Americans, and they
cite lack of effort as the reason why individuals are not successful in the workforce or
marketplace. With all the social traditionalism and religious rigor that Afiican American
evangelical Protestants share with their white counterparts, they directly feel the socio-
economic irnplications of Christian Right policies align with the Republican Party. Most
of the African Americans vote Democratic, and this is maintained for African American
evangelicals (Wilcox and Rozell 2000). Betty DeBerg (1998) propones that the Christian
Right in the current political context is consolidated by and large as a white movement
not only opposing government involvement with respect to welfare but also affirmative
action at all levels. The principal target audience of the Christian Right remains the white
community (Green 1995).

This focus regarding race was applied to Protestant conservatives in evangelical and
fundamentalist churches, only. With respect to the Catholic Church there is no Church
organizational distinction between parishes possible, as is the case with the Protestant

counterpart, where most evangelical and fundamentalist churches are independent and

free of any overarching organization. Also, there are relative few Afiican American
Catholics in the United States. About three percent of all Catholics in the United States
are African American (Backgrounder 2009). Also in relation to the distribution of
questionnaires to Catholic Social Services and Right to Life Pregnancy Counseling
Services located in Mid Michigan, no restrictions were applied as means of getting some
phenomenological insight into the demographic composition of the service centers
approached

Findings

The results of this dissertation reveal that religious conservatives’ views about the
individualist responsibility for poverty, is based on distinct belief structures for Catholics
and Protestants. For Catholic conservatives the structures are based on their sexual
morality. For Protestants, structures are based on their hierarchical gender ideology.
However, findings about the concept of ahistorical religiosity suggest that religious
conservatives’ values about sex and gender are not directly transformed into the views
about the causes of poverty but through distinct beliefs that are rooted in the Catholic and
Protestant religions. Catholic conservatives transform their sexual morals into their
beliefs through abortion attitudes. For Protestant conservatives, their frequency of Bible
reading is the means through which their hierarchical gender ideology is transformed into
beliefs.

The findings suggest, however, that it is not the religious beliefs about abortion and
the frequency of Bible reading that is associated with the view about poverty. Abortion
ideology and frequency of Bible reading are the means through which sexual morality is

made salient to the Catholics and that makes the hierarchical gender ideology salient to

the Protestants.

Results also indicate that the factual gender relations revealed from religious
conservatives’ domestic labor distribution does not influence their views about the
responsibility for poverty. However, their views and beliefs about gender relations are
distinctly structured for Catholics, in a different way than for Protestants. For Catholics,
gender relations beliefs are based on their sexual morality, for Protestants on phenomena
indicating hierarchical gender ideology. These findings are parallel to those of the
religious conservatives’ views about the individualist responsibility for poverty,
indicating that the ideology about gender hierarchy and sexual morality influence
Protestant and Catholic conservatives’ economic view about the individualist
responsibility for poverty more so than their actual gender relations.

Outline of the Project ’

Chapter One describes the association between the conservative Protestant and
Catholic religious dogmas and the believers’ moral values. The chapter explains how the
most emphasized moral values of the faithful in the historical context of gender
equalitarian tendencies are sexual morals. Sexual morals are examined in relation to
specific Protestant and Catholic religious features. It also explains why the specific
sexual morals of Catholic and Protestant conservatives are not traditional, but ahistorical
and apart from an empirical development of religious dogma and morality. This chapter
argues that it is sexual morality that makes the religion salient to the believer.

Chapter Two propounds that sexual morality is structured in an ideology of gender
hierarchy that has its origin in the male bread winner model, which occurred as a result of

the onset of the transformation of society from an agricultural to an industrial basis in the

10

19th century. This chapter puts the ideological structure of the male bread winner in
ahistorical perspective and in relation to the specific Protestant and Catholic conservative
dogmas. It proposes that the structure of moral beliefs for Catholic conservatives is their
sexual morality and for Protestant conservatives their hierarchical gender ideology. The
concept of neo-patriarchy sheds light on the difference between factual gender relations
of the everyday situation of religious conservatives and their world view beliefs about the
gender relations.

Chapter Three shows the relationship between the moral values of the religious
conservatives and their economic world view. It proposes that Catholic and Protestant
conservatives’ ahistorical perceptions about morals are related to their views about the
responsibility for poverty. It argues that the association between moral values and
economic attitudes for Protestants is based on their hierarchical gender ideology, as
compared to Catholics, for whom the association is based on their sexual morality.

Chapter Four presents the strategy and process of data collection. The chapter further
describes the variables used in the analysis. Finally, the chapter presents the analytical
tool used to interpret the data.

Chapter Five displays the results of the analysis from this thesis. It displays the
analysis about the concept of ahistorical religiosity, the findings about neo-patriarchal
gender relations, and the evaluation of the religious conservatives’ views about the
responsibility for poverty.

Finally, Chapter Six discusses the results and their implications. This chapter
summarizes the results with respect to the hypotheses dealt within this dissertation. The

study’s limitations as well as frrrther research are also discussed.

ll

Chapter 1

THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR

Strict Religious Dogma: The Fundamentalist Context of the Focus on Morality

In the next few pages I discuss Protestant fundamentalist and Catholic conservative
dogma in order to develop the grounds to an insight into the association between strict
dogma and moral values. In this chapter I present the fundamentalist background of strict
Christian dogma, which provides a context for a discussion of how ahistoricall religiosity
has sexual connotations, based on the current historical context of gender egalitarian
ideology in the larger society. By ahistorical I mean there is nothing in the core of the
Church’s tradition of rites and sacraments that is produced by the human mind or
configured by cultural and historical circumstances. The characteristics of ahistorical
religiosity of the Catholic Church are that her traditions are unconstructed by human
experience or time. In this respect the symbols of the ahistorical dogma are made
changeless and errorless (Gilkey 1974). The features that make Protestantism ahistorical I
see located in the claim of inerrancy of the Bible. The ahistorical character of inerrancy
lies in the rejection of any hidden meaning of the Biblical words that could be interpreted
in various historical perspectives and the perceived objectivity excludes a contested
interpretation of the Bible (Barr 1978).

This background is essential to understanding my discussion of ahistorical religiosity
in the following subchapters. For Protestant conservatives, sexual morality and the fight
against moral decay are necessary for salvation, and for Catholic conservatives, these are

indispensable to reach God’s grace. The discussion shall be the grounds for

 

’ The term “ahistorical” was suggested to me by Gene Burns in a conversation in May 2007.

12

understanding why the association between strict dogma and moral values is transformed
into hierarchical gender ideology and opinions about the causes of poverty.

Moral values have become a political issue during the last 30 years, some literature
says, as a backlash to the protest movements of the 19605’(Sanbonmatsu 2002). Other
writing (Dionne 2008) purports moral values have become politicized as a defense
against the feared atomization of society that was seen as a consequence of the breakup
of authority structures. There is no challenge to the argument, however, that the advent of
moral values has come fi'om people who follow conservative religious dogma (Brady and
Han 2006; Campbell 2006; Evans 2003; Soper 2001). They consist of Protestant
fundamentalists and evangelicals, as well as those fiom other conservative religions, such
as the Catholic and Jewish religions. What they all have in common is a traditional
heritage with respect to social values. They generally seek to limit legal abortion,
eliminate all laws that protect gays from job and housing discrimination, and alter the
curriculum in the public schools in a variety of areas ranging from sex education to
biology to the latter to include creationism besides Darwin, and history (Green et a1.
1996; Smidt 2001; Wilcox 2000; Woodberry and Smith 1998).

Among these traditionalists, doctrinal rigor is cited most often in empirical literature,
as in Protestants reading the Bible literally and believing in the apocalypse and
revivalism (Guth et a1. 1997; Guth et al. 1996b; Leege and Kellstedt 1993a). Doctrinal
rigor in Catholicism includes the belief in the infallibility of the Pope and the vertical
male Church hierarchy as sole mediator of the sacraments (Evans 2002; Manning 1999).
In order to understand why religious conservatives are attracted to moral values is to

understand why people with strict religious dogma are against abortion, gay rights or sex

13

education in the public schools.

Early surveys about abortion (Ginsburg 1989; Granberg 1978; Luker 1984; Neitz
1981; Spitzer 1987) show that the more people were religious the more they revealed
sentiments against abortion. Harold Grasmick and colleagues (1990) found that personal
religiosity was too unspecific and not the determining factor related to values collected
under the umbrella term “social traditionalism.” They found that specific doctrine, not
commitment to one’s religion (church attendance, prayer), was important in determining
support for social traditionalism—expressed in an ideology of a gender divided family
structure and fundamentalist doctrine (measured as reading the Bible literally)——and
showed the strongest positive direct effect on traditionalism. Others (Guth et al. 1996a;
Jelen 2000; Tamney 2002) have revealed that people with fundamentalist beliefs show
the strongest opposition to abortion, gay marriage, or other topics regarding moral values.
Fundamentalists split from Protestant mainline church groups, like the Presbyterians and
Methodists and later the Baptists at the end of the 19th century, and started to consolidate
themselves into their own faiths. Modernists and fundamentalists disagreed about how to
read the Bible and modemizers started to reinterpret the Bible (Barr 2002; Harris 2002).
As I provide the discussion in the following subchapters, questions of social morality
based on gender hierarchy were among the most important ones of this dispute.

Fundamentalists, the literature says (Dinges 1993; Marsden 2006: 235) are more
radical in degree of applying religious dogma and social values literally than other
Protestants, such as the evangelicals. The content of the fundamentalists’ religious dogma
is basically not different of the evangelicals’. The literature finds this matter of degree

reflected in the dogma of Protestantism in general and fundamentalism in particular

14

(Marsden 1987). An emphasis on sin is paramount in Protestantism, and in the stricter
religious rigor of the fundamentalist tradition the focus is on the apocalypse which
expresses the multitude of punishments for humans’ sinful behavior (Berlet and Lyons
2000; Harris 1998; Vinz 1997). The social issues involved are linked to moral values
over abortion, gay marriage and family traditions.

Protestant Conservative Dogma: Morality against Apocalypse and Sin

According to apocalyptic belief, social phenomena like high divorce rates, abortion
_ and crime are testimony for the biblically predicted end of all times , indicating that
moral values have been abandoned and the once hegemonic social traditions of the pious
are endangered (Fischer 2006; Marsden 1991: 36, 162). In other words, sin is perceived
in connection with “value” deterioration. In the pre—millennial2 dispensational
perspective, the advent of legalized abortion has the symbolic value that the reign of sin
in society has reached crisis levels (Hunter 1983: 30) that can only be relieved through
the second coming of Christ.

Even though apocalyptic world views have flourished in periods of world crisis since
early Christendom, and in non-Christian religions as well, Ernest Sandeen (1978) shows
in his historical comparative analysis that pre-millennialism is not a feature of early
Christianity. It did not occur until after the start of the 19th century. Until that time,
Christians in general, and more specifically evangelicals, had been taught not to expect
the second coming during their lifetime. It would arrive after the biblically announced

millennium and, therefore, be hundreds of years away with time to work for the social

 

2 Pre-millenarian Protestant theology is escharological and sees society sinking into disaster before the
second coming of Christ, when he will install 1000 years of peace for the saved ones (Sandeen 1978).

15

betterment of society (Sandeen 1978: 4, 12)3.

Despite the end-times atmosphere seen in the pre-nrillennial dispensationalist
worldview, the doctrine reveals a remedy for salvation: belief in living a life that
conforms to the literal truth of the Bible through denouncing social decay and fighting the
moral deterioration of society (Boyer 1992: 93, 97; Lawrence 1995). The doctrine
requests the personal acceptance of Christ as one’s savior. Conservative Christians are
concerned only with the perfection of saved individuals, and this perfection is what leads
those individuals through the struggle against moral decay (Kepel 1994 p.121).

Catholic Conservative Dogma: Moral Militancy for Grace through
Obedience to Church Hierarchy

While the link between the Protestant conservative dogma and the urge to protect
traditional values seems evident as a means to gain salvation, it cannot explain why other
religious conservatives are committed to moral militancy. Though Catholicism does not
emphasize apocalypse, sin and textual truth, Catholic conservatives, like the
fundamentalist Christians, are ardent fighters against abortion (Cuneo 1989). They
believe that, as an expression of activism for their faith, they are defenders of social
traditionalism and especially of their Church’s emphasis on a patriarchal hierarchy
(Cuneo 1997). In contrast to the apocalyptic God who requires the perfection of saved
individuals, Catholicism emphasizes grace through sacraments, which transports

salvation through the mediation of the Church—a hierarchy that begins with God and is

 

3 Not all millenarian interpretations of Protestant theology see the end-times as disastrous. Another
eschatology that is more optimistic emphasizes the continued success of the church, the steady
improvement of men and society, and the eventual culmination of Christianity in the coming of a literal
millennium (Sandeen 1978: 5), at the end of which Christ’s second coming would occur. Post-
millennialism often has a politically liberal connotation because it implies that the second coming will
occur after people had been working on the betterment of society to improve it to divine kingdom-like
conditions. The idea developed from Calvinism about the betterment of men and society within a theocratic
state (Vinz 1997).

16

passed through the Church to the ‘ordinary humans.’(Gilkey 1974) The dogmatic
conservatism in Catholicism that is comparable to Protestant fundamentalism4 lies in the
rituals and in the male Church hierarchy.

Catholic conservatives are loyal to Rome. They believe Papal teachings are inerrant
and decisions are final (Hebblethwaite 1988). They believe it is essential to follow the
Vatican’s teachings in order to gain God’s grace (Miller 1993). This rigidness starkly
contrasts with mainline Catholic laypersons who do not strictly follow the Vatican,
especially in matters of teaching moral values like humane vitae and the sacrament of
marriage (D'Antonio et al. 1989).

Since the Second Vatican Council (1962 and 1965) the Catholic Church has
officially started to deal with pluralism and liberal ideology. Liberal bishops and
theologians participated in deciding which doctrine and ritual counted for salvation
rather than the magisterial teaching of the Vatican alone (Hebblethwaite 1986).

One of the major changes after Vatican 11 involved an incision in the vertical male
hierarchy. Women were allowed to take over the functions of local church services that
had been previously reserved only for the priests as the sole mediators of sacraments
(Kelly 1999; Perl and McClintock 2001 ). Catholic conservatives say this is a
misinterpretation of Vatican II. Richard Schoenherr (2002)5 propounds that the changes

introduced through Vatican II resulted in a dramatic loss of the mystery and supernatural

 

4 There is a discussion in the literature about whether Catholic fundamentalism exists in the first place since
fundamentalism has been linked to textual inerrancy (Cuneo 1995, Dinges 1993, Weaver and Appleby
1995)

5 The Vatican H council affirmed the fundamental freedom of men and women and the primacy of
conscience in the process of moral decision-making. This replaced the customary preoccupation with
objective norms and Obligations. So, the Council gave implicit legitimacy to a degree of dissent from the
moral strictures, sexual or otherwise, publicly proclaimed by the Church (Greeley 1985). Greeley insists,
however, with or without Vatican II, obedience to Catholic moral teaching would not have survived the
19705 or 805, when the sexual revolution reached the larger society.

17

power that the system had previously held of the clearly predicted mediation of God’s
grace and the way to salvation.

Catholic conservatives, believing in the righteousness of Vatican teaching, see their
place in God’s grace jeopardized by the liberal changes that the Church hierarchy has
tolerated. These conservatives want to revitalize the Church through a campaign of_moral
militancy (Weaver and Appleby 1995b). They claim that the US. bishops focus most of
their attention on unemployment and economic justice and, therefore, treat abortion as a
secondary issue, diffusing their passion for fetal life. They make Catholic bureaucrats
responsible for the liberalism in the Church and locate problems of moral disobedience
within the laxness of bishops and priests who do not follow up with Papal teachings of
religious catechism and sexual morality (Cuneo 1997: 48).

The reason why moral values are central in conservative Catholic and Protestant
dogma is because they show the believer the way to salvation. For Protestant
fundamentalists this is an individual matter, a personal relationship with God through his
words in the Bible, as compared to the Catholic conservatives who reach God’s grace
through the mediation of Church bureaucracy.

Religious Salience in Ahistorical Religiosity: The Importance of Sexual Morality

We saw above that moral values are a means to reach salvation for the religious
conservatives. Why is this so and what is the meaning of the moral?

Catholic Ahistorical Religiosity

Several authors have investigated how dogma is linked to the ideological structure of

a particular religious tradition (Dinges 1986; Fiorenza 1993; Marsden 2006; Weaver

1993). They have compared Catholic conservative dogma with Protestant

18

fundamentalism. William Dinges (1986: 261) found that the main zeal for the Protestant
and Catholic conservatives is the spiritual warfare for truth and righteousness. He shows
that both religious groups profess to be objective. Focusing on Catholicism, he propounds
that, according to the conservatives, there is nothing in the core of the Church’s tradition
of rites and sacraments that is produced by the human mind or configured by cultural and
historical circumstances. The characteristics of ahistorical religiosity of the Catholic
Church are that her traditions are unconstructed by human experience or time. In this
respect the symbols of the ahistorical dogma are made changeless and errorless, and
Langdon Gilky (1974: 28) argues that the nearly SOO-year-old Catholic rites (established
at the Cormcil of Trent: 1545-63) are in this perspective autonomous or independent of
experiential grounding and ultimately independent of philosophical questioning.

Ifwe take into consideration that Catholic conservatives’ way to God’s grace leads
through obedience to the Church hierarchy and moral militancy, John Paul’s H
philosophy about humans and the world, too, can be understood as ahistorical. Peter
Hebblethwaite (1986; 1988) analyzed the religio-political decisions that John Paul II took
and thinks the social justice pronouncements against wars and poverty for which he was
known were clearly second in importance behind his policies on sexual morality. His
reasoning about sexuality was, according to Hebblethwaite, lacking any historical
dimension and was bare of any insight about the human consciousness. John Paul’s 11
view of humans was constructed without consideration of any historical or natural
experience. Hebblethwaite (1986: 46) insists that, according to the Pope’s human
philosophy, people do not experience a work situation or a relation to human rights, but

he was viewing humans as if they were purely philosophical entities about whom he

19

could draw general conclusions about the proper conditions of work, the defense of
human rights, or the errors of Marxist collectivism.

This ahistorical and abstract thought, however, is not simply a reaction to modernity.
Catholic traditions were not dehistorized by definition in pre-Vatican [1 rule. They also
do not constitute original Catholic tradition. Rawlinson (1926: 117) already compared
two visions of papacy eight decades ago: one in which the pope claims to be the organ of
truth, who is responsible to God alone and the faithful are bound to obey, and the second
in which the papacy is the organ for articulating the experience of the Christian body as a
whole, where the Church’s function is not to promulgate truth but to regulate the general
line of Christian thought.

Sexual Morals as Power Structure of the Catholic Hierarchy

Ahistorical religiosity makes it clear to the individual Catholic conservative as to
how to behave in order to reach salvation. The errorless character of the ahistorical rituals
that mediate God’s grace leaves no uncertainty in being included in the community of
those saved for eternity. Above, we saw that the way to salvation leads through moral
values. The question remains, why are moral values for Catholic conservatives based on
sexuality and not, for example, on social justice?

The answer lies in the ideological structure of the American Catholic Church. In his
analysis of the Vatican’s religious ideology, Gene Burns (1992) determined that ideology
is a power structure through which the Catholic Church maintains the authority that she
derives entirely fi'om religious and moral issues. Specifically, the Vatican’s power is
based on an ahistorical view about sexuality that becomes obvious if the Church’s

dealings with the laity’s sexuality are put into a historical perspective. Burns (1992)

20

investigated the historical reason for this development and showed that, with the
separation between church and state that occurred with the advent of the nation states in
19th century Europe, the Catholic hierarchy started to ideologically distinguish issues of
faith and morals on the one hand, and issues of politics and social problems on the other.
Until the 19th century, states had some say about Church internal personnel politics and,
in turn, the Church had the right to be the priority religion in those states. When the
nation states stopped enforcing these former rights, the Church could not be involved in
state politics any more. As a consequence of this loss of state-based power, Rome
increased its emphasis on the faith and morals of Catholic individuals and families to
maintain the basis of its religious authority.

Burns (1999: 68, 74, 77) shows that Catholics’ sexual morality is one of the few
areas of Catholics’ lives in which Rome can claim absolute authority. The Vatican
derives this authority from its interpretation of Natural Law (in Catholic religion, God’s
will) in which sexuality must only have the intention of procreation, and anydeviation
from that intention is mortally sinful (Burns 1999: 78; Kissling 1999). The ahistorical
character of the Vatican’s interpretation of Natural Law regarding sexuality can be seen
in that it is bare of any inclusion of the believers’ consciousness. Vatican II, had after all,
affirmed the fundamental fieedom of men and women and recognized the importance of
conscience in the process of moral decision-making. So, the Council implicitly gave
legitimacy to a degree of dissent about the moral rules (Greeley 1985). Mary Jo Weaver
(1999: 92) argued that the Vatican’s refusal to give any weight to the belief that “God’s
revelation continues to unfold in human experience” is responsible for its logic in matters

of sexuality. It precludes any change of the view of the Church hierarchy with respect to

21

contraception, abortion, homosexuality, divorce, or remarriage -- all issues linked to the
range of sexuality. The reason, Weaver (1999) says, is the Church will not understand
sexual pleasru'e that is not open to procreation. The hierarchy’s refusal to see sexuality in
the light of human experience is ahistorical because sexuality without taking human
experience into consideration comes down to a philosophical entity (about which the
Church hierarchy seems to draw conclusions as necessary for its power maintenance).

The visibility of sexism in organized Catholic religion is highlighted today by the
relative decline of sexism in secular society (Martos and Hegy 1998: 19). Most American
Catholics ignore Vatican teaching on matters of sexuality, specifically contraception,
divorce or remarriage (Weaver 1999). The distance between lay Catholics and the
hierarchy is most effectively visible in relations to controversies around abortion and
homosexuality. Abortion is to the Vatican (including the American bishops) of such
overwhelming importance that the hierarchy does not hesitate to condemn or endorse
certain government policies, or to ex-communicate pro-choice Catholic politicians (Burns
1992: 109), as American bishops threatened to do in the 19905. Interestingly, the Vatican
does not interfere so strongly in other social issues about which its followers disagree
with its stance, such as regarding economic welfare or issues of peace and war.

However the complementary view of women, as Weaver (2006) calls the Vatican’s
relationship to the other half of the Catholic community, is ahistorical because the Church
cannot tolerate a plurality of moral orders but is fixed into a gender hierarchical ideology.
Weaver (1994) goes on in her discussion to claim that the Vatican’s view on sexuality is
not traditional, because traditions are pluralist. Traditional views are the wisdom of the

Church that has accumulated for ages and therefore allows for a historical comparative

22

perspective of events. History and experience as acknowledged in the principle of the
individual’s primacy of conscience in the process of moral decision-making, however,
make salvation rmcertain (O'Meara 1990). As against this, the unquestionable vertical
male Church hierarchy promises a way to salvation that is authoritative and
unambiguously sacred.

Ahistorical religiosity can be summarized on the individual level for Catholics with
Richard Schoenherr’s (1987) notion as to capture the spirit of faith through the strictly
defined truth and correct religious celebration like rituals and sacraments that are
believed to guide to the truth. Regarding the Catholic hierarchy, from which the believer
is acted upon through the Church bureaucracy (Burns 1999) the ahistorical is embedded
in the Church bureaucracy that teaches its truth about intentional procreativity of
sexuality. This truth is absolute because it is the power base of the Church From the
angle of absolute truth of intentionally procreative sexuality any historical perspective
about sexuality has to be abandoned. A tradition about it cannot develop with which the
faithful would be able to apply their experience and evaluate it on the background of the
learned Church tradition in the process of decision making. The inclusion of the
believers’ consciousness - permitted in dealing with Catholic rules since Vatican II
(Greeley 1985) -- is not allowed with respect to sexuality.

Protestant Ahistorical Religiosity

The features that make dogmatic truth in Protestantism ahistorical have their origin
in the inerrant Bible. The ahistorical character of inerrancy lies in the rejection of any
hidden meaning of Biblical words. The perceived objectivity excludes a contested

interpretation of the readings. Faith on this background depends, according to James Barr

23

(1978), on the formal structure of the text. The belief in inerrant objectivity is essential
because, if one part is questionable, others can be questioned, too, and the belief system
breaks apart. Protestant fundamentalists have the desire to establish a firm, rational basis
for Christian belief (Marsden 1991: 162,167). They regard the Bible as filled with
scientific statements and interpret the scripture as refening to literal historical events that
are being described exactly.

Thus, rather than the irrationality of emotionalism with which fundamentalism has
often been identified, it is rationality upon which the conservative religious dogma is
based (Tilley 1993: 194). The “super rationality” (F iorenza 1993) of the inerrant Bible
discounts human experience and any historical accounts. The strong emphasis put on the
inerrancy of the scripture generates a negative attitude towards empirical interpretations
and the historical development of theology in general. It upholds what is thought to be
traditional orthodox Christian doctrine (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988: 27, 35), but lacking any
development over time, the doctrine is ahistorical. The traditions of the ahistorical dogma
are “invented” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983) because they were created as a response to
the novel situation of changing gender relations and because the lack of precedent for
change or the resistance to change precludes the dogrna’s social development.

The declination of social development of dogma that comes from the perception that
the Bible is inerrant precludes any leverage in interpreting the Biblical text. Sandeen
(1978: 13) shows that there was a pre-inerrant Bible reading of the early 19th century
where spiritualized and figurative fulfillment was sought for every biblical prophecy. But
in the inerrant Bible, mystical, metaphorical, and symbolical perceptions of reality have

largely disappeared. There is no veil over the meaning of symbols. Dispensationalist

24

belief contends that allegorical and spiritualized interpretations of prophecy are a
manifestation of unbelief and a denigration of the authority of the scripture (Marsden
1991; Sandeen 1978: 131).

The request for theological interpretation of the Bible as inerrant is not something
pertaining to original Christendom but a consequence of the quarrel between theological
traditionalists and modemists (Harris 1998: 29). The emphasis on the ahistorical
inerrancy of the Bible started then, when liberalizing theological trends threatened the
values of the traditionalists.

Biblical Control over Sexual Morality: Gender Hierarchy as Means of
Salvation

The ahistorical interpretation of the Bible guides the believer to the absolute truth of
a value system that is inerrant and therefore shows a clear objective in the beliefs that
lead to salvation. Above, we saw that the way to salvation leads through moral values.
Also, in the context of conservative Protestantism, we have to ask why moral values are
linked to sexuality and not to other value systems, such as those framed from the social
gospel. In the Catholic conservative context, morality is entirely intertwined with the
power structure of the Church hierarchy and its view that sexuality has to be intentionally
procreative. As will be proponed below, in the Protestant conservative context, sexual
morality is also an important ground of religious authority.

The culture that gave rise to the ahistorical dogma of conservative Protestantism was
deeply concerned with matters of scripture and gender. Margaret Bendroth (1993233, 51)
investigated the beginning of the biblical inerrancy movement at the end of the 19th

century, led by Princeton Calvinist theologians, and their insistence that women’s

25

subordination is inherent in the created order. The movement unified to resist liberalizing
theological and social trends that started to move away from Biblical literalism and from
the gender hierarchy that is linked to that literalism (Harris 1998: 21). It started at the
time when the majority status of Protestant pietistic values began to be challenged by
Catholic and other religious immigration and could not culturally reproduce themselves
any longer rmder conditions of urbanization, industrialization and secularization.

Martin Riesebrodt (1993: 197), who studied Protestant fundamentalism and Iranian
fundamentalist Shiism comparatively, argues that fundamentalism is a reaction to the
structural transformation of interpersonal relationships in all social spheres: gender, labor,
and race. The authority of interpersonal relationships in Protestant hegemonic times was
based on unquestioned power structures that were ultimately rooted in “the personalistic
principle of piety” (Riesebrodt 1993: 207). Personalistic is understood as religious
individualism in which Protestant conservatives are, through the Bible’s word, in direct
contact with the beyond (Kepel 1994: 114). Contrary to the principle of piety the
structure of the interpersonal relationships had become a matter of legitimization based
on performance. In the replacement of pietism with performance in respect to
interpersonal relationships lies the frame for immorality. Adherence to ahistorical dogma
is, following Riesebrodt’s (1993) fundamentalism analysis, a protest against the
dissolution of patriarchal structures, not only in the family, but also in economics and
politics. The perception of immorality has, then, to do with the changing structures of
power that were previously rooted in the Bible, within which people have interacted in
relatively uncontested ways. However, the erosion of patriarchal norms and structures

takes place most visibly in the sphere of the family, in the relationship between the

26

sexes and, therefore, in the definition of sexual morality.

From her analysis of conservative Protestant magazines and books, Betty DeBerg
(2000) came to the conclusion that the inenancy of the Bible is so important for the
dogmatically conservative Protestants because it was the major weapon for the
convention of the separate gender spheres ideology. The separation between the gendered
provider — care giver spheres is taken from the literally read Bible as divinely sanctioned
and a pre-requisition to avoid the calamities of sin. In the times of assaulted patriarchal
values, the theologians of the inerrant Bible read that women are naturally prone to
insubordination and need to be regulated into salvation. What is considered “natural” is
untouched by social development and individual human experience and becomes
ahistorical. The inferiority of women, Bendroth (1993: 51) shows, is traced back to the
Fall--Eve’s sin to seduce Adam into disobeying God by eating from the tree of wisdom.
Behind this critique is the conception of woman as the potential seducer of man into sin.

Female sexuality was considered to be an instrument of Satan by the founders of the
Biblical inerrancy movement (Ruthven 2004). The punitive meaning of Satan remains
unchanged throughout theological history, thus with Satan the inerrant Bible has an
ahistorical view of women’s sexuality. The solution has been to render this sexuality
harmless and subdue it into motherhood within a gender hierarchical family structure
(Gillis 1996). The reason why control over the family is so culturally important to the
Protestant conservatives is because, in the patriarchal family, the values of their religion
are reproduced. Control over the family is of primary concern since it has been
jeopardized, specifically in the public schools, with values formed by historically

influenced human experience instead of pietistic inerrancy, namely with liberalism in sex

27

education and Darwinism (Balmer 1994: 56-60). The Bible-infallibility believers
maintain that outside of the hierarchical man-woman-child institution, women’s sexuality
poses a danger to the stability of the worldly order and to religious salvation. Therefore,
sexual relations outside patriarchal marriage are forbidden and taboo because they do not
serve the gender-based division of labor that the Bible portrayed through channeling
female sexuality into motherhood (Bendroth 2001).

In summary, the focus on the formalism of the believer’s religious behavior
(Schoenherr 1987) is expressed in Protestant ahistorical religiosity with the behavior such
as frequency of Bible reading (see chapter 5). With respect to Protestant conservative
dogma, faith depends on the formalism of the specific Biblical words in which the
inerrant truth is located (Barr 2002). Viewing the inerrant truth in the Biblical words
makes the hierarchical gender relations portrayed there divine and the subsequent control
of female sexuality sanctioned by God (DeBerg 2000). An empirically founded view of
gender relations cannot develop at a time where also religious conservative women
contribute economically or provide for the household income. The ahistorical maintains
the inerrancy of the Biblical truth, which not only sees the lack of gender relations as
sinful on the individual level, but excluding any empirical and historical facts from social
analysis, also socially detrimental. This exclusion allows for a direct link between
personal sexual moral as precondition of salvation and the restructuration of society
(Sennet 1994, also see chapter 3 of this thesis). From the ahistorical focus on the pure
Biblical word the lack of gender hierarchy is seen as stimulating the passions — because
of Eve’s seduction of Adam into disobeying God (Bendroth 1993) which is seen as

hindering men, in particular, fi'om adopting a moral way of life and thereby destroying

28

 

families and plunging them into poverty and misfortune.

The question I posed at the beginning of the chapter was how strict dogma and
opposition to social issues like abortion, gay rights or sex education are associated, or
why religious conservatives are attracted to moral values. Both Catholic and Protestant
conservative faiths focus on the assertion that they provide the absolute truth about right
and wrong, how to please God and gain space in eternal life or to provoke condemnation
forever. The strict dogma of absolute truth in its either or condition is ahistorical because
it excludes the consideration of changing human experience in different historical
contexts. Instead it leaves a clear way to salvation, and hierarchical gender ideology and
sexual morality are the means to achieve it. The firndamentalist Protestant Bible and the
bureaucracy of the Catholic Church both describe the truthful way of life in the context of
sexual morality in order to maintain patriarchal power relations. The truth they follow is
built on different dogmatic structures: the textual emphasizing the personalistic
(Riesebrodt 1993) relationship to God, where the individual is directly responsible for
how to gain salvation, versus the bureaucratic, where the believer is acted upon (Burns
1992) by the Church hierarchy in reaching grace.

Religious Salience: A Conservative Factor in the Current Historical
Context

Ahistorical dogma relies on a static heritage that contains all the truth necessary for
dealing with the ethical problems of life without including any discussion of human
experience (Fiorenza 1993: 241). The conservative political effect of the ahistorical
search for truth in the current political context of discussions of gender equality comes

from the view of the separate spheres and natural differences between men and women to

29

which religious conservatives adhere. Holding right views is normative for all other
aspects of religious identity for them (Marsden 2006), and they recognize this through the
salience of their beliefs.

James Guth and John Green (1993: 159) reviewed the literature about the meaning of
religiosity and how it relates to some aspects of modern political life. When they
measured religiosity with respect to the American political party system, they figured that
it is the strength of attachment to religious beliefs and traditions rather than their specific
content that is vital to understanding the religious underpinning of political ideology
(Guth and Green 1993). The core concept of religious strength, they found, is salience,
the importance that religion has in a person’s life. The link of salience to religious
conservatism is that the more doctrinally conservative a religious tradition is the more
members say their religion is important to them. Also, religious salience was directly
linked to questions of sexuality, morality and abortion, or in general, to “family values”
(Guth and Green 1993: 160), all issues which are components of both Protestant and
Catholic current conservative dogmas and have sexuality as their underpinnings.

Salience: A Source of Meaning and Attitude Construction

Doctrines that have unambiguous standards of truth, like a clearly defined text or
prescribed rites mediated through the organizational hierarchy, are capable of making the
importance of the religion salient to the believers because the unambiguousness of the
doctrine provides the faithful with meaning (Salzman 2008: 15). The source of meaning
is limited through the frame of the dogma of absolute truth. The sacred text is the sole
source of meaning for the Protestants. All concerns are subordinated to the ultimate

concern of living according to the divine will prescribed there (Elliott 2006). Catholic

30

conservatives perceive their religious salience as being aware of performing the right
rituals mediated through the ordained Church hierarchy (Greeley 2000). High religious
salience is based on a closed ideological system. It provides certainty and clear and
accessible standards to guide one through the confusion of modern life. Dinges’ (1987:
146) finding about the resistance to the then new and liberal Mass rituals that were
introduced as a consequence of Vatican 11 gives support to the notion that high religious
salience gives meaning to a purposeful life. Rituals, he found, are core components of
Catholic identity, and their timeless uniformity allows for a clear answer as to what it
means to be a Catholic.

The salience of belief also is a feature that determines an individual’s specific
attitudes and decisions. If various issues are salient for someone, each of the issues is
competing for the person’s awareness and diverts him or her from acting decisively. The
more salient an issue is for one's political philosophy, however, the stronger one's
activism (Kaysen and Stake 2001). This link between the believer’s religious salience and
the salience of his or her political ideology can be seen with the role abortion plays in the
conservative religious community. David Yamane and Elizabeth Oldmixon (2006) found
that high religious salience influences legislative voting, specifically on the issue of
abortion. Abortion is central for the defense of traditional sexual values and often stands
as representative of all phenomena of morality that are a political issue. The impact of
religion upon abortion is mediated by ideology (Emerson 1996), and sexual morality is
the mediator of religion upon abortion.

Protestant conservatives’ salience of their religion makes them read that male

headship -- their verbal expression of hierarchical gender ideology -- in gender

31

 

lit

relationships (Denton 2004; Gallagher 2004; Gallagher and Smith 1999; Grasmick et al.
1990) is essential for a Bible conforming life. Turning away fiom the Bible would be
grounds for sexual permissiveness. If promiscuity is not negatively sanctioned by
religion, they seem to believe, pregnancy is left with the option of abortion instead of
resulting in marriage. Humanae Vitae, the Pope’s request to avoid artificial contraception,
is the context for Catholic conservatives from which they link religious salience to
abortion. For them, artificial contraception is the first step towards abortion because the
Natural Law requirement that sexuality has to serve procreation is violated. Catholic
conservatives oppose artificial contraception even though the credibility of the sexual
teaching of the Church has decreased and lost legitimacy for the general laity since
Vatican H (Cuneo 1997: 18; D'Antonio et al. 2001)6. Also, the Church hierarchy itself
provides a link between religious salience and abortion. Catholic conservatives claim that
US bishops treat the abortion issue secondarily and that many keep silent about the laity’s
disobedience regarding Humanae Vitae. With this contradiction to the .Vatican teaching,
Catholic conservatives are reminded of what is important for their religious identity. Any
dispute about contraception, let alone legal abortion, is a fundamental assault on
Catholicism and means a struggle over Vatican authority (Burns 1999: 69).

In that sense, religious salience is a political activator. Michael Cueno (1997: 75-79)

interviewed pro-life activists and found that their activism is primarily concerned with

 

6 The credibility of the Church’s sexual teaching has not declined, however, because of Vatican II, who
introduced the concept of consciousness in the process of moral decision-making. The Council did give
implicitly legitimacy to a degree of dissent from the moral strictures, sexual or otherwise, publicly
proclaimed by the Church. Greeley (1985: 18) insists that with or without Vatican II, obedience to Catholic
moral teaching would not have survived the 19705 or 805, when the sexual revolution touched the larger
society. In addition, the concept of absolute truth is not simply a pre—Vatican II concept. Catholic orthodox
tradition has left space for interpretation of dogma already in the 19‘” century, with Cardinal Newman
taking into consideration laity consciences under God even when confronted by papal prohibition for
teaching about artificial contraception (Miller 1993: 302).

32

expressing their religious convictions and solidarity. It means, for them, fighting the
hedonistic consumerism of modern life in which the sacredness of created life is
marginal. Activism against abortion may be understood, Cuneo maintains, as a protest
against the moral softness of mainstream Catholicism in the United States. Kathy Rudy
(1996: 55, 56) found for Protestants the same direct link between religious salience and
abortion. She shows that participants of the anti-abortion activist group Operation Rescue
believe salvation will be granted to those who have sacrificed by risking embarrassment
and arrest when picketing in front of abortion clinics. The sacrifice they give, Riesebrodt
(1993) propones, is the eschatological context to prepare for salvation. Accordingly, the
ideological grounds of the political salience of abortion are moral values, and anti-
abortion cannot be separated from religious conservatism. At the same time, abortion has
been given high public salience by the media (F erreeand Gamson 1999), so moral values
have been of high political concern for religious conservatives.

The closed ideological system of ahistorical religiosity provides a clear structure for
what it means to be a religious conservative and why this is important to the believer.
Sexual morality is the object, the background of which makes religion salient to the
conservatives, and the struggle with abortion is how they express their religious salience
publicly. Fred Kerlinger (1984: 31) called this construct the critical referent. It is the
object of an individual’s attitude and is relevant for his or her everyday life. The object of

public expression might change, or other political issues might be added to abortion, as it

seems to be the case with gay marriage in the last few years (Nivola and Brady 2006;

Suarez 2006: 91). The strength of attachment to their religious beliefs makes Christian

conservatives aware of their religion’s importance in their everyday life. Sexual morality

33

is a powerful base upon which the salience of their beliefs is nourished.

34

Chapter 2

THE FACTOR GENDER IDEOLOGY

The Transformation from Traditional to Negotiated Gender Relationships

During the Enlightenment the male-female hierarchy was called into question. The
promise of the Enlightenment was that the God-given power structure of class and gender
could be circumvented by the vision that humans can control the worldthrough
knowledge (McCarthy Brown 1994).What was thought to be natural had become social.
God was being replaced through reason. Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pierson
(I998) explain that the dwindling of traditions forces us to think in terms of risk.
Tradition and nature structured landscapes of action in the past. As things became non-
natural and non-traditional, more human decisions could and had to be made about the
social and natural worlds. Reproduction changed from being a given in nature to a
decision-making process about both starting a family and having sex. It should be
understood that people in pre-modem times had to take risks, too. Giddens and Pierson’s
(1998: 111) argument rests on the assumption that the lack of absolute authority to turn to
brings insecurity. So with piety being pushed into voluntarily following God’s will in the
secular society, we are simultaneously both experts and lay people in different areas of
our lives. At one point we are just forced to make a decision without any ultimate
authority to which we can turn. Some find this quite difficult, but that is the reality of
modernity.

Giddens (1992) propones that sexuality serves as a metaphor for the changes taking

place in society. He argues that sexuality has been integrated into the ideals of love and

35

connected closely to the moral values of Christianity, as one should devote oneself to
God (i.e., love him) in order to know him. Through this process, self-knowledge is
achieved. This became part of a mystical unity between man and woman, and suggests a
more permanent involvement with the love-object. Modernity replaced the arbitrary rule
of mysticism and dogma (Giddens 1992: 40) because of the ascendancy of reason that
promises an understanding of the physical and social processes in everyday life.
Sexuality ceases to have tradition and nature as its main reference but the more self
identity is shaped by reflexivity, the more it becomes a property of the individual. All
relationships can then be called into question by a partner when the situation is felt to be
unfair or suppressive (Giddens 1992: 192). Giddens shows modernity needs a balance
between openness, vulnerability and trust. The lack of socially accepted pietistic rules is
problematic in the sense that it is personally demanding and forces the individual to be
accepting and appreciative of the other.

This situation of risk that we experience in our everyday personal relationships7 in the
United States pluralist society is contrary to the principle of religious salience that
Christian conservatives perceive in the pietistic community. As I outlined in the last
chapter, religious conservatives’ sexual morality and gender ideology is a critical referent
(Kerlinger 1984) for their religious salience. It helps for attitude construction and
decisions in everyday life and through the clear and accessible standards that the strict
dogmas provide religious conservatives’ sexual morality is a closed ideological system
and provides certainty about right and wrong. As such, sexual morality and hierarchical
gender relations can be understood as a guide protecting against the confusion of modern

life.

 

7 This includes not only private relationships but those we experience at the work place or see in public life.

36

Protestant and Catholic conservatives’ high level of religious salience about their
religious traditions and sexual morality also point to the discrepancy between what is
important about who they are and what they see as social decay in the larger society. The
discrepancy they envision in the larger society is jeopardy to their salvation because they
fear the hedonistic values will intrude upon their own religious communities, through
social institutions like the public schools or the work place, in which they necessarily
participate for a living. They refer the social decay that they perceive to the role of
women in society, specifically to their sexuality (Hawley 1999; Stacey 1996).Women’s
sexuality has been an aspect of control over the believer throughout the entire history of
Christianity (Ranke-Heinemann 1990; Runkel 1998). However, as I intended to show
with my discussion of salience of ahistorical religiosity in the previous chapter, it is
religious conservatives’ identity that is linked to this aspect of gender hierarchy in
Christianity. There is a link between identity and belief in sexual morals and hierarchical
gender relations because Protestant salvation and Catholic grace of the faithful depend on
this link. This is specifically reflected upon the current context of relative descendent
sexism as women in the larger society have moved into leadership positions in the
workplace and in politics. From that discrepant perspective of gender hierarchy that the
religious conservatives advocate and relative descendant sexism in the larger society,
women’s sexuality is considered potentially disruptive. On the grounds of these concerns,
’ religious conservatives sense it is important to regulate (women’s) sexuality through

religious traditions.

Traditions implement quite specifically structured relationships and an ethical

regulation of life conduct (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). A value system, where

37

“traditional” sexual morality is the critical referent, does necessarily have a hierarchical
gender ideology. Within this gender ideology, the ethical regulation of life conduct is
derived fi'om patriarchal structural principles and from culturally specific patriarchal
forms. This point of view necessarily implies an ideological power hierarchy between the
genders, with men being allocated the lead As I will explain below in the section of neo-
patriarchy, the meaning of hierarchy has to be qualified in a pluralist society like the
United States. Bendroth (2006) contends that the gender division of labor that
fundamentalists extract from the inerrant Bible as indispensible for a religious life does
not define the political or theological agenda of the recent evangelical movement. But she
acknowledges that fimdamentalists’ resistance to women in leadership positions and the
equating of women’s issues as theologically liberal goes back to the ongoing influence of
some fundamentalist ideological structures.

In what follows, I will give an overview of the theory of gender systems/ gender
relations that emphasizes the cultural background of the gender ideology that is analyzed.
Sexual morality is the cultural background, on which religious conservatives’ gender
relations are analyzed. In addition, I look at the specific Protestant and Catholic religious
cultures of the faithful to see whether there is a difference between the two faiths with
respect to gender relations on the grounds of their sexual morality. This distinction will
provide a preview to the next chapter where the association between sexual morality and
the view about poverty will be investigated. The relevant concern is whether the distinct
Catholic and Protestant conservative cultures demonstrate a difference in the views about
poverty. At the end of this chapter I review the empirical literature on what Riesebrodt

(1993) calls neo-patriarchy. It refers to the fact that any social group that wants to

38

preserve specific traditions adapts to some of the social changes in the pluralist society
and creates new forms of the traditions that they want to preserve. That section shall
show how religious conservatives’ gender relations reflect or not the gender relations in
larger society and shall prepare for the next chapter in which I will follow the question
regarding how religious conservatives’ gender ideology is linked to their economic
ideology.

The Theory of Gender Relations

Cultural and Interpersonal Factors of the Gender Systems Approach

The principles of patriarchy imply a general submission of women under men in all
labor-based cultural settings. The theory of gender systems (Crompton 1999) sees
patriarchy not as the totality of gender relations in a specific context but as one kind of
many other possible gender relations in the totality of the gendered context. Patriarchy is
only a part of the gender systems. It might be used to describe particular kinds of gender
relations as, for example, thehierarchical relationship of men and women in
fimdamentalist churches or the Catholic Church as compared to similar employment
situations in relatively egalitarian positions. The theory of gender systems (Crompton and
Harris 1999: 1-9) recognizes that cultural and interpersonal factors structure gender
relations. It will recognize that the different cultural contexts of church and employment
situations draw along different interpersonal relationships between men and women.

I will talk about interpersonal factors when I describe the neo-patriarchal adaptation
of gender relations at the end of this chapter. First I want to discuss the cultural context of
domesticity with the application of the breadwinner model to the regulation of female

sexuality. I will show how it shapes sexual morality and gender relations of the religious

39

conservatives into hierarchy, with an additional focus on howl see Protestant and
Catholic conservative dogma structure their believers’ sexual morality and gender
ideology.

The Culture of Domesticity

The trade union movement negotiated a breadwinner wage for many years with the
corporate world, with its peak in the years after the Second World War. The objective to
ensure was that working men earn a salary sufficient to maintain a family (Humphries
1982). It split family work life in the middle class into a public sphere, with a salaried job
market, and a private sphere, where caring for family members and domestic work was
assigned to women. With the domestic organization of family life as a private sphere for
women separated from the activities of the salaried work related public life of men, the
ideology of women as morally superior to men started to take hold (Crompton et al. 2007:
2). This situation of the extreme division of spheres between men and women and the
conceptual allocation of ‘care’ to women is described through the ideology of
domesticity (Epstein 1981; Stacey 1996). Large parts of the ideology of domesticity
come from the pietistic faiths that were a building bloc of the American culture at the end
of the 19th century and which are carried on in the dogma of the religious conservatives
today (Balmer 1994).

In the presentation below I want to trace the following questions: How is the factor
of ‘women’s care’ that structures the gender division of labor in the breadwinner model
related to the religious conservatives’ dogma? How is women’s care related to
unregulated sexuality’s disintegrating force in conservative dogma? How much or not is

the concept of women’s care affecting the religious conservatives’ factual gender

40

relations? Finally, how much is the concept of ‘women’s care’ relevant for the regulation
of religious conservatives’ sexual morality today?

Protestant and Catholic conservative dogmas request for their believers’ salvation
and grace requirement that women’s sexuality be regulated into motherhood as the
defining female role (Balmer 1994). This has been possible only because the religious
conservative culture created two very different character traits for the members of each
sphere of what was, in the larger society, called the breadwinner model. DeBerg (2000)
and (Sheerin 2001) present Protestant fundamentalist respectively Catholic pre-Vatican 11
women’s magazines where the theme of the necessity of women’s moral virtue runs
through The ideology of domesticity is structured around the context of women’s care. It
contends for women to be absorbed in the persons they love while men are absorbed in
the things they do. Both, the Protestant and the Catholic analysis of women’s magazines
propose that domestic ideology could allocate such importance to women’s high moral
’ status only because of the exalted role of motherhood. Motherhood is nurturing, empathic
and selfless”.

Selflessness and even suffering for her family is portrayed as giving a woman the
“dignity that best fits her dependence” (Welter I966: 153). Women are compensated with
high honor and prospective protection for their material and institutional powerlessness,
if they behave normatively according to domesticated sexual morality. Religious
conservative women’s reactions to abortion illustrate how their belief in domestication is

an acceptance of dependency for protection. They reject the lack of morals in sexual

 

8Williams argues that the character traits describing women as “naturally" selfless lingers on in today’s
time in women’s employment. She links the idea of women’s selflessness with the fact that they do the
larger part of household labor in the dual earner family than their men. Crompton and her coworker’s
empirical work confirmed this as recent as a few years ago.

41

accountability, the denial of possible motherhood, when they talk about abortion
(Manning 1999: 199). Abortion reflects the ahistorical feature of the culture of “dignity
form dependence on men” (Welter 1966: 153). This is because abortion rejects the
principle of “male headship”(Denton 2004; Gallagher and Smith 1999) in a relationship
that is so important for Protestant conservatives to gain salvation. Also, abortion denies
the request of the Catholic Church that sexual relations have to be intentionally
procreative in order for the believer to gain God’s grace (Weaver 2006).

In addition to being selfless in the culture of care women are responsible for
controlling men’s sex drive (Division for the Advancement of Women 1994; Lienesch
1990). This feature, too, is implied from the inerrant Bible as necessary for the individual
to reach salvation. Ifthe control of men’s sex drive is not accomplished, the consequence
is disruption of gender relationships. Conservative women of various religions insist that
the reason for women having abortions is they are not being taken care of and are
abandoned by their men (Ferree 2003).

The exaggerated imbalance between men’s economic value and women’s moral
value is a modern phenomenon. Women had more economic value in pre-modern times
with their labor on the farm or in the artisan shop. In the Puritan society of the late 18‘’1
century, all family members, including women and children, were expected to make an
economic contribution with their skills and labor. A household was firll of productive
work that was supported by women, or they provided a share in the labor of their artisan
men. Motherhood had been one among many of the tasks expected of women (Epstein
1981)

Biological motherhood. as the norm-- and viewed as best for the child-- is a recent

42

phenomenon of belief. Before the 19th century, everyone who mothered was called a
mother, regardless of biology. They included mistresses of brothels and the keepers of
journeymen's hostels, older sisters who brought up their younger siblings, and slave
women who nursed white children. Nurturing qualities were attributed to both men as
well as to women throughout the medieval and early modern periods. Through the 19th
century, the term to father still retained nurturing as well as generative connotations.
Only in the 20’11 century has maternity come to bear all the weight of symbolic as well as
practical meanings that once were attached to all who mothered. In the 20th century
maternity became attached to the particular person who gave birth (Gillis 1996).

The emphasis of motherhood in order to explain sexuality makes deviant all desires
that do not tend towards the consumption of controlled doses of domesticated
heterosexuality. McCarthy Brown (1994) maintains that from the body and its appetites
we glean moral codes that allow for the making of gender roles. They belong to the most
basic social organizations and allow the construction of social differences between men
and women. This creates the perception that passions and erotic feelings can be
controlled and the belief that the world is orderly and manageable (J akobsen and
Pellegrini 2003; Siegel 2000).

Catholic and Protestant Cultural Context of the
Domestication of Sexuality

Even though both religious conservative groups talk about marriage as the only
frame into which sexuality and motherhood shall be channeled, the structural grounds on
which the ideology of domesticity grows is different for Protestant than for Catholic

conservatives. Applying the principle of ahistorical religiosity to the domestication of

43

sexuality implies that the former it is textual and the latter is bureaucratic. Will the
different structures have an effect on the domestic ideology of Protestant "and Catholic
conservatives and if so, how will that ideology manifest itself? Should I expect that
Protestant conservatives express their domestic ideology about sexual morality
differently than Catholic conservatives? To get to an answer I examine the meaning of
marriage and motherhood in the context of domesticity for the two conservative groups.

In Catholicism, the institution of marriage is sacramental since the Church declared it
so at the Council of Trent (1545 and 1563). As a sacrament, marriage has been
instrumental for the conservatives to be sexually active and reach God’s grace. This was
not always so. The council was held to make order in Church and society through the
control of women and gender relations (Strasser 2004). Before the council in the 16th
century, marriage was an agreement between families, corroborated through festivities,
and no priest or state official had to be involved. There was no real distinction between
sexual relations within marriage and outside of marriage. Only a consensus between
partners was necessary (Leonard 1998; Strasser 2004: 34). The Council of Trent made
marriage a sacrament. This is the reason why the cultural background upon which the
Catholic conservative ideology of domesticity is based should be considered
institutionally.

Since marriage is sacramental the sexual morality of the Catholic conservatives has
to be looked at in the light of the sacramental institution. Pre- and extra-marital sex are a
deadly sin As a sacrament, marriage should stay unrepeatable and also institutions that
are associated with sex outside marriage, like divorce, or the public schools with their

curriculum offering sex education are from this view sinful. In this perspective, sex

44

education is not only unnecessary but harmful because it encourages potential sexuality
outside of marriage (Kissling 1999; McCormick 2003). This indicates that an important
part of the cultural background of Catholic conservatives’ gender relations is regulated
through the balance of sin and sacrament. Catholics are acted upon from the Church
hierarchy and the conservatives want to follow Church teaching in order to gain God’s
grace. At the same time, the focus of the Church is to control sexuality through the
sacramental institution of maniage that was created at the Council of Trent in order to
control the parishioners’ sexuality. It should be appropriate to conclude, then, that the
gender division of labor that manifests the gender relations in the ideology of Catholic
domesticity is secondary besides sexuality within the sacramental institution from which
Catholic conservatives’ view about sexual morality develops.

On the Protestant side, there is the word of the Bible which is the believers’ direct
connection to their God. As I outlined in describing the perspective of ahistorical
religiosity in the last chapter, from the Bible comes the message that women are naturally
prone to insubordination (Eve’s sin to seduce Adam). The Biblical message with respect
to sexual morality is that women’s subordination is inherent in the created order, and thus
gender division of labor is divinely sanctioned. Accordingly, it can be said that the
emphasis of Protestant conservatives regarding their domestic ideology is on the gender
hierarchy. That is, the religio-cultural background on which Protestant conservatives’
control over women’s sexuality and their view about gender relations should be looked
at. That the gender hierarchy itself (less the institution of marriage) is the focus here is
suggested by comments such as Ziegler’s (2000: X) who insists that gender role identity

was the bottom line of the development of conservative Protestantism at the end of the

45

19th century, and the Bible’s spiritual authority was used to valorize the gender hierarchy.
In this perspective, gender hierarchy is a tool against sexual promiscuity and therefore
against sin and social calamities.

Protestants and Catholics consider that Phenomena of the social calamities, like high
divorce rates, abortion, and gay marriage, but also other phenomena as shown from the
discussion about ahistorical religiosity, like crime or unemployment, are associated with
sexual promiscuity. With Protestant conservatives, those social phenomena are
considered apocalyptic and growing under conditions of personal sinfulness. For Catholic
conservatives they occur because the conservatives think that most Catholics do not
follow the Church teaching of taking the sacrament of marriage seriously, and the middle
hierarchy of the Church does not enforce this. While for Protestant conservatives, too,
marriage seems to be the tool to channel sexuality in general and motherhood to regulate
female sex in particular, it can be said it is a secondary cultural background of gender
relations for them. The focus is the Bible’s emphasis of women’s submission under male
leadership.

In both Protestant and Catholic conservative cultural contexts, sexuality is controlled
within marriage and motherhood. But the Protestant conservatives’ cultural background
focuses on the gender hierarchy, the submission of woman under man. In addition,
marriage and motherhood are the means to maintain this hierarchy. The Catholic
conservative background emphasizes the institution of marriage in order to control
female sexuality. The submission of women under men seems to be a side effect of
marriage and motherhood. In one culture, the institution of marriage, in the other the

ideology of women’s submission or adherence to “male headship” (Bendroth 2001;

46

Denton 2004; Gallagher and Smith 1999) as it is called in the literature, can be implied to
be the context of the regulation of their sexual morality.
Gender Division of Labor and the Concept of Neo-Patriarchy

The domestication of sexuality into a gender division of labor has been explained as
a major ground for religious conservatives’ regulation of sexual morality in the current
historical context. The culture of ‘care’ allocating high moral virtues to women in the
ideology of domesticity is the basis for the gender hierarchy. The roots of the concept of
care come fiom the religious conservatives’ urge to regulate women’s sexuality. Before I
go on to discuss how this affects economic ideology about the responsibility of poverty in
the next chapter, the meaning of ‘gender division’ as a tool to regulate women’s sexual
morality has to be put in perspective of the global transformation of the United States into
a postindustrial society. I will show how the gender relations of the religious
conservatives changed during the last few decades. The question of whether this has
affected their gender ideology and their sexual morality is examined.

Because the factual gender relations of the religious conservatives have changed, the
male breadwinner model has to be considered an ideal typical of gender relations (see
Crompton 1999: 205) for explaining the system of gender division in the domesticated
setting. The cultural influence on gender relations from the global transformation of the
division of labor makes it impossible to keep family structure and one’s way of earning a
living unchanged (Crompton 1999). All social groups have to adapt their lives to a certain
degree to the societal forces that restructure gender relations and family life. One should
not assume that religious conservative women accept the setting of domestication

indistinguishably or accept gender power difierentials in docility. Riesebrodt (1993: 202)

47

calls this the neo-patriarchal adaptation. The completely separate spheres of action that is
allocated to men and women in the breadwinner model, is not realistic in Western
societies like the United States. The ideology of domesticity is not physically possible
and has to be understood as a conceptual separation of the sexes, not a physical one. The
relations between men and women in the economic and cultural spheres and the nature of
women’s submission in these spheres have changed over time.

The change of the cultural context that occurred through the transformation of the
gender division of labor goes along with changes in interpersonal gender relations. The
theory of gender systems emphasizes the cultural context and interpersonal factors that
unfold in gender relations. Cultural and interpersonal factors can structure gender
relations in various ways not recognized by the implication of women’s suppression from
a general principle of patriarchy. Numerous studies have been conducted that show
evidence of these changes in gender relations for religious conservatives. The research
was conducted mainly in the field of Protestant faiths, with priority given to Protestant
fundamentalists and evangelicals. There is hardly any research that looks at the gender
relations of conservative Catholics, as I described them through their feature of
ahistorical religiosity. This dissertation should give insight into the association of
Catholic conservatives’ gender ideology, their sexual morality, and their domestic
relations. Also, it should provide the opportunity to compare the gender relations of
Protestant and Catholic conservatives. The discussion that follows shows the literature
and research done regarding the change of gender relations with respect to conservative
Protestants.

Most of the Protestant conservative women contribute today to their families’

48

incomes with a job. They participate in the labor force in order to maintain a family
standard of living. They need to earn in order to support families that have been
undermined by the loss of j obs or real earnings by men, the same way as this has been
occurred in the larger society. Women’s paid work is, in general, followed by a changing
domestic division of labor in the direction of more egalitarian gender relations
(Crompton and Harris 1999: 16). However, the changes are not gradual. Women’s move
into the labor force has not been reflected with an equivalent share of men’s participation
in the household. International studies suggest women do more domestic and caring work
everywhere (Crompton et al. 2007: 236). This pattern is reflected in the household of the
religious conservative. Women of conservative Christian religions are not willing to
exempt men from domestic labor. Fundamentalist men do participate in the household
labor to the same extent as their non-fundamentalist counterparts. But fundamentalist
wives have to carry the leftover of household labor from the “second shift” (Hochschild
1989). That labor is heavier for women. among fundamentalists than for non-
fundarnentalists, because the fundamentalist women do more household work like
cooking and cleaning than those not religious (Ellison and Bartkowski 2002).

An approach through general principles of patriarchy to analyze the consequence of
the Christian women’s labor force participation for their gender ideology would not allow
account for the changes that have occurred. These women do still believe in the necessity
of women to submit under men. Through looking at specific gender relations influenced
from specific cultures, qualifications are possible. The theory of gender relations
(Crompton and Harris 1999) makes it possible to see that the culture of the women in the

paid labor force and the culture of the conservative Christian religion add up to specific

49

relations between man and women in the religious conservative household.

For example conservative Christian women do not reject women’s submission under
men, but put this principle of gender relations more in question than their husbands, and
they are less supportive of patriarchal Values than their husbands (Grasmick et al. 1990).
As a consequence of the lesser economic dependence on men, an increase in divorce rates
has occurred among them, too (Brasher 1998; Utter and Storey 2001). Their conditions
are barely different from the women’s domestic gender relations in the larger society
(Stacey 1996: 27). The concept of care that is implied from the combination of the
breadwinner model and the religious conservative dogma is not a way of life in the
Protestant conservative households.

In addition to these women’s changing gender relations, that is related to their
participation in the labor force, the literature gives evidence of Protestant conservative
women’s application of power in their religious settings. They want and are able to carve
out areas of power at home and in their religious institutions (Beaman 1999; Griffith
1997; Harris 2006). Also this can be analyzed applying interpersonal factors that
structure the relationship between men and women in a certain cultural setting, as
suggested by the theory of gender systems/ gender relations (Crompton and Harris 1999).
These women’s urge for power and leadership in the specific cultural context of
conservative Protestant gender hierarchy would not be recognized by the implication of
women’s suppression from a general principle of patriarchy.

Brasher (1998) and Griffith ( 1997) show that Protestant conservative women can
retrieve power fi'om the religious institutions they join, even though they are excluded

from official positions of authority. Their adherence to submission and male authority

50

obtains meaning within the transition between the world in which women were largely
confined to the home and a modern life in which they have to fully participate in business
and public life (Griffith 1997). Brasher’s (I998: 123) analysis reveals that the priority
these Protestant conservative women give to religious life enables them to deal with the
controversy of a modern society in which self esteem is advertised to be retrieved from
paid work, but the workplace does not adapt to the needs of parenting that is still largely
in the hands of women. With no paid maternal leave, commitment to parenting is not
valued and childcare inadequate and barely funded. In this context, the doctrine of
submission in the church network becomes a means of asserting power over bad
situations (Ruthven 2004). The very emphasis on male authority in congregational and
domestic life produces interpersonal conditions between men and women that have its
advantages for these women. Ideologically, marriage is valued, sexual fidelity demanded,
drinking discouraged. Men are expected to take an active part in bringing up their
children. Female submission becomes empowerment in this flame of interpersonal
relations(Brasher 1998: 199) and the concept of care is distributed to both men and
women. The ideology of domesticity implies a gender division between ‘care work’ and
‘paid work’. But with respect to both household labor and child care, there is no strict
physical separation between the religious conservative men and women
Sexual Morality within the Transformed Gender Relations

It is obvious that gender relations of the religious conservatives, as shown for
Protestants, have changed towards a more egalitarian situation in the domestic setting,
similar to larger society. In addition, conservative religious women do use the setting of

their religious institution for empowering themselves with respect to the relations with

51

their husbands. I discussed in the previous chapter that religious conservatives’ way to
salvation is rooted in the ahistorical dogma about sexual morality and views about gender
relations. In order to go about the question of how their sexual morality affects their
economic ideology about the responsibility for poverty, I want to know how the
transformed gender relations of the religious conservatives affect their views about
gender ideology and sexual morality.

Conservative religion does influence the gender ideology of the believer towards a
more gender hierarchical world view. Protestant conservative women have different
beliefs fiom women who are not involved in religious institutions with strict dogma
about submission to the gender hierarchy of their religious groups, sexual morality,
marriage, and family oriented values (Bryant 2006; Carroll et al. 2000 / 2001: 202).
Generations of fimdamentali st women talk about the necessity of submission to men, and
single women use terminology of submission in their courtship (Brasher 1998; Denton
2004). The gender hierarchy seems to be an important ideological concept in the
worldview of conservative Christians today. They do believe in women’s submission to
men, which they describe as ‘male headship’ in the home (Bartowski 1997; Gallagher
2004; Gallagher and Smith 1999; Luckrnann 1967).

The same attitude holds for sexual morality within the conservative religious context.
Petersen and Donnenwerth (1997) found for conservative Protestants no decline in
support for traditional beliefs about pre-marital sex between 1972 and 1993, while at the
same time such beliefs declined significantly among Catholics and mainline Protestants.
This opposition against sexual pemrissiveness held also for higher education.

Schmalzbauer (1993) interviewed evangelicals with higher education and professional

52

jobs and saw that they adapt regarding civil liberties, gender roles and even abortion
towards the mainstream, but they reveal a strict opposition against sexual permissiveness
and this reaches from homosexuality to extramarital and premarital sex. Traditional
sexuality, however, is linked in an intrinsic way to opposition against abortion and other
issues of conservative concern about sexual carelessness (Becker and Eiesland 1997).
With demographic variables controlled, Kennedy (1993) found traditional sexuality and
motherhood ideologies had the strongest relationship with disapproval of legal abortion,
and they are coupled with other issues of sexual concern, such as gay and lesbian rights
and gender relations (Ferree and Gamson 1999: 51). Also, talk about sexuality is
continuously fought through devoting major resources into sexual abstinence only
curricula for the public schools (Rose 1999).

The empirical literature about Protestant firndamentalists and other conservative
Christians suggests that the gender relations which the breadwinner model implies with
the division of labor between women’s care for her family and men’s earning a salary in
the market place is not a realistic way of life. The division of labor in the domestic setting
is rather an ideology that prepares the grounds from which the political discourse on
family values and moral ideology is structured. While gender relations have changed
towards less hierarchical interaction between religious conservative men and women, the
gender values of both men and women are influenced by the conservative religious
doctrine. Conservative doctrine makes for a more gender divided ideology compared to
those with no conservative religion. Also, the ideology of strict sexual morality has
remained valid for those believing in Protestant» conservative dogma. In the following

chapter I will discuss how this reflects the economic ideology of the religious

53

 

conservatives.

54

Chapter 3

ECONOMIC ATTITUDES

Protestant Conservatives’ View of Public Institutions

There is a large portion of literature that discusses the possible affmity or the lack
thereof between the moral right and the fiscal conservatives. Cynthia Burack and Jyl
Josephson (2002) reviewed this literature. They consider the “common wisdom that there
is little affinity” (Burack and Josephson 2002: 13) between the two doubtful. They find
close affinities, though, between fiscal conservative and moral ideology on the political
right, even though they admit there are many differences in the firndamental values of the
world view of the supporters of fiscal and moral ideology.

In the 19805 Rebecca Klatch (1987) undertook the task to ascertain whether there is a
common link between the two camps of right wing ideology. She found from her
interviews of activist women of both the moral conservative and fiscal blocks that their
beliefs had different ideological roots. The moral conservatives emphasize the “right
belief “of their religion, centered on the family as the sacred unit of divinely hierarchical
gender relations. The fiscal conservatives believe the rational individual is the primary
element in society. They denounce any form of government intervention in the private
realm as an illegitimate intrusion on individual liberty. The moral conservatives, however,
want at least partial intervention. They request state endorsement for moral and religious
issues, such as prohibition of partial birth abortion or gay marriage, since the strict dogma
of their religion does not allow such a thing as moral neutrality about abortion or gay

marriage (Marsden 2006).

55

Klatch (1987) did not find much convergence in the content of values between the
moral and fiscal conservative factions. In fact, empirical analysis about social
conservatism and economic laissez faire conservatism supports her finding that the two
are minimally related (Johnson and Tamney 2001). Klatch found, however, that the two
groups of conservatives converge in naming the forces responsible for their social
distress. Both see American society in decline and state that regulation of the wealth of
society by government is responsible. Both the fiscal conservatives and the moral
conservatives hate ‘big government’ (Blumenthal 1986; Himmelstein 1990; Walsh 2000).

The conservatives assert that increase in the size of government has been combined
with an increase in immorality. The moral conservatives’ view is that one shall not force
men’s views (to regulate wealth) upon others if God’s moral is not followed (Guth et al.
1997; Guth et al. 1996a; Kepel 1994). Welfare encourages, according to this view,
immorality through rewarding illegitimacy, unwed parenthood and deviation from Bible
oriented values. As outlined in the first chapter of this thesis, the Protestant ahistorical
salvation history is dependent on hierarchical gender relations, because women’s
sexuality is seen as detrimental to men and society if not structured in marriage and
motherhood. Not structured in gender hierarchy, sexuality is seen as stimulating passions
that distract men from responsibility to their families and obligations in society (Balmer
1994). With values taught as those associated with sex education in the public schools, or
welfare that allows motherhood without marriage, public institutions put the necessity of
the gender hierarchy into question and compete with the values that the religious
conservatives teach in their families. Under these conditions, the religious conservatives

lose control over their families and communities (Riesebrodt 1993). The conservatives

56

request relief for the poor designed by the religious community, to insure that the Biblical
values preparing for salvation are being followed as a condition for the economically
unlucky to deserve the community’s help.

Feminism also represents the extension of ‘big government’ at the expense of the
traditional authority of the church, the neighborhood and the family (Klatch 1994: 139).
Government funded progressive institutions like Planned Parenthood, the National
Organization for Women, and labor unions are opposed by the religious conservatives
because these institutions intrude upon gender, family and community values
(Himmelstein 1990; Jelen 1991b).

In addition, the moral conservatives are in conflict with the public school system.
Through the tax dependent public school with sex education and ban on religion,
secularism’s moral decay is maintained. The children of the religious conservatives are
not only confronted with secular values and sexual issues, but religious instruction is
prohibited Because of the tax based public character of the educational system, the issue
of sex education in the public school curriculum is a major component of moral politics
(Irvine 2002). Regulation of society through public institutions is rejected exactly because
public institutions are considered to be promoting the moral decay which the doctrinally
conservatives battle against. The redistribution of wealth by the secular government is
thus considered an issue of religious and moral malaise because economic success in the
secular society is linked to education. The education system also includes public programs
that promote feminist moral values (Sennet 1994).

The economically individualistic worldview does not mean a laissez faire ideology

towards one’s own poor. Rejected is bureaucratically organized welfare that construes

57

support as a right and is not combined with any kind of control of the religious
community as to whether the prospective recipient is truly needy and deserves the help as
a person who is saved and religiously and morally supervised (Riesebrodt 1993: 180).

The question of this thesis is whether religious conservatives find individualist
irresponsibility or social structures the reason for poverty. Is there a difference between
Catholic and Protestant conservatives with respect to their economic views? The
comparison of the moral and the fiscal right suggests religious conservatives take an
individualist approach.

Empirical Findings

The empirical literature does not reveal such a straightforward path. Some research
found conservatism related to both social traditionalism or family values on the one hand
and economic issues on the other (Hunter 1991; Wuthnow 1988). Others found
conservatism of the religious orthodox only with respect to “family-related” issues (Davis
and Robinson 1996a) but with some diversity for the doctrinally conservatives’ socio-
political and economic views (Pyle 1993).

Empirical research does show consistency in two ways: in the Protestant
conservatives’ political priorities for moral policy and in their activists’ unambiguously
economic attitudes in addition to their moral preference. Activists who are engaged in
one of the Christian Right organizations reveal that policy priority for moral values and
economic issues must come secondarily. Such work in 2006 (Green et al. 2006; Petrocik
2007) found that Christian Right activists preferred moral issues eight times more than
economic issues politically. Fifty nine percent of the Christian Right activists said moral

issues are most important, compared to seven percent who said the economy is most

58

important. Their economic attitudes were based on government deregulation. Forty-six
percent were strongly against more welfare spending.

The importance given to moral issues for policy application can be found, in general,
throughout the Protestant conservative community. This is not surprising given the
doctrinal necessity of proper morals in order to reach salvation and the idea that social
problems are solved through individual moral behavior. The literature confirms that a
significant portion of Protestant conservatives think that saving people’s souls for Christ
and converting them will solve the social malaise. David Leege and Lyman Kellstedt
(1993a) and Guth with coworkers (1996b: 308, 314) revealed that focus on religious
conversion and soul saving, as compared to activism and endorsement of social issues, is
linked to an individualist perspective of the world. This is associated with the focus on
moral problems under the umbrella of family values. Religious conservatives are against
economic issues like welfare and do not endorse those who have a political agenda
preferring those government regulated issues. The believers in conversion feel moral
issues need more protection through the law. They are for strong pornography laws,
teaching creationism in the public schools, eliminating birth control information given in
schools and ceasing abortion, except for when bearing the child would threaten the
mother’s life (Green et al. 1996: 74, 76). Abortion seems still to be the phenomenon that
most strongly represents their fight against moral decay. In that case, government
regulation is advocated. Abortion is the policy issue that almost all conservatives (94 %)
want to have dealt with through official restrictions (Green et al. 2006: 44).

The connection between moral and economic attitudes is not very clear for the non-

activist religious conservatives. Their belief in an active-authoritarian God is strongly

59

related to abortion and sexual morality attitudes but only sporadically related to ideas
about social and economic justice. Paul Froese and Christopher Bader (2008: 708) found
that picturing God as an active and authoritarian supreme being involved in the world is
partially associated to economic justice. In their study, the faithful believed that the
government should help reduce income differences (Froese and Bader: 703). But these
religious conservatives also proponed that the taxes are too high, and that they were in
support of defense spending, topics generally not related to economic justice or
government regulation. Also, the authors found no relationship between the figure of an
authoritarian God and attitudes about government spending on education, the
environment, health, or welfare.

A focus on moralistic views to save the individual also influences the institutional
perspective of the believers. Guth, et al. (1997; 1998) asked whether the church should
focus on social reform or individual morality. People who say that individual religious
action like soul saving as compared to social justice action is the primary responsibility of
their church is associated with individualist worldviews. Those with strong conservative
dogma reveal, with respect to their economic attitudes that the society should function on
the ground of self responsibility of the individual. Therefore, taxes should not be raised
for distribution to the needy, to solve world hunger, or to provide health insurance (Jelen
1991b: 106). A comparison with Canadian evangelical Protestants suggests fiscal
conservatism among the evangelicals in the US has to do with the larger number of the
dogmatically strict in the US who are moral activists like the Protestant fundamentalists
(Hoover et al. 2002).

In the United States, religious conservatives are politically associated with the

60

Republican Party, which is the stronghold of fiscal conservatism. However, moral issues
have been the reason why religious conservatives have voted Republican, rather than
social welfare issues or the economy (Petrocik 2007: 289; Rozell and Das Gupta 2006:
12). Conservative Christians voted Republican in the election of Bush in 2000 (Blasi
2006) as well as in 2004 (Dionne 2006) using morality as the major issue. While this may
seem normal at this point in history, it has not always been the case. There have been
several waves of changing in issues between the Civil War and the Reagan administration
that show a changing affiliation of religion in the context of politics. A case in point is the
impoverished Protestant evangelical South that had been, contrary to their religious
individualism, the bastion of the heavily government regulated New Deal policy between
the 19305 and the onset of the Reagan Politics in the 19805, when the realignment of
conservative Christian religion to the Republican Party started to show effects (Walsh
2000).

Historian Matthew Lassiter (2008) maintains that the working class among the
religious conservatives has remained favorable towards economic government regulation,
as they were before the onset of Reagan politics in the 19805. But when in the context of
the feminist and anti-war movements young people started to question patriarchal
authority and divorce started to break up families, the Christian Right leadership guided
its constituency with the promise to protect their families by ensuring free market values
and deregulation. The lining up of the secular, fiscal right and the Christian Right
eventually became a Republican strategy against the social regulation of wealth that had
followed after WWII as an agreement of industry and labor (Himmelstein 1990).

There is empirical evidence that the Christian Right leadership has invoked towards

61

the Republican Party the political potential of the working class’ cultural insecurity. Guth
(1997: 86) and coworkers found that pastors of conservative denominations that have
large working class participation guide their churches through moral agendas where
abortion and gay rights have priority, compared to their counterparts of liberal churches
who emphasize poverty, the environment and civil rights. And the Christian Coalition
backed the agenda of economic conservatives, including support for a flat tax and
privatization of the welfare system. In 1999 this coalition supported an end to the
‘marriage penalty’ of the federal tax code (W eissman 2000; Wilcox and Rozell 2000).
Various other Christian Right organizations have supported sub-minimum wages,
privatizing the welfare system, cuts in Medicaid and other public spending programs.
They also opposed Clinton's national health insurance proposal. Many of these views
would have hurt poor families while helping affluent Americans (Wilcox 2000: 129).

Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson (1996a; 1996b) and N. P. Barry (1987) found
progressive opinions in the religious conservative community regarding some economic
policies about welfare and minimum wage. Opinions were close to Lassiter’s (2008)
argument that the working class among the religious orthodox support economic policies
for government programs to aid the economic disadvantaged. Also, Clyde Wilcox (Jelen
2000; Wilcox 1989) found that supporters of Jerry Falwell’s political action group, Moral
Majority, tended to favor government action to reduce income differences, while their
leadership advertised free enterprise and least possible state involvement.

Especially for the economically less fortunate the struggle for economic survival is
the main priority. When they are confronted with specific programs that describe their

own daily concerns like increase of minimum wage or the reduction of real income

62

adjusted for inflation differences between rich and poor their preference for the regulation
of wealth is not inconsequent. This was especially the case in the 19805, and 19905 at a
time when the conservative religious movement was not yet fully aligned with the
Republican Party. Realignment between Republican Party and moral conservatives was
found to be the case for the years after the second election of George W Bush (Saunders
and Abramowitz 2007). The religious conservative elite, however, especially the pastors
and preachers, have been socialized in Bible colleges for generations to adhere to the
theological justification of capitalism. The highest value is individualism and freedom to
act in God’s grace. This includes the work and working conditions because capital and
labor have according to the Biblical inerrancy believers at base the same interests. In the
patriarchal relationship between entrepreneur and worker, the entrepreneur increases
prosperity but lives modestly and gives money to his church to increase God’s glory. The
workers labor hard but get a just wage to feed their families. Both capitalist and worker
fulfill the earthly task assigned to them by God (Riesebrodt 1993: 69, 77).

The writings on Protestant conservative dogma show a leaning towards individualist
responsibility in the economic realm. Government regulation is rejected since it has been
associated with immorality. For this, empirical work shows the Christian Right leadership
has been fiscally conservative since it led its constituency into market deregulation.
While the general population of the religious conservatives has often followed this lead,
they have also supported some of the public programs that go towards redistribution of
wealth and propounded the view that the government is responsible to prevent poverty.

Catholic Conservatives: Empirical Findings

Compared to Protestant conservative dogma with its individualist relationship with

63

God, Catholic conservatives’ relationship with God is mediated through the Church
hierarchy. Where Protestant conservative dogma requires personal conversion for
salvation which provides saved individuals as a means for social regeneration Catholic
dogma places less emphasis on the individual person. The central feature in the tradition
of Catholicism has been the Church as an institution and the individual in the community
(Rudy 1996). The individual is guided through the Catholic teaching office and Church
hierarchy regarding matters of faith and socio-political views.

With respect to the distribution of wealth, Catholic dogma has had a different effect
on Catholics than the Bible has had on evangelical or fundamentalist Protestants. When
asked for sources of poverty, Catholics often report economic and political factors as
grounds of poverty than evangelical Protestants who are more likely to blame individual
failure (Brackley 1996; Dionne 2008; Wald and Smidt 1993; Wald and Calhoun-Brown
2007: 185). Peter Benson and Dorothy Williams (1982) applied these differences in
dogma and religious structure and developed a measure of political ideology from
individualist versus communitarian religious beliefs. These beliefs are strong predictors
of a person’s world view. The communitarian view points towards progressive ideology
while individualist views lead towards political conservatism. Punishing the sinner for his
or her own misfortune, as is the belief with Protestant fimdarnentalists, is not a Catholic
characteristic. Langdon Gilkey (1974: 18) thinks that because of the several hundred
years of continuous tradition and factually unrealistic strict religious rules prescribed for
daily behavior in Catholic communal life, there is a deeper recognition for the inability to
adhere to all of them. Before Vatican II and the introduction of the freedom of the

individual’s consciousness (Greeley 2006) for decision making, there were religious rules

64

that could have prescribed the potential behavior of the believer in almost every situation
of his or her everyday life. It is unrealistic to follow so much regulation Gilkey (1974)
maintains. This cognition is the grounds for more tolerance and acceptance of the
estranged and fallible characteristics of our lives.

Michael Welch and David Leege (1988: 588) followed up with the assessment of
Catholics’ ideology, measuring closeness to God either through social connections (love,
care for another person or groups of people) or through spiritual connections
(performance of rituals, reception of sacraments). The researchers explain variation in
political ideology regarding issues of sexuality and gender roles. The higher the level of
closeness to God through social connections (love, care for another person or groups of
persons), the less Catholics were conservative on positions like abortion, the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA), premarital cohabitation, the husband as the exclusive breadwinner,
or secular humanism as threat to society (Leege and Welch 1989: 152, 154). In general,
comparative studies of Catholics and Protestant ideology find that conservative Catholics
are comparable to Protestant evangelicals or fundamentalists on issues of morals and
sexuality (Bendyna et al. 2001; Bendyna et al. 2000; Jelen 1991b).

With respect to economic ideology, the following studies showed inconsistency.
Welch & Leege (1988) and Ted Jelen (1991a; 1991b) found scarcely any effect of
religious orthodoxy on Catholics for their economic world views. They were progressive
as measured as favoring a nuclear freeze and decrease of defense spending. Joseph
Tamney and coworkers (1988) distinguished between progressive and conservative
Catholics and Protestants on the grounds of social traditionalism. Those with high scores

on a scale measuring social traditionalism believed individuals should be responsible for

65

their own economic well being and relief fi'om poverty should be privately organized
through the Church. Catholics who were not so rigid on morals and sexual relations
agreed more to the necessity to restructure the economy to relieve poverty. Mary
Bendyna (2000) and colleagues found years later that the orthodoxy of Catholics had a
conservative effect on their outlook on economic issues, but in 2001 (Bendyna et al.
2001) they found opposite results. Morally conservative Catholics who supported the
Christian Coalition were less economically conservative than their evangelical Protestant
counterparts when measuring social welfare, aid for poor children, income inequality, or
nuclear weapons. Also, conservative Catholics revealed that the evangelically colored
economic agenda of the Christian Right posed a barrier for them because their
communitarian ethic does not justify calls to eliminate welfare and scale back other
poverty programs which the American Catholic bishops conference introduced in the
19805 and 90s (Wilcox 2000 p.129).

Catholicism emphasizes the parish community with the individual as member and his
or her relationship to God, not the more abstract direct link between the faithful and God,
based on religious belief only that the Protestant inerrancy believers emphasize (Brackley
1996; Greeley 2000). Where Protestants focus on the individual and his or her
relationship to God through the divine word in the Bible Catholicism emphasizes the
mediation of God’s grace through the sacraments administered to the believer through the
Church hierarchy (Gilkey 1974; Jelen 1991b; Lent 1998). The Catholic faithful is not
directly linked to God like the Protestant, but through the mystic of the Catholic Church.
It is the membership in the Catholic community through which the faithful is responsible

to God.

66

Rudy (1996) describes with her investigation about the meaning of moral for pro-
choice and pro-life activists, why abortion was “not necessary” (Rudy 1996: 37) in the
Catholic community whose members’ shared Catholic rules and traditions. Unwed
mothers could turn over their baby to a circle of care centered in the parish. They would
know first hand that someone else would care for their child better then they could The
Church had “oppressive tendencies” (Rudy 1996: 38) with the countless rules that should
be followed but mothers with unwanted pregnancies found the community which enabled
the decision of giving birth and handing over the child. Catholic parents would be found
for unwanted pregnancies because the world was a place where family was more about
sharing faith than sharing a household There was a way to deal with unwanted
pregnancies that allowed a mother who could not care for her child herself to be
responsible to her baby and her Church within the fabric of traditional Catholicism. The
sinful member could still be responsible to God by knowing that others in the community
would take care of what she or he had not been able to do.

This is an example that illustrates the reason why Catholics in general have been
found to be more inclined to take the social structure and political reasons into account
for the explanation of poverty than religious conservatives do (Wald 1997). Empirical
work shows that the conservatives among the Catholics are restrictive on issues of
morality and sexuality sirrrilar to Protestants, but moral conservatism has not transferred,
straight forwardly into economic conservatism (Greeley 1990). Some research shows a
link between moral and economic conservatism for Catholics (Green et al. 1996). Others
found Catholic conservatives had a stronger communitarian ethic than economic policy

endorsed by the Christian Right (Dionne 2008: 156; Walsh 2000).

67

Catholic Bishops’ Socio-Politics

Several of the authors that found the Catholic conservatives have more progressive
economic attitudes than their Protestant counterparts interpret these results as the
Catholic hierarchy’s teaching authority upon the Catholic community. The American
bishops who have been quite progressive after the Second Vatican Council (Burns 1996;
Kelly 1999; Perl and McClintock 2001) issued pastoral letters in the 19805 and 905
containing the demands for nuclear freeze and reduction of defense spending. They took
on capitalism, with their critique of income inequality as the inevitable result of
unregulated capitalism (Wald 1997). However, Michael Budde argues (1992: 251) that
the American bishops did not question the economic power elite with their pastoral letters
on peace and the economy. The Canadian bishops, he continues, risked the wrath of the
business community with their critique, while the US bishops portrayed economic life
with as little conflict as possible. The major counterparts of the US bishop
communication were the power holders, Budde maintains (1992: 251), and not the
community members.

However, to rely on the official Catholic teaching to explain the believer’s political
view is problematic. There has been an ever growing discrepancy between Rome’s
teaching and Catholics’ follow up (McCormick 2003). First, consider sexual moral
teaching. Since Vatican II, Catholics have rejected matters of faith and morality by
questioning the Vatican’s doctrine of sexual morality and rejecting the legitimacy of
Papal supremacy (Greeley 1985: 83, 84). Bishops and priests have proposed alternatives
of their own, nurtured from the laity's conscience and experience. However, the bishop’s

pastorals in sociopolitical matters were of strong concern at the American Bishop

68

Conference in the 19805. These were not easily assimilated by the laity. William
D’Antonio, and his colleagues (1989) found in a 1987 survey that 67 % of American
Catholics had not heard of the 1983 peace pastoral and 71 % had not heard of the 1986
economy pastoral despite extensive religious and secular media attention given to the
letters.

With Catholic conservatives, though, the relationship to the middle Church
hierarchy is problematic. The bishops’ liberal views on the economy are not the
appropriate explanation to understand the Catholic conservatives’ view on the causes
of poverty. Catholic conservatives, as a matter of reaching God’s grace, want to be
obedient to the Church’s teaching. However, the American bishops are those whom
the Rome-obedient despise as too liberal and not understanding the Vatican’s true
intentions, whether in moral or other matters (Cuneo 1997). It is doubtful that
Catholic conservatives will accept those same bishops’ leadership regarding
sociopolitical concerns. Catholic conservatives are one subgroup of faith within the
Catholic Church, where different beliefs and different social groups continue to exist
under a common identity of Catholicism (Dillon 1999a; Dillon 1999b; Manning
1997). Obedience to the Church hierarchy is a means of identification for Catholic
conservatives. Since they dismiss the authority of the American bishops, it might be
appropriate to look at the origin of the Church teaching, the Pope in the Vatican, as
the source of ideological influence for the American Catholic conservatives.

Pope John Paul II’s Socio-Politics

The leader of the world’s Roman Catholics from 1978 to 2005, John Paul II, was a

highly regarded spokesperson for the fight against poverty. He differed from classical

69

economic liberalism regarding how much the government should be involved to produce
a just society with less inequality between the rich and the poor (Cima and Schubeck
2001: 214). In fact he criticized the welfare state in a manner comparable to fiscal
conservatives because its “bureaucratic thinking saps human energy and increases
economic costs” ( p.217). He expressed Opinions against big government and agreed with
the free market on reasons of individual self deve10pment (Burns 1992: 59, 71, 191;
Hebblethwaite 1986). Other Popes left more evidence of thinking about how to fight
against economic inequality in a context that looks at social structures and political
policy. Leo XIII wrote ‘Rerum Novarum,’ a condemnation of unrestricted capitalism and
a basis on which the modern labor movement and welfare state developed. Also, it was a
source for public program demands, like a US living wage (Dionne 2008: 156).

While John Paul II saw that the free market leaves many behind who have no
marketable resources, he was for the principle of subsidiary monies that go back to
charity, as compared to his two Vatican II predecessors who emphasized the
principle of solidarity on the ground of distribution (Cima and Schubeck 2001).
Subsidiary as a function to organize society was introduced by Pope Pius XI at the
end of the l9tb century. His epistle was broadly concerned with the harmonious
relationship among persons and institutions in a hierarchically ordered society. It
emphasized the duty of the higher societal entity towards the people in the lower
entities, including the recognition of the integrity of every person. Those in the lower
social entity have the duty to follow the leadership of those higher up (Skillen and
McCarthy 1991: 140).

This consensual thinking rather than a critique of the socio-economic elite seems

70

to have been influential for the Church hierarchy led by John Paul II. The neo-
conservative literature on the Catholic ethic of the economy saw in John Paul’s social
ethic the appreciation of capitalism. Michael Novak (2003) says the Pope grounded
his economic ideas in the tradition of free market liberalism and maintains he
developed a Natural Law theology of the market. Richard Neuhaus (2003) saw
predecessors such as Paul VI as left leaning and influenced by European socialism.
These predilections, finds Neuhaus, were corrected in John Paul's newfound
appreciation of capitalism. Charles McDaniels (2007) rejected these two neo-
conservative authors’ interpretation of John Paul’s thinking for market capitalism. On
the grounds of John Paul’s reference to subsidiary McDaniels located the Pope’s
economic philosophy as the middle ground between two extremes, socialism and free
market capitalism, with his frequent cautions against individualism and
consumerism.

Whether the American biShops are considered left wing or not as authors of the
pastoral letters on peace and the economy, but not challenging the structure of
inequality with their sparing the capitalist elite from their critique, the Catholic
conservatives have questioned the bishops’ leadership as too focused on the poor and
not enough on morals and unborn life (Cuneo 1997 ). The Pope, while engaged in
fighting poverty, seems to have been reluctant to identify the social structure as the
location to which the inequality in wealth could be traced. He warned against
consumerism and the dangers of individualism in an uncontrolled market economy.
However, be grounded his economic ethics in a free market philosophy and was

against welfare that is regulated by the government as means to relieve poverty.

71

From an ahistorical perspective, the connection between sexuality and public welfare
can be explained by the Church’s relationship to legal abortion Compared to Protestant
conservative dogma, where the ahistorical lies in the belief of the faithful in the Biblical
word, in Catholicism, the ahistorical is located in the believer’s obedience to the Church
bureaucracy. For the Catholic Church, abortion is the ultimate phenomenon contradicting
intentional procreativity. The Church cannot accept legal abortion because abortion
means a challenge to the power base of the Catholic Church. Power is the major reason
why sexuality has to be procreative (Burns 1992). Any public institution that allows sex
to be non-procreative and to happen outside of sacramental marriage is suspicious to the
Catholic Church for the same reason that abortion is. Thus, welfare, institutionalized as a
public right, is not dependent on religious supervision by the parochial community.

The right of financial help implies an option of family construction that is
independent of the sacrament of marriage. Catholics, at least the conservatives who gain
identity through their obedience to the Church teaching (Luebbers 2001, Salzmann 2008)
view that welfare should be at least influenced by the Pope’s perspective about the
responsibility of poverty. John Paul II was opposing poverty in the context of free market
structures or left enough discretion for interpretation regarding his economic phi1050phy
so that secondary sources like (Republican) party politics who endorse anti-abortion
could be influential on the believers opinion about the responsibility for poverty (Papanek
1994; Rose 1999; Saunders and Abramowitz 2007). Hypothesis 3b2) (section:
Hypotheses, Responsibility for Poverty) puts this argument more into perspective in

relation to the political environment in which the faithful live.

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Religions Conservatives and Social Class

In 1973 Robert Wuthnow (1973) associated religious commitment in the US with
attitudes about social and economic policies. However, he thought that religion
distinguishes between liberal and conservative politics more on the social than on the
economic dimension. E. J. Dionne (2008: 80) linked social and economic values in the
context of religion furthermore, and he claimed the moral crisis spoken of by the
conservatives does not only grow from the permissive ideas of the counter culture of the
19605 but from roots that threaten to allow market values to crowd out all other values. If
we accept that anti-abortion is always linked to conservative religious dogma and sexual
morals (Ebaugh 1978; Ferree et al. 2002; Granberg 1978; Wald and Calhoun-Brown
2007: 190), Kristin Lukers’ classic study of anti-abortion activists can be seen as a
critique of the religious conservatives against unregulated market values. Luker (1984)
found 25 years ago from the anti-abortion activists in her study that their engagement
against abortion was an expression of their skepticism towards the domination of market
values that would destroy the time and social prestige they were accustomed to investing
into their patriarchal families.

However, the empirical findings regarding the influence of social class on
conservative morals and the attraction to religion with strict dogma do not allow for a
clear cut picture. Luker (1984) found that pro-life activists are more likely to be of
lower socioeconomic status, have fewer years of education, hold less well paying
jobs, and are married more frequently to blue collar workers when compared to pro-
choice activists. Also Guth and coworkers (1995) found that the conservative

activists for traditional morals and religion are not as highly educated as their

73

leftwing counterparts. Carol Maxwell (2002), on the other hand, found many middle
or higher socio-economic status members among the pro-life activists. An important
factor in participants’ activism was their opportunity to have the time to participate in
a picket line or other protest activities.

The question taken from these findings is whether conservative religious groups
are demographically distinct from the rest of the population. prro life activists are
Protestant, they are mostly from the pool of religious conservatives that are evangelical.
They are barely distinct demographically fiom the larger population (Park and Reimer
2002). Evangelicals are not much different from immigrant Catholics. Both groups
typically come from the lower classes and both have moved up the social ladder within
the last few decades (Smith 2001; Wald 1997).Thaddeus Coreno (2002) maintains that
the middle class is comprised of more fundamentalists today than some decades ago.
However, this is only a fraction within the middle class. The old middle class was
working class. The old middle class continues to struggle within a society governed by
the new professional middle class. The middle class today is marked by widening class
polarization and scarred, in the eyes of the evangelical religious groups, by progressive
cultural secularization. The class polarization occurred, Ralph Pyle (2006) shows, since
the old middle class has never been able to claim the wealth, power and prestige of the
new middle class and has become a strong advocate of traditionalism and
fundamentalism. Especially conservative Protestants have remained behind the
mainstream of Catholic and liberal Protestants on the socioeconomic ladder.

Lifestyle, values, and other cultural preferences further distinguish the groups. Alan

Wolfe (2006) sees conservative religion and the endorsement of traditional morals in

74

connection with lower economic classes. He finds for the US South that lower socio-
economic status is related to higher divorce rates and argues that this produces social
strain, which is countered by joining doctrinally conservative churches. Contrary to this,
the experience of social strain, according to Riesebrodt (1993), is not class specific but
dependent on whether the conservative believers have conformed their values within the
structural conditions of modern society. If they refirse to do so and at the same time
protest the structurally enforced conformity, they are likely to be attracted to
dogmatically strict religion.

Moral activists who refuse value adaptation and consequently join a dogmatically
strict religious group can be found in specific sections of all social classes. Riesebrodt
(1993) says those whose power and identity was transplanted to spaces of diminished
prestige and groups of less social power seem to be most likely to join the movement.
Even though conflict over material interests (as a consequence of the decline of social
position) is involved with the believers’ attraction to strict dogmatic religion, the major
part of their attraction consists of conflict over the values of larger society. The structure
of the conflict has changed the culttual position of the carriers from hegemonic
importance to marginality (Riesebrodt 1993: 89). This produces the consequence that
their former status of conduct of life and conflict management has been deprived by
social and religious pluralism of majority cultural recognition and has transplanted them
into different (less prestigious) social structures (Marsden 1983; Vinz 1997).

With their fight for maintaining traditional values on sexuality and gender
relations, religious conservatives are also fighting against the atomization of society

with its domination of market values and the danger of destroying families and the

75

individual in a careless society. One part of the literature sees the religious
conservatives, especially those of conservative Protestant faiths, as less affluent than
those belonging to other faiths (Coreno 2002; Luker 1984). Another part sees the
attraction to conservative religious dogma not as a class specific phenomenon, but
sees dogma identifying with the battle against the dissolving moral values in the
secular society (Blanchard 1996).

In summary, this dissertation examines the finding that Christian conservatives
give policy preference to moral over economic issues. It follows Risebrodt’s (1993)
argument that the attraction to conservative religious dogma is an expression of
protest against the devaluation of the values and skills for conflict resolution for the
social group to which a protesting person belongs. For both Protestant and Catholic
conservatives, their values regulating gender relations have been questioned by the
secular society. This thesis argues that it is their specific views about gender relations
and sexuality that influences their economic ideology. Protestant conservatives reject
government regulation, because it deprives the religious community of the control
over the members’ conversion spirit. Moral implications are in return for the
economic and social help that someone is supposed to receive. From this point of
view, this thesis argues that Protestant conservatives allocate individualist
responsibility to poverty.

Catholic conservatives reject the US bishops’ leadership, and Pope John Paul 1.1
released mixed signals about the solution to economic problems. His economic
policy was ambiguous as to whether he advocated individualist or structural

responsibility to explain poverty. In addition, socioeconomic issues like solutions to

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questions of poverty, have low priority for the Church since they have no means for
power maintenance. Policies are recommendations, but are not binding for what it
means to be a Catholic. Sexual morals, however, are binding (Burns 1996). This
thesis focuses on moral values about which the Pope provides clear guidance and that
have binding character for the Catholic conservatives. Therein is sought an
explanation for their economic views.

The literature about Protestant and Catholic conservatives has not, however,
addressed the question about whether these two religious groups’ moral values about
sex and gender relations are based on the same or different ideological and dogmatic
grounds. This dissertation investigates whether these morals of the Catholic and
Protestant conservatives are based on the same or different ideological grounds and
how this affects the two religious groups’ attitudes about the causes of poverty.

HYPOTHESES
. There are three blocs of hypotheses in this thesis. The first deals with ahistorical
religiosity and the religious and ideological components of ahistorical religiosity. The
second is about neo-patriarchy as an adaptation of gender relations to current cultural
settings. The third examines how economic attitudes about the responsibility of poverty
are related to religious dogma, sexual morals, and gender ideology.

Ahistorical Religiosity

This study follows the question about whether religious conservatives have more of
an individualist or structural view about the responsibility of poverty and why. It is
proposed in this dissertation that the dogmatic background of religious conservatives is

ahistorical and that the cultural vehicles that make their religiosity salient to them are

77

sexual morality and gender ideology. This represents Protestant conservatives’ salvation
experience and Catholic conservatives’ grace experience. Both have their roots in the
believers’ militancy for sexual morals. This moral militancy is accomplished through the
control of women’s sexuality (Bendroth 1993; Burns 1992; Burns 1999; DeBerg 2000;
Dinges 1993; Hawley 1994; Riesebrodt 1993; Weaver 1999). As outlined in the first
chapter of this thesis, the urge to control women’s sexual morals is the cultural
phenomenon from which the religious conservatives produce their view about gender
relations. The second chapter outlines how the religious conservatives express the control
of female sexuality in the attitude that sexuality has to be domesticated within marriage
and parenthood (Crompton 1999; Epstein 1981; Hawley 1999; Stacey 1996).

This thesis hypothesizes that la) Catholics’ and Protestants’ ahistorical religiosity is
explained by their view about sexuality and gender relations. Morals about sex and
gender relations are the major ideological components that are associated in this
dissertation making the importance of their religion aware to the believers.

In addition, as outlined in this chapter about the link between social class and
conservative dogma, conflict over moral values in the larger society is the major
attraction for people to strict religious dogma (Riesebrodt 1993). This thesis further
proposed that lb) the value conflict is not class dependent but within each socio-
economic class are sections of people who experience the value conflict over morals.
This is the reason why I expect the influence of sexual morals and views about gender
relations on the conservatives’ ahistorical religiosity to be independent of class issues like
income and education. Also, Weaver (1993) maintains that the conservative religious

movement, since its occurrence in the 19805, has always attracted groups of young

78

people to its membership. Therefore, I expect that 1c) the influence of sexual morals and
views about gender relations on ahistorical religiosity will be independent of the
generation variable.

Neo-Patriarchy

Ahistorical religiosity has produced the culture of gender divided care in the gender
system of domesticity with a gender division of labor between women caring for the
persons they love and men’s absorption in their market job (DeBerg 2000; Epstein 1981;
Lienesch 1990; Manning 1999; Sheerin 2001). This duality between women’s care for
the family and mens’ struggle in the market place comes from the essence of the
Protestant and Catholic conservative dogmas. The dogmas say that Protestants’ reaching
salvation and Catholics’ gaining grace are dependent on the condition that women’s
sexuality be regulated into motherhood as the defining female role (Bendroth 2001;
Hawley 1999; Weaver 1994). From this perspective, one would expect to find a strong
association between sexual morality and gender ideology on the one hand and the
domestic work situation of religious conservative people on the other.

This line of reasoning has to be revised, however. As outlined in the section about
neo-patriarchal adaptation (Ellison and Bartkowski 2002; Riesebrodt 1993) in chapter 2,
social groups have to adapt their lives to a certain degree to the societal forces that have
restructured gender relations and family life. This has occurred with the entry of
conservative women into the labor force and their contribution to the family income.
From this context I hypothesize that 2a) domestic work distribution between religious
conservative men and women is less related to sexual morality and gender ideology than

to demographic variables such as generation, education and income. Nevertheless,

79

research has found attitude stability over the last three decades concerning the religious
conservatives’ ideology about gender relations. The attitudes about the gender relations
has been unchanged since studies about the religious conservatives’ ideology of gender
relations have been conducted (Petersen and Donnenwerth 1997). While the concept of
gender divided care is expected not to apply for the factual domestic work situation, the
ideology of the religious conservatives about gender relations is expected to be gender
divided This is the reason why I expect to find a difference between factual domestic
work and the ideology of gender relations. Thus I hypothesize that 2b) the factual
distribution of household labor between husband and wife is not predicted by their
ideology about domestic gender relations. This difference about factual household labor
done by men and women and their ideology about gender relations has been investigated
with Protestants only. The present dissertation also involves Catholics with whom these
differences are followed.

The literature has not distinguished between Protestant and Catholic sexual and
motherhood ideologies. This dissertation does investigate the issue of whether there is a
structural difference between Catholics’ and Protestants’ ideology about gender relations
and sexual ideology. I examine how the two religious groups conceptualize motherhood
and marriage (see chapter 2 of this dissertation, section Catholic and Protestant Cultural
Context of the Domestication of Sexuality). It can be seen that Protestants’ perceptions
on motherhood and marriage are based on textual grounds and for Catholics on
bureaucratic grounds. The Catholic Church declared marriage holy, thus sex without
procreation intentions in marriage is sinful. On the Protestant side, rules about sex and

gender relations do not come from institutional orders but are extracted from the text of

80

the inerrant Bible. Women are described there as having committed the original sin, and
consequently are considered naturally subordinate to men (Bendroth 1993). Thus the
message of the Catholic Church in gender relations is about sexuality that is sinful
without the procreation in marriage. The message of the inerrant Bible is about the
gender division of labor. In the context of bureaucratic and textual grounds for gender
and moral ideologies, I predict 2c) 3 different ideological structure for Protestant and
Catholic morality and ideology about gender relations. For Catholics, attitudes describing
sexual morality will be the major variables predicting their views about gender relations;
for Protestants, issues describing gender hierarchy will be most important.

There are two grounds upon which I hypothesize that 2d) Catholic and Protestant
conservatives’ ideology about gender relations is independent of their demographic
origin. Catholic ideology has to do with the conservatives’ attitude stability about sexual
morals and gender relations. Contrary to the factual domestic work situation, where more
egalitarian gender relations have developed, religious conservatives have shown for
decades the same hierarchical gender and sexual ideologies (Petersen and Donnenwerth
1997). Also, research has shown a clear policy preference of religious conservatives’
political priorities for traditional moral and gender related family issues. Economic issues
have come second in importance as to what politicians should solve most urgently(Green
et al. 2006; Petrocik 2007). In both of these cases it is doubtful that demographic
variables now have an influence.

Responsibility for Poverty

In the first chapter I argued that the dogmatic feature of the religious conservatives is

ahistorical and that one ideological issue that has been dealt with in ahistorical terms by

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the religious conservatives is sexual morality and the gender relations linked to morals.
Protestant conservatives’ salvation experience and Catholics’ perception of God’s grace
are rooted in this flame of hierarchical gender ideology and sexual morals.

As outlined in chapter one, a feature of ahistorical religiosity is the focus on the
dogma’s formal requirements, such as Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading or
Catholics’ correct rituals for the sacraments. The focus on the religious formalism allows
for belief in a clearly defined truth This makes the importance of the religion more
salient to the believer (Salzman 2008; Schoenherr 1987). The means that make ahistorical
religiosity salient to the believer are sexual morals and the gender relations. In both
religions, the focus on the religious formalism is linked to the spiritual connection to God
as compared to the social connection with emphasis of the care for others (Welch and
Leege 1988: 588). Emphasis of the spiritual, in turn, is linked to an individualist
perspective of the world and the focus on individual morals politically expressed in
social policies supporting traditional families, gender roles and sexual morals (Papanek
1994; Rose 1999). In this line of reasoning, individual morals and social problems are
closely linked to sexual morals. On these grounds I hypothesize 3a) that Protestant and
Catholic conservatives’ ahistorical religiosity is the religious component that is associated
with their view on an individualist responsibility of poverty.

As argued previously in this chapter Protestant conservatives reject government
regulation. It has been associated with immorality and prevents conversion towards
salvation. Many public institutions are associated with the promotion of promiscuity, like
sex education in the public schools, or welfare with unwed parenthood. The literature

shows (Himmelstein 1990; Klatch 1987) that public institutions, which have to do with

82

the regulation of wealth, prevent the religious community from having control as to
whether the needy person deserves support as someone who is morally supervised and
lives within the rules of the religious community. According to this view if someone is
poor, it is because they did not submit to the religious community’s rules (Riesebrodt
1993). From this point of view I hypothesize that 3b1) Protestant conservatives’ ideology
about sexuality and gender relations influences their fiscal attitudes towards the
individual’s responsibility for poverty.

For Catholic conservatives, the question of acceptance or rejection of government
regulation has not been so clearly traced from their religious dogma as for their Protestant
counterparts. This dissertation intends to develop this theme.

The Pope’s policies on the economy have no binding character and are not
necessarily to be followed for the individual to be a good Catholic. This contrasts with his
moral policy on sexuality (Burns 1999). Welch & Leege (1991), for example, found that
. conservative Catholics follow their Church’s position as long as she is clear about an
issue, such as about the death penalty; or if the Catholic Church diverges from other
policy organizations, such as those among the Christian Right to which conservatives
adhere. Ifthe position of the Catholic Church is ambiguous or missing, the research
found that Catholics follow others’ direction. Here, the Republican Party with its market
individualism rrright be the preference, since the party endorses pro-life policies. This is a
strong incentive since the ban on abortion is a cornerstone of the Catholic belief system
(Burns 2005; Kissling 1999).

The opposition against abortion is representative of the conservative believers’

struggle against sexual permissiveness (Hawley 1994; Manning 1999; Press and Cole

83

1999). For Catholic conservatives, permissiveness is the symptom of disobedience to the
Pope’s teaching about sexuality. The Pope’s policy on sexual morals is binding for the
conservative Catholics’ identity. Believers’ faith is bound to obedience to the Church
leader for earning God’s grace. In addition, John Paul II promulgated a non-binding
economic policy, leaning more towards free market economy than towards fiscal
government regulation (Cima and Schubeck 2001: 214). From this policy of the Pope on
the one hand and the Republican free market ideology on the other, who with its anti-
abortion endorsement is supporting the Pope’s moral philosophy, I hypothesize 3b2) that
Catholic conservatives’ ideology about sexuality and gender relations influences their
fiscal attitudes towards individualist responsibility for poverty.

With respect to the association between moral and economic attitudes, there is
no work available that distinguishes between the Catholic and Protestant
conservative faiths by examining the structure of the ideology about sexual morality
and gender relations. As outlined in the second chapter and applied with hypothesis
2c), the Biblical textual grounding produces gender hierarchy as the major
ideological component of Protestant moral ideology and women’s subsequent
submission under men because of Eve’s fall. The Catholic bureaucratic structure is
dependent on sexual morals for power maintenance, and therefore, moral ideology
has sexual morality as its major component. In this context of bureaucratic and
textual grounds for ideologies about gender relations and moral ideologies I
hypothesize for Catholic conservatives that 3c) sexual morality will be the major
component explaining moral ideology. For Protestant conservatives, this is predicted

to be gender hierarchy.

84

Finally, it is hypothesized that 3d) the ideological components will withstand the
demographic controls of income, education and generation. This argument is based on the
importance of moral values over economic issues the religious conservatives have
reported with respect to policy preference (Green et al. 2006; Petrocik 2007). For
Catholic conservatives, sexual morality is the value taught from the Church hierarchy,
binding what it means to be a Catholic. Protestant conservatives read from the Bible that
the individual’s moral condition is linked to the wellbeing of the society as a whole. Both
Catholics’ identity and Protestants’ moral responsibility are personalistic phenomena
required from the respective dogma for everyone and should be independent of class
issues.

Summary of Hypotheses

Proposition in relation to ahistorical religiosity: Morals about sex and gender
relations are the major ideological components that are associated in this dissertation with
making religious conservatives aware of the importance of their religion (see chapter one
of this thesis).

Hypothesis 1a): Catholics’ and Protestants’ view about sexuality and gender
relations are the strongest predictors of their ahistorical religiosity.

Proposition in relation to demographic control of ahistorical religiosity — Social
Class Issues: Conflicts over moral values in the larger society are the major attraction for
people to strict religious dogma. In each socio-economic class there are sections of
people who experience the value conflict over morals (Riesebrodt 1993). I expect that the
value conflict is independent of variables featuring class membership like income and

education.

85

Hypothesis 1b): The influence of sexual morals and ideology about gender relations
on ahistorical religiosity is independent of income and education.

Proposition in relation to demographic control of ahistorical religiosity —Generation:
The oldest age cohort born before World War II is the most doctrinally orthodox and the
most committed to their church. This age cohort is dying out. The age cohorts born in the
19605 and after are the least likely to participate in doctrinally orthodox worship but the
conservative religious movement, since its birth in the 19805, has always attracted groups
of young people to its membership. They have become smaller in numbers but more
orthodox and conforming than previous generations (D'Antonio et al. 2001; Weaver
1993)

Hypothesis 1c): The influence of sexual morals and ideology about gender relations
on ahistorical religiosity is independent of the generation variable.

Proposition in relation to neo-patriarchy: With the entry of conservative women into
the labor force and their contribution to the family income (Ellison and Bartkowski 2002)
the religious conservatives had to adapt their lives to a certain degree to the societal
forces that have restructured gender relations and family life during the last few decades
in the larger society (Riesebrodt 1993). While the concept of gender divided care for the
family versus market work for pay is expected not to apply for the factual domestic work
situation, the ideology of the religious conservatives about gender relations is expected to
be gender divided.

Hypothesis 2a): The domestic work distribution between religious conservative men

and women is not affected by their ideology about gender relations.

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Hypothesis 2b): The domestic work distribution between religious conservative men
and women is more dependent on demographic variables like income, education and
generation than on the ideology about gender relations.

Proposition in relation to neo-patriarchy — egalitarian versus hierarchical ideology:
Catholic conservatives’ ideology about gender relations and sexual morality is built on
bureaucratic grounds. They reach God’s grace through their obedience to the Pope and
his Church teaching about gender divided sexual morals (Burns 2005; Gilkey 1974).
Protestant conservatives’ ideology about gender relations and sexual morality is built on
textual grounds. They reach salvation through belief in the Biblical word of the divinely
approved gender hierarchy between men and women (Bendroth 2001; DeBerg 2000).

Hypothesis 2c): Catholic and Protestant conservatives’ ideology about gender
relations and sexual morality is hierarchical.

Proposition in relation to neo-patriarchy - different structural grounds of ideology:
The structure of the hierarchical ideology about gender relations is different for Catholics
than for Protestants (see chapter 2 of this dissertation).

Hypothesis 2cl ): For Catholics, attitudes describing sexual morality will be the
major variables predicting their ideology about gender relations.

Hypothesis 2c2): For Protestants, attitudes describing gender hierarchy will be the
major variables predicting their ideology about gender relations.

Proposition in relation to demographic control of neo-patriarchy: Religious
conservatives have revealed for decades the same gender and sexual ideologies (Petersen
and Donnenwerth 1997). Also, they have more recently shown preference for politics that

give priority to topics about traditional moral and gender related family issues and

87

economic issues have come second in line in importance in relation to what politicians
should take care of most urgently (Green et al. 2006; Petrocik 2007).

Hypothesis 2d): Catholic and Protestant conservatives’ ideology about gender
relations is independent of the demographic variables income, education and generation.

Proposition in relation to the responsibility for poverty: The means that make
ahistorical religiosity salient to the believer are sexual morals and the gender relations
that are the grounds of the sexual morals (see chapter one of this thesis).

Hypothesis 3a): Protestant and Catholic conservatives’ ahistorical religiosity is the
religious component that is associated with their views about the responsibility for
poverty.

Proposition in relation to the responsibility for poverty — individualist versus
structural responsibility for Protestants: The local Protestant conservative community
wants to have control over their believers’ adherence to Biblical rule in order to decide
with religious criteria who deserves help against poverty. Because of prospective loss of
control over the faithful, the community rejects a general right to welfare from
government intervention (Himmelstein 1990; Klatch 1987).

Hypothesis 3b1): Protestant conservatives’ ideology about sexuality and gender
relations influences their fiscal attitudes towards individualist responsibility for poverty.

Proposition in relation to the responsibility for poverty - individualist versus
structural responsibility for Catholics: The Catholic bureaucratic structure is dependent
on sexual morals for power maintenance, and Catholic conservatives’ grace experience is
dependent on their obedience to the Pope. The economic policy of John Paul I] leaned

more towards free market economy than towards fiscal government regulation (Cima and

88

Schubeck 2001: 214). In addition Republican free market ideology and the Republican
anti-abortion endorsement support the Pope’s phi1050phy on sexual morals (Papanek
1994; Rose 1999; Saunders and Abramowitz 2007).

Hypothesis 3b2): Catholic conservatives’ ideology about sexuality and gender
relations influences their fiscal attitudes towards individualist responsibility for poverty.

Proposition in relation to the responsibility for poverty - different structural grounds
for Catholics’ and Protestants’ ideology: Catholic conservatives reach God’s grace
through their obedience to the Popes and his Vatican theologians’ teaching about sexual
morals (Burns 2005; Gilkey 1974). Protestant conservatives’ reach salvation through the
belief in the Biblical word of the divinely approved gender hierarchy between man and
woman (Bendroth 2001; DeBerg 2000).

Hypothesis 3c): In this context of a bureaucratic ground for Catholics’ and a textual
ground for Protestants’ ideologies about gender relations and moral ideologies the
hypothesis is: Sexual morality is the major component explaining Catholic conservatives’
views about the causes of poverty. Hierarchical gender ideology is the major component
explaining Protestant conservatives’ views about the responsibility for poverty.

Proposition in relation to demographic control of the views about the
responsibility for poverty: Moral values have priority over economic issues for the
religious conservatives with respect to policy preference (Green et al. 2006; Petrocik
2007). I expect the ideological components about morals and gender relations will
explain Catholics’ and Protestants’ views about their individualist responsibility of
poverty. I expect that demographic controls will not affect this explanation.

Hypothesis 3d): Sexual morality is the major component explaining Catholic

89

conservatives’ views about the causes of poverty. Hierarchical gender ideology is the
major component explaining Protestant conservatives’ views about the responsibility
for poverty. The demographic variables income, education and generation have no

influence on these explanations.

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Chapter 4

METHODS

Description of Data

A questionnaire (see Appendix A) was constructed for data collection of this project.
Data was collected through survey methods. From June 2001 to February 2002 I
distributed 800 questionnaires in selected Catholic and Protestant churches and to the
Pregnancy Services (Crisis Pregnancy Centers) and the Catholic Social Services (with
Respect Life groups) of the Greater Lansing Area. Furthermore, questionnaires were
mailed out to Right to Life of Michigan Pregnancy Counseling Services located in the
areas fiom Ann Arbor to Saginaw and Grand Rapids to Detroit. Four hundred eight (408)
of the questionnaires were returned.

Roughly 40 questionnaires were distributed to Christian Right, anti-abortion, and
conservative religious activist groups in the Lansing areas. They were the Michigan
Family Forum, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, and the American
Family Association of Michigan. Included in the data collection of Christian Right
organizations were also the Lansing based Citizens for Traditional Values and the
associated Foundation for Traditional Values. These Christian Right organizations are
anti-abortion, free enterprise political action groups campaigning in addition for
conservative religious and family (hierarchical gender) values. In relation to Catholic
conservative activist groups I collected data among the Catholic League for Religious and
Civil Rights with questionnaires mailed to them in the Detroit region. This is a Catholic

conservative organization independent of the Catholic Church but fighting for keeping

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her conservative values and according to their self description from their web site
(Catholic League 2009) fighting the secular danger against civil society and modernizing
Catholic religious values. Cuneo (1997) describes this kind of conservative socio-
religious vision in his assessment of the Catholic conservatives’ aim to keep the
American Catholic Church pious and male hierarchical.

Among the specifically anti-abortion and religious activist source of local data
collection were the Right to Life of Michigan (RLM) Organization of the Greater
Lansing areas, Michigan Christians for Life and Michigan State University (MSU)
Students for Life. RLM of Lansing had in addition to pregnancy centers and Christian
adoption agencies (Bethany Christian Services 2009) a non-religious adoption agency
and two non-religious children’s aid non-profit agencies and one government
organization (Appendix B, Table 20) listed in their directory of pregnancy support
services (Right to Life of Michigan 2000). A check of conservatism through those
respondents’ abortion ideology (see section Data Collection below) revealed the
respondents had mainline or liberal views on religious and abortion issues. I checked any
further group listed in a hard copy or online directory on adoption and the prevention of
abortion that I considered for data collection for their association with religious values in
order to keep control of the income of data in relation to religious conservatism and
mainline views. In addition 1 did contact a few mainline Protestant churches (Appendix
B, Table 19) in order to'keep a balance between conservative and mainline votes among
Protestant and Catholic data in the later part of my data collection.

Three Lansing based religious groups were recommended by the Pastor of the

fundamentalist New Covenant Christian Church and the missions director of the

92

evangelical Trinity Church, Lansing for data collection among religious activist groups.
They are the prayer group Pray America, Manos de Jesus in Lansing, a missionary group
building houses for widows and orphans based on a literalist Bible life in Guatemala and
praying sessions in Lansing. The two others are City Rescue Mission and Lansing Teen
Challenge. Each is a Bible mission group working to rehabilitate alcohol and drug
addicted youths and adults on the basis of a literalist Bible life. From these religious
groups and the anti-abortion and Christian Right organizations a few staff members per
group filled out the questionnaire. Another approximately 15 questionnaires were
returned from the Catholic homeschooling community of the Greater Lansing area.

Ten percent (9.5%) of the respondents to the entire survey were minorities. Four
percent were Afiican American, three percent were Hispanic and an additional three
percent were of another non-white ethnic group. With the exception of one male member
of the Michigan Family F orurn who was Hispanic and one female member of one of the
Pregnancy Counseling Services (Appendix B) who was of a not identifiable minority, the
participants of the survey of the pregnancy and anti-abortion organizations, Christian
Right and Catholic conservative political action and religious missionary groups were
white. All Hispanic and African American responses came from one of the Churches
where questionnaires were distributed.

Studies on black and white Christians clearly validated the conclusion that African
American evangelical Protestants are conservative on moral values (Emerson and Smith
2000; Green et al. 2006; Stacey 1996) but demographically distinct from their white
counterparts. Both black and white evangelicals have the same orthodox social values

regarding the protection of the family in opposition to sexual permissiveness, divorce,

93

gay marriage, and especially abortion. African American evangelical Protestants are
concerned about the breakdown of the family, as white evangelicals are, but they do not
search for the causes of the phenomenon entirely in feminism, secular humanism or the
liberal elites. African Americans search for the causes first and foremost, in economic
and social problems (Green et al. 1996: 186). As a consequence, they are more
progressive on economic issues such as the affirrnation of the welfare state, affirmative
action and other public programs aimed at reducing poverty and the number of uprooted
families.

With all the social traditionalism and religious rigor that Afiican American
evangelical Protestants share with their white counterparts, they directly feel the socio-
economic implications of Christian Right policies align with the Republican Party. Most
of the Afiican Americans vote Democratic, and this is maintained for African American
evangelicals (Wilcox and Rozell 2000). Since Afiican American and white conservative
Christians are politically distinct and have different socio-economic interests, none of the
minority members were included in the study. Also they were too few (all rrrinority ethnic
groups totaled 38 cases) to be included as a control group in the regression analysis.

Data Collection

The initial plan was to choose two conservative churches of approximately the same
size for data collection from the Lansing area, one Catholic and one Protestant. The
criterion for selecting these two churches was their activism against abortion. The protest
against abortion is central and stands as representative of all the struggles for socio-moral
values'for which the Christian conservative movement has been known the last three

decades (Ferree et al. 2002). In 2001 the spokesperson of the Michigan Catholic

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Conference connected me to the St. Gerard Catholic Church and the Lansing chapter of
Michigan Family Forum linked me to a few fundamentalist churches, among them the
Trinity Baptist Church, a non denominational Bible church located in East Lansing. Both
churches had approximately two thousand members. A pilot study showed two things:
That random sampling from the membership lists of the selected churches, as was
planned, struck from consideration any participation on the Protestant side. Evangelical
church elders made clear that they would not work with membership lists. They would
only distribute questionnaires in their churches to volunteers who wanted to fill them out.
The Catholic side was more responsive with respect to the sampling request. Fr. Sylvester
Fedewa at the St. Gerard Catholic Church would have participated in the distribution of
questionnaires randomly sampled from a membership list. However, since there was no
Protestant sampling counterpart, membership lists for the project were disregarded.

The second insight from the pilot study was that not enough cases would be collected
from distributing questionnaires in one or even a few selected churches from the
Protestant and the Catholic religions. Data collection from selected churches would not
provide enough cases for data analysis. Not more than approximately 20 people would
fill out a questionnaire in one single church, even if it was a mega Church with several
thousand members like the Mount Hope Church of Lansing. (During final data collection,
there were two cases of Catholic churches from where I collected 25 and 38
Questionnaires and 30 from a Protestant mainline church (Appendix B, List of
Churches). Ifit was a smaller church of a few hundred members, the return rate would
drop to under ten returned questionnaires or none at all.

Also it was clear that distributing questionnaires in conservative churches for

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volunteers who would be willing to fill them out would still result in gaining a large
number of mainline votes about religion and gender issues. Collecting among self '
selected volunteers to participate in the study would not render enough answers from
religious conservatives. Since anti-abortion ideology and conservative religious dogma
are strongly associated (Beyerlein and Chaves 2003; Granberg 1978; Kohut et al. 2000)
1 controlled whether the respondents were conservative by checking their answers to the
questions about their opinions about abortion. (See Appendix A question 4.6 (1 to 7). The
question 4.6 (1 to 7) is from the General Social Survey (1999). If the answers to four of
the seven scales which asked whether they agreed with abortion were filled in with
“probably no”, the respondents were considered conservative. The respondents could
choose from “definitely”, they would agree with abortion, to “probably”, they would
agree to “not sure”, “probably not”, and they would “definitely not” agree with abortion.
The next step in the process of data collection included the systematic coverage of all
conservative Protestant denominations listed in the yellow pages for the Lansing area,
including the non-denominational churches and Bible groups (see evangelical
denominations of the list of Protestant denominations in Table 1) from which at least one
medium size church (300 up to 1000 members) was selected to be called and asked
whether questionnaires could be dropped off. A definition of conservative religious
denominations (Leege and Kellstedt 1993b; Mead and Hill 2001) was used as reference
to select the denominations from the Yellow Pages and from the intemeti The process of
calling for participating in the survey was repeated until one of the evangelical Protestant

churches listed. under a certain denomination agreed to have questionnaires dropped off.

On the Catholic side, I talked to the director of peace and justice ministry at the St.

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Table l
Protestant Denominations

Evangelical Denominations Mainline Denominations
Southern Baptist American Baptist

Presbyterian in America Presbyterian in the USA
Missouri Lutheran Synod Evangelical Lutheran of America
Wisconsin Lutheran Synod United Methodist

Church of God Congregational

Assemblies of God Reformed

Church of the Nazarene Episcopal

Non-Denominational United Church of Christ

Bible Fellowship Disciples of God

 

Sources: Mead and Hill (2001), Leege and Lyman (1993b)

Mary Cathedral, Lansing and deacon of the Diocese of Lansing from whom I got a
directory of the parish social ministries of the Lansing region. They include 23 parishes
of the 92 of the Lansing Diocese (Diocese of Lansing 2000). Each parish church’s social
activities of the Lansing region was listed, from Peace and Justice issues on the left side
of the political spectrum to those with focus on Respect Life, the Catholic pro—life
pregnancy social services to the middle of the right of the spectrum. The Respect Life
groups are the Catholic counterpart of the Right to Life of Michigan (RLM) pregnancy
counseling services, to which I mailed questionnaires in the entire mid — Michigan area,
after the local Lansing area data collection had not provided enough conservative data for
empirical analysis. The pregnancy counseling’services are organized and put on the
intemet by Christian Right organizations like Care net and Heart Beat International
(United States 2006).

The Catholic Church organizes the Respect Life services herself, while RLM says

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they are not affiliated with any religion (Blanchard 1996). There is a specific Catholic
counseling center in Lansing, Project Rachel, to heal trauma after abortion. The director
of Peace and Justice Ministries of the Diocese of Lansing told me, however, that this
Catholic pregnancy center was staffed, but there was hardly anybody from the
community who would seek counseling before or as a psychological support after an
abortion.

In any case the deacon made clear that the struggle against abortion of the Respect
Life social services and the Catholic Church were not in any way linked to the political
action group Right to Life. The parish priest of the St. Therese of Lisieux Church in
Lansing to whom the deacon connected me also ideologically distanced Catholic pro life
from Right to Life. There were two such Catholic pro-life groups at St. Therese, Problem
Pregnancy and Respect Life. The parish priest emphasized the entire hmnan life span
which Catholic Respect Life defends including the Church’s fight against poverty. He
meant poverty is not respectful of a graceful life. Furthermore he. was strongly opposed to
the death penalty.

The discussion of these two Church officials was support to some of the discussion
in the literature claiming that Catholic anti-abortion stances are not right wing, but have
progressive features, with their struggle against poverty, death penalty and nuclear
weapons (Kelly 1999). At the same time the Catholic Church hosts social groups with
opposing social and political aims under her organizational umbrella while Protestant
churches are rather organizationally distinct with their social and political views between
the more liberal mainlines and the conservative evangelicals (Gilkey 1974), (also see

Appendix B of this dissertation). The history of the development of Protestant religious

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fundamentalism shows the trend of organizational separation when basic ideological
differences cannot be resolved within a Protestant denomination. Disagreeing members
are free to leave and build a new Church without losing their religious identity, since
Protestant belief is based on the Word, not the institution of the church as with the
Catholic faith (Marsden 2006; Walsh 2000).

The Pregnancy Centers Online — Michigan Listings had 133 Centers listed
throughout Michigan in 2001 of which 27 were Catholic Social Services. Some Catholics
against abortion in the parishes throughout Michigan must have felt close enough to the
political action groups of the Christian Right organizations that organize these pregnancy
centers (United States 2006) in order to list their parish pro life groups with them, but at
the same time, those Catholic centers listed with the Christian Right pregnancy
organizations are only a fraction of the many parishes in the State of Michigan. The
Lansing Region with its 11 Respect Life social services in the 23 Parishes had none of
them listed rmder Pregnancy Centers -. Michigan Listings in 2001 [also see Diocese of
Lansing (2000)].

These diverging interests within the Catholic Church were reflected in relations to
my data collection in the diocese of Lansing. For data collection I called each parish
church listed in the Greater Lansing area of the diocese which had a Respect Life social
action comrrrittee included in their social ministries, and asked whether I could distribute
questionnaires. Also, I asked the staff of these parishes with Respect Life action groups to
give me information about which of the Catholic Churches in the Lansing areas had
conservative social programs. An indicator for adherence to conservative rule is the

rejection of artificial contraception as taught by Humanae Vitae, because artificial

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contraception is considered the beginning of the abortion process of life and subsequent
sexual permissiveness (Miller 1993). Parish churches that advocated “natural family
planning” were organized in programs called “Couple to Couple League” promoting
information on the monthly cycle of the woman for contraception. Churches like
Resrurection of Lansing and St. Thomas Aquinas of East Lansing that emphasized such
programs strongly in their social ministries services were asked to fill out questionnaires.

An additional Catholic group that I approached to have questionnaires filled out was
the Catholic home schooling community of Lansing. They teach their children at home
through 8"” grade, because they feel, the Catholic Church bureaucracy and the schools
administered by the Church are too liberal. While most of the homeschooling proponents
to which I was directed filled out the questionnaire (12 questionnaires), contact to the
Protestant counterpart was finitless. Protestant evangelical and fundamentalist
homeschoolers were not responsive. However, one Protestant fundamentalist pastor
asked the teaching staff of his elementary school to fill out questionnaires for the project
of this dissertation. They all did fill out the questionnaires. The pastor had been
approached by the Catholic wife of one of his fundamentalist church members on behalf
of my dissertation project.

Catholics in general were more responsive in filling out the questionnaire (n=200)
than the Protestant evangelicals (n=133) in relations to my entire data collection
(Appendix B, Table 19). To match the larger response rate of the Catholics in general and
the Catholic non- conservative responses in particular on the Protestant side, a few
mainline Protestant churches (Appendix B, Mainline Churches) were chosen for the final

data collection (n=44) in addition to the evangelical churches (n=133) that have more

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conservative tradition of dogma than the mainline churches (Wuthnow 1989).

In order to enlarge my data set in addition to the set collected from the Lansing
areas I checked from the Internet all pregnancy counseling organizations listed in 2001
under Pregnancy Centers Online — Michigan Listings. They are political action groups
that hand out information about abortion and how to avoid it. They offer pregnancy tests
to pregnant women that search pregnancy and abortion information and try to convince
them not to have an abortion. I called every group between Detroit and Grand Rapids,
Ann Arbor and Flint and asked whether I could mail questionnaires. Many of these
organizations, especially in the non-metropolitan areas are staffed with one person. They
begin operation but then disappear after a few months. So some of the centers listed had
no valid phone number any longer. I mailed from One to ten questionnaires to the
agreeing service centers, depending on the number of staff members who would
volunteer to fill them out.

Construction of Variables

The concepts of interest in this study are ahistorical religiosity, neo-patriarchy, and
econorrric ideology. The following sections describe the variables that were used to
analyze the association between strict dogma and moral values of Catholic and Protestant
conservatives and how this association is transformed into gender ideology and opinions
about poverty. The description of variables is grouped in dependent, independent and
control variables. Table 2 gives an overview over these groups of variables.

Dependent Variables
Ahistorical Religiosity: The question “How much guidance does your religion give

you for your daily living?” was chosen from the General Social Survey (1999) to

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operationalize ahistorical religiosity (see Appendix A, question 1.24). The coding used
in the analysis is from (1) to (6): “None” (1) to “the only guide I have” (6). The question
about how much one’s religion is one’s guide through daily life measures awareness of
the importance of one’s religion and interacts with the awareness of a conservative
identity. Gut and Green (1993) found in this context that it is not the content of a religion
that is vital to understanding the ideological underpinning of a person’s world view on a
progressive conservative dimension but the strength of the attachment to the beliefs and
traditions of that religion. The basic concept of religious strength, they found, is salience,
the importance that religion has in a person’s life. The link of salience to religious
conservatism is that the more doctrinally conservative a religious tradition is the more
members say their religion is important to them (Guth and Green 1993).

With respect to the Catholic and Protestant ahistorical dogmas we saw (in the first
chapter) that faith depends on capturing the spirit of the religion through its formalism
(Schoenherr 1987). The connection of ahistorical religious formalism to salience is that
the religious boundaries of the dogma the truth of which can be found in formalism are
clear to the believer. A religious belief that has clear boundaries is more salient to the
faithful than a dogma that allows dispute over the individual’s consciousness about God’s
will (Elliott 2006; Salzman 2008).

The final reason why ahistorical religiosity is operationalized in this dissertation
through religious salience is that this concept was in Guth and Green’s (1993: 160) study
directly linked to questions of sexuality, morality and abortion, or in general, to “farrrily
values”. These are all issues which are components of both Protestant and Catholic

current conservative dogma and have sexuality as their underpinnings. The awareness of

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the conservative identity is according associated with the believers’ awareness of his/her
sexual morality.

Domestic Work Distribution: The literature about the gender division of labor in
conservative Christian households has mostly been conducted in Protestant evangelical
and fundamentalist settings. This research shows a neo-patriarchal situation in which the
domestic work situation of the Christian conservatives has changed towards the larger
society with the work in the home being adapted to the double earner society.

On the grounds of Arie Hochschield’s (1989) findings about the disproportionate
load of work for women compared to men in the double earner situation published in her
book “The Second Shift” (Hochschild 1989) I wrote a series of questions asking about
the distribution of domestic work between the man and the woman in the household
(Appendix A, questions 3.2 (1 to 4). “In your family or partnership who does the
following activities, the male or the female, or do you share equally.” On a scale from (1)
(the man only is taking care of the task in the household) and (7) (the woman deals with
the task alone) I asked about who does the shopping for groceries, prepares meals, does
the cleaning, takes care of the children. A high score means a high degree of gender
division of labor within the household. 1 added the four questions up into a scale of (0) to
(28), which resulted in a reliability factor of Alpha=0.76. (The mean for Catholics is
19. 8, the mean for Protestants is 18. 7).

The comparison of the means for Catholics and Protestants shows, that both,
Catholics and Protestants live in households with relative gender equalitarian relations
between husband and wife. We consider that the code (14) means most equalitarian and

(28) the most gender divided relations. However, Catholics’ gender relations regarding

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the distribution of household labor is slightly more gender divided than for Protestants.
This possibly indicates that marriage and the relationships within it are sacramental in
Catholicism (Strasser 2004).

Ideology about Gender Relations (Table 2, Conservative Gender Ideology): I
explained in chapter 3, Hypotheses, that the concept of neo-patriarchy contains the
factual gender relations that I measure from the distribution of household work between
men and women, and the ideology about gender relations. The questions to measure the
believers’ ideology about gender relations, (equalitarian or hierarchical), were adapted
from the General Social Survey (General Social Survey 1999). The sequence of questions
asks about working mothers and family life [Appendix A, questions 3.1 (l to 9)] and was
introduced as follows in the questionnaire: “Here are some questions about women. Do
you agree or disagree?” The nine questions were coded from (0) strongly agree to (4)
strongly disagree. The questions were added into a scale of (0) to (35) with a reliability
factor of Alpha: .82. They were coded in such a way that the higher the score, the more
the person has a gender divided ideology about gender relations. Table 2 shows that
Catholics with a mean = 20.1 have a slightly more conservative gender ideology than
Protestants with a mean = 18.9 on the scale that measures the ideology about gender
relations between 0 and 35.

Economic Attitudes: Responsibility for poverty has been allocated to the individual
in the conservative Protestant tradition. There is a strong emphasis there on the
individual’s necessity to convert as a precondition for the betterment of society including
the fight against poverty. The reason for poverty is seen in people’s sin from not

following God’s word in the Bible (Wilcox 2000). Structural, social or political

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conditions are hardly taken into consideration in the Protestant conservative dogma as
' possible sources of poverty (Emerson and Smith 2000). Catholic dogma is not as clearly
associated with individualist responsibility of poverty. The Catholic conservatives have
as one feature to their salvation: To be obedient to the teachings of the Vatican, from
which sexual morality is binding for the Catholic membership in the faith. Economic
ideology is given more discretion in the Catholic faith, since the socio-economic teaching
is not compelling for the Catholic identity (Burns 1996). Economic ideology that
allocates individualist vs. structural responsibility for poverty is measured with the
question fi'om the General Social Survey (1999) “Which of the following is closer to your
view? Individuals are poor because of individual failure or individuals are poor because
of social, economic, or political factors.” (Appendix A, question 2.31.3) A scale between
(1) strongly structural and (8) strongly individualist measures the degree of individualist
responsibility.

The mean for Catholics is 3.6, Whereas the mean for Protestants is 4.5. This indicates
a slightly stronger tendency for Protestants to search the causes for poverty in
individualist responsibility as compared to Catholics and is support for the conclusion in
the literature (Hoover et al. 2002; Walsh 2000) about the focus on individualism in the
Protestant conservative dogma. In addition, the Catholic mean of 3.6 on the (0) to (8)
scale indicates Catholics in general have a more structural approach to explaining poverty
as compared to Protestants. This is support to the literature about this theme as I
presented it in chapter three, section on Catholic Conservatives. There I described
Catholic conservatives’ relationship to God that goes through their parish community

with the individual as member. Communitarian views are explained as some of the

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reasons why Catholics are more inclined to explain poverty with social causes or
deregulated market policy that is harmful for the economic disadvantaged than the
Protestant explanation (Gilkey 1974; Jelen 1991b; Lent 1998).

Independent Variables

The independent variables are grouped into three categories for presentation
purposes. They are based on gender ideological grounds, religious grounds, or whether
they have both gender ideological and religious connotations. Gender ideology and
sexual morality are the two major gender ideological variables. The importance of these
two variables is that they are used to test the structural difference of the concept of
morality for Protestant and Catholic conservative dogmas (chapter 3, hypothesis 2c).
How are these dogmas associated with gender ideology and then transformed into
opinions and interpretations about the causes of poverty? The variable gender ideology is
constructed from questions asking about the opinion on gender relations. The questions
ask the. opinion about the role of women as mothers and part of the labor market
[Appendix A, questions 3.1 (1 to 9)]. The variable gender ideology is used both as an
independent and a dependent variable in this study (see chapter 5). The construction of
the variable is described above (section Dependent Variables, Ideology about Gender
Relations).

The description of the next variable is sexual morality. It is the structural counterpart
of gender ideology to test whether there is a structural difference of the concept of
morality for Protestant and Catholic conservative dogmas (chapter 3, hypothesis 2c).

Sexual Morality (Table 2, Conservative Sexual Morality): Morals in the conservative

religious context of the Protestant and Catholic faith are framed by the domestication of

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sexuality. In this view sex outside marriage does not exist. Divorce is one of the first
measures of breakup of the grounds of domesticated control over women through
sexuality (DeBerg 2000). Three questions from the General Social Survey (1999) were
chosen to approach this situation (Appendix A, questions 4.2, 4.3, 4.4). The coding with
the first two questions is from 0 (not wrong at all) to 4 (always wrong) and asks if they
think it is always wrong or not at all if a man and woman have sexual relations before
marriage, or if a person has extramarital sexual relations, or whether they think getting a
divorce should be easier or more difficult.

In both the Protestant and Catholic conservatism, the public school is considered a
pool of liberal thought. The public school threatens with sex and evolution the values of
the creationist view of the world and the reproduction of the religious identity of
conservative Protestants and Catholics (Riesebrodt 1993). Sex education has been
considered one ground of sexual promiscuity and therefore one of the primary features to
be battled (Irvine 2002). On the grounds of this information, I constructed the four
questions on teaching sex education and abstinence in the public schools (Appendix A,
questions 4.5] to 4.54) with the coding for the first three being 0 (definitely yes) to 4
(definitely no). The fourth question is: At what age should abstinence be taught, if at all.
All seven variables about pre- and extra marital sex, divorce and sex education were
computed into a scale from 0 to 28 with the reliability Alpha: 0.71.The coding means the
higher the score, the more a person holds conservative moral values on sexual morality.

The next two variables, abortion and male church leader have both gender
ideological and religious connotations. Abortion indicates permissiveness (Becker and

Eiesland 1997: 158) as it implies female sexuality without the flame of domesticated

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control in the male dominated family. Permissiveness is for Catholic conservatives the
issue about the mortal sinfirlness of sexuality without the intent of procreation

(Burns 1999; Kissling 1999; Weaver 1999). For Protestants abortion is the objection to
God’s will (Bendroth 1999).

Abortion (Table 2, Conservative Abortion Ideology): In order to measure abortion
attitudes, I constructed a scale measuring opinion about abortion and activism about
abortion. The part about abortion attitudes is composed of a scale with seven questions
flom the General Social Survey (1999) asking under which conditions the respondent
would agree with abortion, coded from (0) affirmative to (5) negative (Appendix A,
questions 4.6 (l to 7). The questions were: Do you agree with abortion if 1) there is a
strong chance of serious birth defect in the baby, 2) a woman is married and does not
want to have any more children, 3) the woman's health is seriously endangered by the
pregnancy, 4) the family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children, 5)
the woman became pregnant as a result of rape. Finally, the last questions asked under
what conditions they would agree with an abortion if 6) she is not married and does not
want to marry the man, and if 7) the woman wants abortion for any reason. Also included
is an additional question about abortion formulated as whether the abortion issue is of
concern to the respondents among other social issues (Appendix A, question 4.1.3). The
coding is fl'om 1) not important at all to 7) very important.

In addition to these questions about the respondents’ attitudes about abortion the
questionnaire asks also about activism on behalf of pro-life [Appendix A, questions
5.1(1) to 5.2]. The questions ask whether the respondent works in an organization that

promotes alternatives to abortion, whether money is donated, letters are written to

108

officials, or whether the respondent goes on a picket line. All questions, those about the
attitudes and those about activism were added up into a scale from 1, indicating they were
not opposed at all to abortion, to 46, indicating they were strongly opposed to abortion.

The mean for Catholics is 28.9 (Table 2), six units more conservative than the
middle score (23) of the scale between (0) and (46). The mean for Protestants is 27.3. It
indicates that Catholics in general (including all Catholics in the data set, not only the
Catholic conservatives) are only slightly more conservative on abortion than Protestants
in general, and both are closer to the middle score than to any of the extremes. Even
though the Catholic Church portrays anti-abortion as a matter of Catholic identity
(Weaver 1999: 92) these results confirm that Catholics in general do not take Vatican
teaching on morals as a matter of their Catholic identity (Christiano et al. 2002;
D'Antonio et al. 2001).

Male Church Leader: This variable also has a religious and a gender component. The
variable “male church leader” signifies the believer’s resistance to women as pastors of
their local church or women as ordained priests. Catholic conservatives want a newly
masculinized Church — cleared of functions that Vatican H has allowed women to
perform in parochial Church ceremonies(Cuneo 1989; Schoenherr 2002). Also for
Protestant conservatives, women as pastors contradicts the Biblically requested male
“headship” and is fiercely contested (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988: 37). In order to measure the
view about the importance of male church leadership as compared to include women into
church leadership, the General Social Survey (1999) question “If your church nominated
a women for priest or pastor would you approve or disapprove?” was used with the

coding approve a lot (0) to disapprove a lot (4) (Appendix A, question 3.1.10).

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The rest of the major variables that are described in Table 2 are mostly based on
religious connotations. Job performance of the P0pe, Importance of church for one’s
decisions and making the sign of the cross are variables with Catholic religious
connotations, Conversion (Getting peOple to Christ solves social problems), frequency of
Bible reading and importance of Bible for one’s decisions are variables with Protestant
religious connotations.

Job Performance of the Pope: In order to measure the degree of conservatism within
the Catholic faith, Catholics relationship to the Church hierarchy was investigated. Do
they practice “loyal disobedience” (Christiano et al. 2002) as found characteristic of
mainstream Catholicism? The loyally disobedient Catholics are participating in their
Church but just do not care about the specifically sexual rules of the Vatican. Compared
to the liberal branch of Catholicism, the characteristic of Catholic conservatives is the
absolute obedience to the Church hierarchy (Cuneo 1995; Dinges 1987). Job performance
of the Pope, as measured in the question used in this study does not measure absolute
obedience but indicates through the believers’ agreement of the church hierarchy
readiness to approve the Pope’s actions. The question to measure this are fiom Greeley
(1990) asking “Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Pope is handling his job?”.
The coding was set at (1) disapprove a lot to (5) approve a lot (Appendix A, question
2.4).

To Get PeOple to Cluist Solves Social Problems: To bring people to Christ is the
Protestant evangelical requirement for conversion. It is the precondition to earn salvation.
Without accepting Christ through a Bible conforming life including proper sexual

behavior, salvation is not possible according to conservative Protestant ideals (Riesebrodt

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1993). “If enough people were brought to Christ, would social ills take care of
themselves”? (General Social Survey 1999) is the question to measure Protestant
salvation with the coding from strongly disagree (1), to strongly agree (5) (Appendix A,
question 2.31.4). The second part of the question (that social ills will take care of
themselves) points to the feature of allocating individualist responsibility to social
problems, as found inherent in conservative Protestantism (Emerson and Smith 2000).

The comparison of the means (Catholic mean = 3.58, Protestant mean = 3.47) that
shows hardly any difference for Catholics and Protestants does not suggest however that
this variable describes a strictly Protestant feature. It indicates, that conversion, as
directed from the Protestant Bible, is as important for Catholics as for Protestants,
suggesting, that a certain degree of “Protestantization” (Gilkey 1974) of the Catholic faith
might have become reality. After Vatican 11, some of the mystic that was inherent in the
sacraments of the Catholic faith had been replaced with more reference to the Bible than
was used before Vatican 11. Some literature says, the sacraments have lost importance
since Catholicism’s newer reference to the Bible is competing with the importance of the
sacraments (Gilkey 1974; Schoenherr 2002).

Frequency of Bible Reading and Importance of Bible for One’s Decisions: The Bible
is the root of the Protestant’s belief to God (Harris 1998). With these variables emphasis
of the Bible, both variables have Protestant connotation. However, frequency of Bible
reading is focusing on the formalism of the Protestant belief. The believer’s emphasis on
the formalism like frequency of reading the Bible I described in chapter one as a
ahistorical feature of Protestant conservative dogma. The questions to measure formalism

in relation to the Bible in my study and the importance of the Bible were (General Social

111

Survey 1999): How often do you read the Bible on your own? The coding is (1) never to
(6) several times a day and: How important is the Bible in helping you make decisions?
with the coding (1) not very important to (7) very important (Appendix A, questions
1.222 and 2.32.1).

The comparison of the means in Table 2 between Catholics (mean = 3.50) and
Protestants (mean = 4.24) in relation to the frequency of Bible reading indicates, that the
formalism is somewhat more important for Protestants than for Catholics. Also, the
comparison of the means in relation to the importance of the Bible for decision making
(Catholics mean = 5.18, Protestants mean = 6.27) indicates the Bible is more important
for Protestants than for Catholics, indicating that the Bible is indeed a more relevant
religious reference for Protestants than for Catholics.

Importance of Church for One’s Decisions and Making the Sign of the Cross: The
religious counterpart of the Protestant Bible for Catholicism is the Church and her rituals
(Dinges 1987; Weaver and Appleby 1995b). Making the sign of the cross as a feature
representing Catholic rituals is clearly not a religious feature shared with the Protestants
in my data set, as the comparisons of the means show (Catholic mean = 5.09, Protestant
mean = 1.37). The question “how often do you make the sign of the cross” (General
Social Survey 1999), Appendix A, question 1.232) was coded from (1) never to (6)
several times a day, the question about the Church was “how important is your church in
helping you make decisions” coded from (1) not very important to (7) very important
(General Social Survey 1999), Appendix A, question 2.32.2). Also here the comparison
of the means between Catholics (5.60) and Protestants (5.29) indicates the Church is

more a feature of Catholicism than of Protestantism even though the indication from the

112

means is not strong and the Bible is more a feature of Protestantism (Catholic: Church
mean = 5.60, Bible mean = 5.18; Protestant: Church mean = 5.29, Bible mean = 6.27).

Praying: The reminder of the independent variables which are included in the study
are three questions about praying - on one’s own, for grace at mealtime, and supporting
prayer in the public schools. The questions are from General Social Survey (1999) and
read “How often do you pray on your own?” And “How often do you say grace at
mealtime?” They were coded fl'om (1), never to (6) several times a day (Appendix A,
questions 1.221 and 1.231). The means for Catholics (Table 2, praying on one’s own,
mean = 5.61; saying grace, mean = 4.98) and Protestants (praying on one’s own, mean =
5.68; saying grace, mean = 5.14) do not indicate a faith specific feature for any of them.
The question whether support of prayer in the public schools (General Social Survey
1999), Appendix A, question 4.1.1) is important to the respondents was coded fl'om (1)
not important at all to (7) very important. Here, the Protestant mean = 4.68 is somewhat
higher than the Catholic (mean = 4.41), supporting the suggestion of some of the
literature, that sustenance of prayer in the public schools is rather a Protestant public
policy issue than a Catholic issue that is also promoted by the Christian Right but less by
the official Catholic Church (Guth and Green 1996: 32-39).

Control Variables

Four demographic control variables were used in this study to test the predictor
variables of ahistorical religiosity, neo-patriarchy and the economic attitudes about the.
causes of poverty. The control variables are gender, income, education, and generation.
The questions on which the variables are based are from General Social Survey (1999)

(Appendix A, questions 6.2, 6.4, 6.51, and 6.6).

113

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Dummy variables were constructed with two categories for gender, and three categories
each for lower, middle, higher income, and education and young middle and older
generation. All categories of the dummy variables are dichotomous. Table 2 displays the
proportions of the sample in each demographic group of the dummy variables and
explains the coding.

One category of each dummy variable is the reference category [Table 2, ( R )]. For
gender it is the male category, for education and income it is the category higher
education or income, and for generation it is the younger, the 19 to 39 years old.
Historically men were considered less religious than women among Protestants and
Catholics, even though in both religions’ conservative dogma, masculine leadership is
essential for conservative identity and rejects the idea of women clergy (Lazarus-Yafeh
1988). The rejection occurs on the grounds of the central role of gender division of labor
for the existence of the conservative Bible dogma (DeBerg 2000), and the power
structure of the Catholic Church (Burns 1996; Weaver 1994). Among the common
believer, women are thought to be more religious, to be sure. Women have been
considered the grounds for care and nurture within which the transfer of Christian values
to the next generation is embedded including to make husbands more committed to
families and church (Balmer 1994; Bendroth 2001). And Catholic women’s volunteer
work has been the back bone of several generations of Catholic Church life (D'Antonio et
a1. 2001). Women have been more involved historically in conservative religion than men
so that the category of women is the main category that is compared to the male category
(reference category) of the gender variable, in this study.

The maximum of the three units of each higher education and higher income are the

116

reference category for the two dummy variables. The rationale for this choice is the
association that wealth and education have with secularism. The United States has been
called the religious exception because Americans are reported to be more religious than
the inhabitants of other industrialized nations (Wald and Calhoun-Brown 2007). However
the acceptance of secular values has progressed in the United States, in that more people
consider themselves not related to organized religion than two decades ago (Hout and
Fischer 2002). Inglehard (1990) contends that the need for spiritual answers does not die
out with economic development in postindustrial societies as the secularization
hypothesis (Berger and Luckrnann 1966) claimed Inglehart and Baker (2000) modify this
claim in that they propone that educational level and economic development of a nation
do have an impact on the traditional secular dimension of the world view of people in
post industrial society. This involves the authors maintain the people’s reduction of
following absolute authorities in their lives such as the authority of parents, religious
formalism, or political leaders and superiors in the workplace. Since religious formalism
is an important factor of conservative religion and higher education and economic wealth
are associated with decrease of the importance of the religious formalism on the macro
level, I choose higher education and higher income as reference categories for the two
dummy variables in my study.

For the dummy variable generation the unit indicating the youngest age group (19 to
39 years old) is taken as reference group. Some of the literature argues that the
conservative Christian movement will not fade with the passage of the older generations,
but is meant to stay since it does attract young peOple (Greeley 2001; Weaver and

Appleby 19953). However there is evidence on the macro level that obedience to religion

117

has been more integrated in the generation that was born before the onset of the post
modern society after the Second World War. D’Antonio and his research associates
(2001) showed that fewer will be committed to the values of the Catholic Church in the
coming decades. A decreasing proportion of Catholics is in the category pre-Vatican II,
Catholics born prior to World War H. It is this latter, shrinking generation D’Antonio and
authors manifest that has been the most doctrinally orthodox and the most committed to
the church as an institution. The authors observe that, as the oldest cohort dies the
youngest increases. Those are the post Vatican H Catholics. They are the least likely to
participate in the church's formal worship (p. 62), and the least likely to give weight to
official church teachings on moral issues (p. 78). The younger Catholic age cohort is
associated with less conservative religiosity and chosen as reference category.

In the context of the Protestant religion, the secularization trend has taken believers
away from the Protestant religion, too, but it is more the mainline denominations who
. suffered diminished numbers, while the more conservative evangelical Protestant
churches have been thriving (Finke and Stark 1992; Wuthnow 1998). I apply the same
units of pre- (60 to 90 years old), post- (19 to 39) and Vatican generation (40 to 59 years)
for the Protestants as I have for the Catholics, since the middle group is the largest for the
Protestants in my sample (40 through 59 years old=53%, N=80), as is for the Catholics
(49%, N=97). Even though Protestants have a stronger youth category (19 through 39
years old=30%, N=45) than the Catholics (22%, N=43) the older cohort of the Protestant
60 to 90 years old (18%, N=27) does not provide sufficient cases in order to separate
them in more age cohorts (Catholic pre-Vatican II cohort=29%, N=57).

Analytical Strategy: Linear multiple regression also known as OLS (ordinary least

118

 

squares) was used in order to analyze the association between strict dogma and moral
values of Catholic and Protestant conservatives and how this association is transformed
into gender ideology and opinions about poverty. There are six dependent variables in
this study: ahistorical religiosity, Protestant frequency of Bible reading, Catholic abortion
ideology, neo-patriarchal domestic work distribution between men and women and their
ideology about the gender relations, and the economic attitudes about the causes of
poverty. For these six dependent variables gender ideological and religious variables
(Table 2) were used in linear regression analyses to test whether they are predicting the
dependent variables. Those independent variables that were significant predictors of the
dependent variables were further tested in a linear regression analysis that includes the
demographic dummy variables.

This further analysis of controlling the usefulness of the ideological and religious
independent variables with the four demographic characteristics was possible in relation
to five of the six dependent variables. None of the hypothesized ideological and religious
variables predicted ahistorical religiosity. Therefore ahistorical religiosity was excluded
from control analysis through the demographic variables (chapter 5). The demographic
variables should control (as stated in the hypotheses in chapter 3) whether gender,
education, income and generation had any influence on the strength of the ideological and
religious variables predicting frequency of Bible reading, abortion ideology, neo-
patriarchal domestic work distribution and the ideology about the gender relations, and
finally the opinion about the responsibility of poverty.

The comparison of the proportions in each demographic group for income, education

and generation between Catholics and Protestants shows that Catholics have higher

119

 

income than Protestants (Table 2, Catholic higher income proportion = 0.36, Protestant
proportion = 0.25; Catholic lower income proportion = 0.38, Protestant proportion =
0.44). Among the Catholics, there are also more of those who are higher educated with at
least a master’s degree (proportion = 0.28), than among the Protestants (proportion =
0.22), however, the Catholics (proportion = 0.41) have also the larger group that is lower
educated than the Protestants (proportion = 0.34). The middle education with bachelor’s
degrees is the Protestants’ largest educational group (proportion = 0.44). This confirms
the notion in the literature that Catholics are not poorer with less education than
Protestants any longer, but have been upwardly socially mobile, especially regarding

income (Green et al. 1996; Walsh 2000; Wilcox 2000).

120

 

Chapter 5

DATA ANALYSIS

Ahistorical Religiosity

The study examines the question: Do religious conservatives adhere to a more
individualist or structural explanation of poverty?

I have argued in the first chapter of this dissertation that ahistorical religiosity is a
characteristic belief structure of the religious conservatives. Truth in this context is
dogmatic. In Protestantism the ahistorical character has its origin in the inerrant Bible
where the inerrancy lies in the rejection of any hidden meaning of Biblical words. Faith
on this background depends, according to James Barr (1978), on the formal structure of
the text. The ahistorical maintains the inerrancy of the Biblical truth, which not only sees
the lack of gender (relations as sinful on the individual level, but excluding any empirical
and historical facts from social analysis, also socially detrimental. This exclusion allows
for a direct link between personal sexual moral as precondition of salvation and the
restructuration of society (Sennet 1994, also see chapter 3 of this thesis).

In Catholicism the believer is acted upon through the Church bureaucracy (Burns
1999). It is in the Church bureaucracy where the Catholic ahistorical is embedded since
the Church hierarchy teaches its truth in general and particularly about intentional
procreativity of sexuality. For the conservative believer the spirit of faith is captured
through the obedience to the hierarchy’s teaching in applying correct rites and sacraments
that are believed to guide to the truth (Schoenherr 1987). The truth about the intentional

procreativity of sexuality is absolute because it is the power base of the Church (Burns

121

1992). A tradition about it cannot develop with which the faithful would be able to apply
their experience and evaluate it on the background of the learned Church tradition in the
process of decision making. The inclusion of the believers’ consciousness - permitted in
dealing with Catholic rules since Vatican II (Greeley 1985) - is not allowed with respect
to sexuality.

On the grounds of the importance of sexuality for ahistorical religiosity I said the
content of the belief structure which makes ahistorical religiosity salient to the religious
conservatives is sexual morality based on a hierarchical gender ideology. I outlined that
sexual morality flamed on hierarchical gender ideology has been directly linked to the
Protestant conservatives’ salvation history or in relations to Catholicism to their
conservatives’ experience of sacramental grace. Gender division of labor is linked to the
Protestant conservative salvation history because of the central role of gender division for
the self-conception of the conservative Bible dogma (DeBerg 2000). For Catholic
conservatives, sexual morality is central for their beliefs because their obedience to
Vatican teaching is essential to deserve sacramental grace and Vatican power structure is
based on the gender hierarchical morals they teach (Burns 1996; Weaver 1994).

In order to know whether the belief structure of ahistorical religiosity is linked to
economic attitudes as I will examine in section three of this chapter, I investigate now the
major components that contribute to the explanation of the concept. I select two sets of
variables: Those based on gender ideology and sexual morality and those based on
specific Catholic and Protestant components of religiosity. With these two sets, I intend
to evaluate the relative importance of the religious components on the one hand and the

ideological components about sexuality and gender relations on the other in explaining

122

 

ahistorical religiosity. I measure ahistorical religiosity with the question of how much
guidance one’s religion gives for one’s daily decisions. This question represents the
believer’s awareness of his or her religious identity (Elliott 2006), and high values have
been associated to conservative religious dogma that focuses on gender division of labor
and morals about sex (Guth and Green 1993). As I explained in chapter one and three, it
is the values about sexuality and gender relations that have been static and are requested
by the religious conservative to stay non- influenced by changes of human experience
and non influenced by any changes of history. This lack of development gives the values
an ahistorical feature.

Besides the ideological variables about sex morals and gender relations I include the
variables “abortion” and “male church leader” in the analysis. The latter two variables
have both a religious connotation and a connotation about sexuality and gender ideology.
I want to see whether these variables have a distinct meaning for Catholic and Protestant
conservatives, that is. whether the one or the other of the variables has a more Catholic
than Protestant meaning and vice versa.

The abortion issue is for both Catholic and Protestant conservatives essential and
more than the litmus test for family values in the context of hierarchical gender relations
(Ferree and Gamson 1999). Abortion indicates permissiveness (Becker and Eiesland
1997: 158) as it implies female sexuality without the frame of domesticated control in the
male dominated family. Permissiveness is for Catholic conservatives the issue about the
mortal sinfulness of sexuality without the intent of procreation (Burns 1999; Kissling
1999; Weaver 1999). For Protestants abortion is the objection to God’s will that a women

has to submit herself to the husband (Bendroth 1999) in which the interruption of

123

 

pregnancy inside or outside of marriage has no place. Abortion is linked to conservative
religious dogma through the sexual permissiveness (of women) because hierarchical
gender relations (the principle of which is violated through the interruption of pregnancy)
belong to the conservative dogma of both religions.

The variable “male church leader” signifies the believer’s resistance to women as
pastors of their local church or women as ordained priests. Catholic conservatives want a
newly masculinized Church — cleared of functions that Vatican II has allowed women to
perform in parochial Church ceremonies(Cuneo 1989; Schoenherr 2002). Also for
Protestant conservatives, women as pastors contradicts the Biblically requested male
“headship” and is fiercely contested (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988: 37). The local church is the
last stronghold where the relative gender amelioration in the institutions of the larger
society has been kept away. For the time being we can keep in mind that “male church
leader” is for Catholic and Protestant conservatives a religious connotation in that it
signifies the objection against women’s leadership in the church context. It has a
connotation of gender relations in that it signifies the belief in women’s subrnissiveness.

The following religious variables have a specific Catholic rather than Protestant
connotation. “Making the sign of the cross” is specific to the Catholics and not performed
in most Protestant faiths except for some Lutherans. The “importance of the Church for
one’s decision making” has insofar a Catholic notion, as the Church has the meaning of
being the grounds from which the Catholic faith is taught and from which God’s grace
will be mediated to the faithful (Gilkey 1974; Greeley 2000).

The importance of the Church in Catholic doctrine is comparable on the Protestant

side with the “importance of the Bible”, and the “frequency of Bible reading”. The

124

Table 3

Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Ahistorical Religiosity

 

Variables Catholics Protestant
[5 SE B SE

Conservative Gender Ideology 0_ 15 0,009 .0054 0013
Conservative Sexual Morality -0077 0.011 0.177 0.017
Conservative Abortion Ideology 0,214 0.006 .0033 0007
Male Church Leader ------- ------- -0.049 0.046
Job Performance of Pope -0.051 0.049 ------ -------
People to Christ Solves Soc. Problems 0.102 0.041 0.072 0.053
Frequency of Bible Reading 0.048 0.034 0.227 0.065
Importance of Bible for Decisions 0.145 0.032 0.165 0.062
Importance of Church for Decisions 0.18 0.032 0.096 0.041
Making the Sign of the Cross 0.071 0.046 -0.017 0.062
Praying on One's Own 0.184 0.057 0.021 0.101
Saying Grace at Mealtime -0.096 0.038 0.023 0.05
Supporting Prayer in Public School -0.054 0.023 0.168 0.031
R’ 0.326 0.519 0.255 0.64
Intercept 3.052 0.348 3.02 0.544

 

 

Notes: N: Catholics = 184, Protestants = 151

"*denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, *denotes p<.05

Male Church Leader is excluded for Catholics because of high collinearity.

Job Performance of Pope is excluded for Protestants since it does not apply to Protestant religion.

Biblical word is the tool that links the believer directly to God. Also, support of prayers
in the public schools has been portrayed in the literature as a Protestant issue, requested
as policy mostly by Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals, but to lesser extent it has
been a Catholic issue (Leege and Kellstedt 1993b; Welch and Leege 1991). The variables
“praying on one’s own” and “saying grace at mealtime” are included as a general
religious trait for both, Protestants and Catholics. All variables except for “job
performance of the Pope” are included in both, the Catholic and the Protestant regression
models. This allows examining whether the assumption that the religious variables are
specifically faith related and whether this holds for my data set.

Table 3 shows the predictors of Catholic and Protestant ahistorical religiosity. The

125

variable “male Church leader” was excluded from the Catholic model because it
correlates strongly (r=0.712, p<0.000) with ‘sexual morality’. According to Julie Pallant
(2005: 155), of two variables with correlations at r=0.7 or stronger one should be
removed from the regression model on reasons of multicollinearity. I remove ‘male
Church leader’ from the Catholic analysis since sexual morality is one of the major
variables in the analysis9.

The results in Table 3 show that hypothesis 1a) is not confirmed. Hypothesis la) said
that Catholics’ and Protestants’ view about sexuality and gender relations are the
strongest predictors of their ahistorical religiosity. In the present analysis conservative
sexual morality and gender ideology are weak and not significant predictors of Protestant
or Catholic ahistorical religiosity. The faith related are the predicting religious variables.
The variable contributing most to the explanation of ahistorical religiosity for Catholics is
their view on abortion with B = 0.214 in a model in which R2 says all the variables
explain 33% of the variability in Catholic ahistorical religiosity. The frequency of Bible
reading is with B = 0.227 the only significant Protestant predictor contributing to the
explanation of the 26 percent (R2 = 0.255) of the variance of Protestant ahistorical
religiosity.

Since the Bible and prayer in the public school have specific Protestant features
(Welch and Leege 1991) I tested whether ‘frequency of Bible reading’, the ‘irnportance
of the Bible for one’s decisions’ and ‘supporting prayers in public schools’ are significant
predictors of Protestant ahistorical religiosity (Table 4). As Table 4 shows, they are. The

variable most contributing to the explanation of Protestant ahistorical religiosity is still

 

9 All the analyses about Catholics that include “sexual morality” and “male church leader” as independent
variables will have the latter one removed from the analysis and replaced by “Job performance of Pope".

126

 

their frequency of Bible reading.

Table 4
Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Ahistorical Religiosity

 

Variables Protestant

ll SE
Frequency of Bible Reading 0.248 " 0.057
Importance of Bible for Decisions 0.184 "‘ 0.053
Support Prayer in Public School 0.197 * 0.027
R’ 0.226 0.631
Intercept 3.567 0.291

 

Notes: N: Protestants = 153
"*denotes p<.001, l""‘denotes p<.01, *denotes p<.05

The Bible and the support of prayer in the public schools indicate a faith-specific
structure of religiosity. The fact that the frequency of Bible reading contributes more to
the model than the importance of the Bible for decision making is an indication towards
the ahistorical, feature of the belief structure of Protestant conservatives. It is the formal
factor of the frequency of reading the Bible that explains more of the believer’s
religiosity than the meaning of the Book. As I explained in chapter one, adhering to the
formalism of one’s religion belongs to the feature of ahistorical religiosity. This is
equivalent to the meaning of abortion and the importance of the Church for Catholics’
decision making. Abortion is the symbol that rejects the intentional procreativity of
sexuality. I outlined in chapter one, that intentional procreativity is the major feature of
Catholic ahistorical religiosity.

Protestant Frequency of Bible Reading
Since my original prediction was that the gender and sexual ideological factors

would contribute strongest to the explanation of ahistorical religiosity (hypothesis la) I

127

 

would like to know, whether these ideological variables have any predictive influence on
the frequency of Bible reading and abortion ideology.

According to my definition of ahistorical religiosity, gender hierarchy, based on the
inerrancy assumption of the Bible is a defining feature of the ahistorical aspect of the
Protestant conservatives’ religion. In order to see whether gender hierarchy is associated
with explaining the frequency of Bible reading, the variables with gender connotations .7,
were put in the regression model: Besides gender ideology and sexual morality this is the
Opinion that the church should be guided by a male leader (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988). "
Abortion, with its symbolism of sexual promiscuity (Luker 1984; Manning 1999;
Strickler 2002) is the other variable that is included in the model to explain Protestant
frequency of Bible reading.

The regression analysis (Table 5) reveals that only gender ideology and abortion
attitudes are significant predictors of the Protestants’ fi'equency of Bible reading. The
interesting finding is that sexual morality does not explain results but gender ideolog
does have a moderate influence. Even though it is second behind abortion attitudes in
predicting the frequency of Bible reading, the fact that gender ideology is a predictor but
not sexual morality supports the difference between Protestant and Catholic
conservatives’ ahistorical religiosity. With the frequency of Bible reading, a religious
variable is contributing most importantly to the prediction of Protestant conservatives’
ahistorical religiosity before any ideological variable with sexual and gender connotation.
Gender ideology is a predictor of Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading, however. The
ideological variable about gender hierarchy has through the frequency of Bible reading an

indirect influence on Protestant ahistorical religiosity.

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Demographic Influences

In the next step I examine whether gender ideology and abortion attitudes are
significant predictors of Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading and withstand
demographic control. For hypothesis 1b I argued that the influence of sexual morals on
the conservatives’ ahistorical religiosity is independent of class issues like income and
education. Applied to the current examination I want to know whether Protestants’
frequency of Bible reading is independent of class issues.

The full model shows that none of the educational and generation levels reveal any
significant influence on the predictors of Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading (Table
6). However, lower income does comprise a significant contribution to the explanation of
the dependent variable. Historian Lassiter (2008) argues that the working class followed
the Christian Right in the decades since the Reagan election because the religious
conservative movement promised to protect their families. On the background of the
feminist and anti-war movements authority structures were questioned and divorce
started to break up families. The conservative religious movement proposed a
combination of strict (gender hierarchical) family and religious values as grounds for
enduring social relationships. They maintained that this could be a solution to the
perception of social deterioration from divorce and single parenthood. That hit low
income families harder than those with more wealth since the split off of each earning
member is loss of one resource more (Stacey 1996). Inglehart and Baker (2000) argue
that specifically those for whom economic security is far off have a different perspective
on authority than those who take economic prosperity for granted. Included in the frame

of authority structure is the person’s relationship to religion. The authors argue that lack

130

of the experience of wealth is more related to the formalism of religion than to a pluralist
view about religious and social values.

The significant result of the low income cohort in Table 6 suggests that an influence
additional to the ones of conservative gender and abortion ideologies is contributing to
those lower income Protestants’ explanation of frequency of Bible reading. Lower
income is defined as less than 50,000 dollars total yearly family income, middle income
is between 50,000 and 74,999 dollars and higher income is 75,000 dollars and more
(chapter 4, Table 2). However, as we see from the B-values of the abortion and gender
ideologies, the significance of neither of the ideological predictors is affected by
controlling them through the lower income variable.

Also Table 6 shows that the contribution of the demographic variables to the overall
explanation of Protestant frequency of Bible reading is smaller than the contribution of
the ideological variables. The whole model including all demographic and ideological
variables explains 25 percent of the variance (R2=0.251). After removing the effect that
the significant low income and the other non-significant demographic variables have on
the ideological variables, conservative gender and abortion ideologies explain still an
additional 17 percent (R2(Change)=0. 167) of the variance of the model. This suggests
that the predictor that influences the low income Protestants’ fiequency of Bible reading
as compared to high income Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading in addition to
conservative gender and abortion ideology is rather small.

Catholic Abortion Attitudes
For Catholics, “conservative abortion ideology” is the slightly stronger predictor of

ahistorical religiosity (Table 3) besides the two religious variables “importance of Church

131

 

for decision making”, and “praying”. Analog to the Protestant “frequency of Bible
reading” I want to see whether ideological components about gender and views about
sexual morality that I hypothesized for ahistorical religiosity are a predictor for Catholic’s
abortion attitudes. In addition, the “Pope’s job performance” is included in the analysis as
a replacement of “male church leader” (see footnote 9 for an explanation).

Table 7 shows that all three variables are significant components that predict
abortion ideology for the Catholic conservatives. The comparison of the results about the
abortion ideology (Table 7) and the frequency of Bible reading (Table 5) reveal that for
Catholics, abortion ideology is most strongly predicted by their view about the Pope,
lending support to the notion that to follow the Vatican’s moral teaching has the feature
of identity for Catholic conservatives (Burns 1992; Greeley and Hout 2006). The Pope as
strongest predictor of abortion ideology is directly followed by sexual morality, while
gender ideology is a much weaker predictor. I described sexual morality in the previous
chapters as defining Catholics’ ahistorical religiosity, more so than Protestants. For
Protestants’ fiequency of Bible reading, sexual morality is no predictor at all, but
conservative gender ideology is, even so a weaker one than abortion ideology. I outlined
in chapter one that the ideology of gender division of labor is considered the grounds on
which the inerrant Bible is built (DeBerg 2000).

Demographic Influences

1n the next step I want to see whether demographic controls can influence the
ideological strength predicting Catholics’ abortion attitudes. D’Antonio and colleagues
(2001) find the most orthodox Catholics in the United States are in the pre-Vaticanqll

Generation. They were born before the Second World War (age 60 through 90). The

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133

largest proportion of US. Catholics, comprising 46 percent of all adult members, is in the
post-Vatican II generation, born after 1961 (ages 19 through 39). The authors point out i
that the shrinking generation of the pre-Vatican H Catholics is the most committed and
doctrinally conservative one. The post Vatican H Catholics are the least likely to
participate in the Church's formal worship (p. 62) and the least likely to give weight to
official Church teachings on moral issues (p. 78). Also D’Antonio and researchers note a
detachment of Post Vatican H women to the expectation of voluntary involvement into
the Catholic Church that was a characteristic of pre-Vatican 11 women.

My data in Table 8 suggests there is no additional generational influence for Catholic
conservatives’ opinion about abortion. In neither, the generation of the 60 through 90
year olds nor the one of those between 40 and 59 is there a factor additionally to sexual
morality and the opinion about the Pope’s job performance that would predict Catholic
conservatives’ abortion ideology if we compare the two generations to the youngest, the
19 to 39 year olds. Also, the data supports the idea that there is no gender difference
between men and women regarding the prediction of their abortion attitude.

However, education comprises a significant control over the Catholic’s abortion
ideology (B = 0.173, p<0.008 for lower education). Lower education is defined as any
schooling up to some college; middle education means up to a bachelor’s degree. The
reference category is higher education with a master’s degree or a doctorate.

All demographic characteristics together explain 22 percent [RZ-R2 (Change)] of the
variance in the complete model predicting Catholic’s abortion ideology (Table 8). After
entry of the variables Pope, sexual morality and gender ideology to the demographic

control variables, the total variance explained by the model as a whole is 63 percent

134

(R2=O.625), from which the three ideological variables explain an additional 41 percent
(R2(Change)=0.410), after the effect of the demographic characteristics on the model has
been removed. This finding points in the direction that Catholics with lower education as
compared with those of higher education have an additional predictor for their
conservative abortion ideology than just their conservative ideology. The demographic
characteristics do not much affect the strength of the B-values of the Pope, sexual
morality and gender ideology though, each of them predicting a stronger degree of
abortion attitudes than lower education (Table 8).

If lower education is associated with lower class structure (Luker 1984) the result for
education in the full abortion model (Table 8) reveals that Catholics with lower education
as compared to those with higher education have an additional factor, in addition to their
conservative ideological characteristics (sexual morality, positive job evaluation of the
Pope and conservative gender ideology) that contributes to the prediction of their
abortion ideology. The additional factor contributes to a more conservative view about
abortion than the Catholics of higher education have.

This is support to the notion that the lack of the experience of education and wealth
is more related to the formalism of religion than to a pluralist view about religious and
social values (Inglehart and Baker 2000). Anti-abortion belongs to the formalism of
Catholic religion because of the request of the Church that sexuality be intentionally
procreative (Perreault 2004; Weaver 1999) to which abortion is contradictory. However,
the additional demographic factor that the lower education characteristic contributes to
the. explanation of Catholic anti-abortion ideology does with B = 0.173, p<0.008 not

overturn the importance of sexual morality and the authority of the Pope’s moral

135

teachings in predicting Catholic conservatives’ view about abortion

To sum up the findings in the context of ahistorical religiosity, the reader can see that
sexual morality and gender ideology are not direct predictors. Ahistorical religiosity is
foremost explained by religious variables. In addition, the major predictors are abortion
for Catholics and the frequency of Bible reading for Protestants, distinctly faith specific.
Abortion cannot be tolerated by the Church because it undermines her moral power based
on procreative sexuality, and the believers’ opposition against abortion shows their
ultimate loyalty to the Pope’s teaching. This is supported by the finding that the
believers’ abortion view is most strongly predicted by their sexual morality and view
about the Pope.

With the frequency of Bible reading as the major predictor of Protestant ahistorical
religiosity the emphasis is with frequency on the formalism, which is defined as an
ahistorical feature (see chapter one). The Bible is the source from which the gender
ideology is learned, supported by the finding that gender ideology is, even though second
behind abortion, a predictor of the frequency of Bible reading.

Finally the results show that sexual morality is the stronger predictor for the
Catholics than for the Protestants, gender ideology is more important for the Protestants
than for the Catholics and demographic variables have only minor influence in decreasing
the influence of the ideological and religious variables. Even though ahistorical
religiosity is not explained by sex or gender ideology, these ideological variables have an
indirect influence on the ahistorical belief structure through Catholics’ abortion attitudes

and Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading.

136

 

Neo-Patriarchy
Distribution of Household Labor between Men and Women
The hypothesis about the domestic work distribution of the religious conservatives is
only partially confirmed. Domestic work of Protestant and Catholic religious couples is
contrary as predicted linked to their ideology about gender relations. In hypothesis 2a) I
argue that because of the neo-patriarchal adaptation on the grounds of the necessary entry

of women into the labor force the domestic work situation between religious men and

 

women is not dependent on their ideology about gender relations. I argued that view is
based on their sexual morality and gender ideology. Because of the neo-paniarchal
adaptation however I argue Catholics’ and Protestants’ view on gender relations is an
ideology, only, not reflected in their actual everyday household situation. Their gender
ideology is more conservative with respect to division of labor than the factual gender
relations they live in their homes. (Civettini and Glass 2008; Ellison and Bartkowski
2002).

Also, contrary to expectation, demographic variables have barely any influence on
Protestants, but there is an influence on Catholics. In hypothesis 2b I argue that the
domestic work distribution between religious conservative men and women is more
dependent on demographic variables like income, education and generation than on the
ideology about gender relations. The demographic variables income and generation do
have some predictive value besides gender ideology for Catholics’ distribution of
household labor, but in the opposite direction than expected: The wealthier and the
younger are more gender divided in their household labor than the older and less wealthy.

In order to test hypothesis 23) and to see direct and possible indirect ideological

137

Table 9

Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Domestic Work Distribution

 

Catholic Protestant

Variables J SE B SE

Conservative Gender Ideology 0.302 *‘ 0.081 0.267 * 0.098
Conservative Sexual Morality 0.088 0.095 -0.098 0.131
Conservative Abortion Ideology 0,085 0,053 0.218 0052
Male Church Leader ....... ----... 0,027 03 57
Job Performance of Pope 0.073 0.441 ------ -------
People to Christ Solves Soc. Problems -0.026 0.367 ~0.084 0413
Frequency of Bible Reading 0.029 0.305 -0.098 0.509
Importance of Bible for Decisions -0.040 0.287 -0.007 0.485
Importance of Church for Decisions 0.110 0.291 -0.109 0.325
Making the Sign of the Cross -0.060 0.409 0.091 0.488
Praying on Oue's Own 0.094 0.51 0.092 0.791
Saying Grace at Mealtime -0.080 0.339 -0.01 1 0.392
Supporting Prayer in Public Schools -0. 173 0.208 0.086 0.242
R’ 0.165 4.25 0.142 4.609
Intercept 11.860 3.108 13.413 4.265

 

Notes: N: Catholics: l 63, Protestants= 128

""denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, *denotes p<.05

predictors (those via religious variables) of household work distribution I entered

variables related to gender ideology and sexual morality into the regression analysis and.

religious variables (Table 9) and found that gender ideology is indeed a predictor of

domestic work situation of Protestants and Catholics. The more gender hierarchical their

ideology, the more gender divided their households, with women doing more of the

household work and child care then men.

Demographic Influences
After controlling for education, income and generation, for only Catholics, not the
Protestants, demographic variables contribute to the explanation of their household
participation. I expected the effect of generation to be negative for younger generations

and positive for older ones. However, the results of the full model about domestic labor

138

Table 10
Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant
Domestic Work Distribution
Controlling for Demographic Characteristics

 

Catholic Protestant
Control Variables [1 SE 0 SE
Gender
Male ---- ----- ------ -----
Female 0.084 0.768 0.112 1.005
Education
Higher Education ------ ------ ----- -----
Middle Education 0044 0.884 0.127 1.171
Lower Education 0.09 0.841 0.160 1.238
Income
High Income ----- ----- ----- -----
Middle Income -0.284 ** 0.834 0.102 1.202
Lower Income -0.169 t 0.772 0.008 1.166
Generation
60 through 90 -0.257 * 0.978 0.008 1.341
40 through 59 0.19 0.859 0.065 1.102
19 through 39 ----- ----- ---- ----
W
Conservative Gender Ideology 0.287 ‘** 0.053 0.263 ** 0.083
R’ 0.267 3.928 0.114 4.612
R2(Change) 0.075 0.064
Intercept 16.82 1.586 11.763 2.188

 

Notes: N: Catholics 163, Protestants = 128
“*denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, "denotes p<.05

distribution among Catholic and Protestant men and women (Table 10) suggests, that
older couples have less gender division of labor than younger ones. This is in addition to
the gender ideology there is an additional predictor of household labor distribution for
older couples. In comparison with younger couples it predicts, contrary to expectation,
less gender division of labor for older couples ([3 = -0.257) compared to younger ones.
The negative B-values of Catholics with middle and low income reveal that also these
income characteristics make a unique contribution to the explanation of domestic labor
distribution in addition to gender ideology. The prediction goes towards less gender

division for the low income Catholics as compared with those of higher income (Table

139

10).

Perhaps this reflects the long term adaptation process of Catholics to the changing
economic situation. For low but also middle income families, women’s participation in
the labor market is not a choice, but a necessity to compensate for reduced wages or
unemployment of husbands. With the changing economy the male bread winner model
was hardly applicable any longer for middle class families, if they wanted to keep

standards of living constant. With lower class families, the male bread winner model had

 

never been a reality in the first place (Crompton 1998). As a means of necessity,
husbands in such situations should adapt with more participation in the household than
seems to be the case when higher income makes gender equality from the financial point
of view more an option. Also older generations (specifically the 60 year olds and more)
might have to adapt to more equally managing the house due to health reasons or both
partners might be retired or have part time jobs. (Acker 1999; Ridgeway and Smith-Lovin
1999)

The importance of these demographic variables can be seen in the increase of the
predicting strength they have on the household labor model. Gender ideology explains
only an additional eight percent (Table 10, R2(Change)= 0.075) of the variance of the
model, after the effect of the demographic characteristics have been removed. All
predictors together explain 27 percent (R2 = 0.267). When gender ideology is controlled
for by the demographic variables, gender ideology explains not more than 8 percent of
Catholics’ distribution of domestic work between men and women. The strength of the
contribution of gender ideology ([3: 0.287), middle income (B: -0.284), and older

generation (B: 0257) are not much different from one another.

140

The total absence of demographic predictors of household labor distribution for
Protestants is unexpected and contrary to hypothesis 2b. The hypothesis says that
the domestic work distribution between religious conservative men and women is
dependent on demographic characteristics like income, education and generation more so

than on the ideology about gender relations. One reason for the absence of the predictive

 

influence of demographic characteristics might be that gender ideology is an integral part

of the Protestant conservative ahistorical religion, more so than for Catholics, where the

 

ideological issue comparative in importance is sexual morality. N. H. Civettini and J.
Glass (2008) show that specifically conservative religion has no effect on the prediction
of how many hours of household work and child care religious conservative men
participated in. Also Voicu and colleagues (2009: 372) found in their comparative
analysis of various Christian religions and how religion affects their members’ household
work that the individual’s religiosity does not influence gender division of household
work. However, they found religion does have its influence, but it occurs only via values
and attitudes in specific religious contexts. The following section addresses this notion.
Views about Gender Relations

In Hypothesis 2c) I argue that the ideology of the religious conservatives’ gender
relations and sexual morality is hierarchical. The important point to see from the
regression analysis is whether gender ideology is predicted by gender division of labor
and whether there is, according to the feature of ahistorical religiosity, a structural
difference between Catholic and Protestant sexual and gender ideologies. Hypothesis
_ 2c1) predicts that for Catholics, attitudes describing sexual morality will be the major

variables explaining their ideology about gender relations. Hypothesis 2c2) says for

141

 

Protestants, attitudes describing gender hierarchy will be the major variables predicting
their ideology about gender relations. In order to see the possible structural difference in
ideology about Catholic and Protestant gender relations I tested gender ideology of

Catholics and Protestants with the same two groups of independent ideological and

 

religious variables that I utilized to test the domestic work distribution before.
The results in Table 1 1 show that hypothesis 2c) about the gender attitudes of

religious conservatives is confirmed. These data portray the picture that the gender

 

attitudes are based on hierarchical views of gender relations. The more conservative the i .
believer’s view on sexual morality and abortion (for Catholics) and sexual morality and
the view on the importance that the pastor be male (for Protestants), the more they reveal
gender hierarchical ideology.

With respect to hypotheses 2c1) and 2c2) the results illustrate that for both, Catholics
and Protestants, sexual morality is a predictor of gender ideology. This it is the strongest
for the Catholic model. For the Protestant model, sexual morality comes after “male
church leader”. The latter has a more gender hierarchical evaluation for Protestants than
for Catholics (Hawley 1994; Lazarus-Yafeh 1988). For the Catholics the Pope is the male
leader that is, in relation to religious dogma, most closely associated with sexual
morality. This is because the Vatican’s teaching about sexual morality is binding for the
Catholic conservatives religious identity (Burns 1996).

The link between Catholic conservatives’ gender ideology and sexual morals also
comes through their Church’s teaching about abortion. Conservative abortion ideology is
a factor predicting gender ideology, even though not strong (Table 11). The Catholic

resistance to abortion identifies with the Vatican’s teaching about sex (without intentional

142

 

Table 11
Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Gender Ideology

Protestant

 

Catholic
Variables [3 SE ll SE
Conservative Sexual Morality 0.305 *‘* 0.087 0.274 *‘ 0.113
Conservative Abortion Ideology 0.188 a 0,049 .0097 0.046
Male Church Leader -..-..- -_.... 0343 "It 0299
Job Performance of Pope 0.071 0.417 ----- ------
People to Christ Solves Soc. Problems 0.083 0.347 0.168 * 0.361
Frequency of Bible Reading 0.071 0.289 0.069 0.452
Importance of Bible for Decisions 0.093 0.271 0.036 0.43
Importance of Church for Decisions -0.048 0.276 0.079 0.287
Making Sign of Cross 0.074 0.387 -0.002 0.433
Praying on One's Own -0.08 0.482 -0.023 0.703
Saying Grace at Mealtime 0.15 * 0.318 0.067 0.348
Supporting Prayer in Public Schools 0.071 0.197 0.06 0.214
R’ 0.54 4.406 0.386 4.456
Intercept 4.032 2.936 4.301 3.771

 

Notes: N: Catholics=184, Protestants=150
"'"denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, ‘denotes p<.05

procreation sex is sinful (Weaver 1999). Abortion as a predictor of gender ideology is
specifically Catholic in that abortion in the data of this dissertation is also the strongest
predictor of Catholics’ ahistorical religiosity (Table 3). For the Protestants the religious
influence on their gender ideology comes through their salvation history. The connotation
that bringing people to Christ solves social problems is the conversion requirement that is
precondition for Protestant conservatives’ salvation.

This dissertation gives evidence with the analysis of hypotheses 2cl) and 2c2) to the
argument that the gender ideologies of Catholics and Protestants'are based on different
ideological grounds. For the Catholics it is with the sexual and the abortion variables
based on sexual morality as ideological and religious structures (Table 11). For

Protestants the different ideological ground is indirectly shown through the variable

143

“male church leader.” As mentioned before, the view of the Protestant conservative faith
that the pastor must be a man, not a woman, is based on the hierarchical gender view,
endorsed by the inerrant Bible (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988). The gender hierarchical “male
church leader” is the stronger predictor of Protestants’ gender ideology than sexual
morality, indicating that there is indeed an ideological difference between Protestants and
Catholics in the explanation of their gender ideology. In the next step, I examine whether
these findings are still valid after the introduction of demographic controls.
Demographic Influences

As the full models for Protestant and Catholic gender ideology show (Tables 12, 13)
with the exception of the Protestant middle generation, the demographic controls exert no
additional contribution to the ideological variables for the prediction of gender ideology.
Hypothesis 2d) is insofar partially confirmed because for Catholics, none of the
demographic variables has an influence on sexual morality, abortion, and saying grace as
predictors of their ideology about gender relations. Sexual morality and abortion attitudes
remain the strongest predictors. This is particularly interesting because sexual morality is
a predictor of Catholic abortion attitudes (Table 8) which in turn is the major predictor of

Catholic ahistorical religiosity (Table 3).

144

 

 

 

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Protestants’ gender ideology predictors are somewhat influenced by the generation
variable, but the ideological prediction remains most influential. This is shown after the
demographic variables have been entered into the Protestant model. With the
demographic characteristics, the model explains only about 8 percent (R2 - R2(Change) =
0.075) of the variance. Afier “male church leader” “sexual morality” and “people to
Christ” are included, the model as a whole explains 40 percent (R2=0.4Ol) of the
variance. After the effect of the demographic influence is removed, the three variables
issuing ideology and religion explain an additional thirty three percent
(R2(Change)=0.326), allowing the assumption that the generational prediction on
Protestant gender ideology is very minor indeed. This lends support to the argument that
the variables of religion and gender ideology first place and sexuality next are still the
strongest predictors of Protestant ideology of gender relations.

In sum, these findings show, that Protestant conservatives’ domestic work
distribution is contrary to hypothesis 2b) and not mainly predicted by demographic
phenomena like income, education, and generation. It is rather explained by gender
ideology as the only significant predictor. This is in a model, however, that does itself not
very strongly contribute to the explanation of the dependent variable, since the whole
model explains only 14 percent of the variance of domestic work distribution (Table 9,
R2=0.142).

The subsequent analysis of the predictors of Protestant ideology about gender
relations reveals the believers’ view that only a man should be the leader of their church
as the most important one (Table l 1). The male church leader has for Protestants a

stronger connotation from gender hierarchy (r=0. 503, p<0.001) than from sexual morality

146

 

(r=0.468, p<0.001). Also, the male church leader variable contributes 11 percent of the
total variance from the ideological and demographic control variables (Table 13)
uniquely to the explanation of Protestant gender ideology"). It suggests that the male
church leader is the much more important predicting factor as compared to the age
characteristic of the 40 to 59 year olds that is also a contribution for explaining
Protestants’ gender ideology. The importance of the male church leader for the Protestant
believers is together with salvation through saving souls (variable: people to Christ solves
social problems) an indication to the support of hypothesis 2c2) that the basic feature of
Protestants’ view about gender relations is gender hierarchical and therefore distinct form
Catholics’.

Catholics’ domestic work distribution among couples is also predicted by their
gender ideology with 16 percent of the variance explained (Table 9, R2=0.165). The full
model of domestic labor distribution (Table 10) reveals, however that the demographic
characteristics with income and generation significantly contributing, are the major part
of the prediction of domestic labor distribution between Catholic men and women. Of the
27 percent of the variance (Table 10, R2=0.267) for both the gender ideological and
demographic factors, the demographic characteristics explain 19 percent (R2-
(R2(Change)=0.192) of the variance in domestic labor distribution. The variance for
conservative gender ideology, after the control effect of the demographic characteristics
have been removed, is only eight percent (Table 10, R2(Change)=0.075). The

demographic variables predict Catholic domestic work distribution better than gender

 

'0 The semipartial correlation coefficient of “male church leader” in this model (Table 13) is sr2=0.339.
This value has to be squared in order to provide the unique contribution value (Pallant 2005: 159). The total
variance of the model explaining Protestants’ gender ideology (Table 13, R2=0.4Ol) would drop 11 percent,
from 40 to 29 percent if “male church leader” were not included. As a comparison, for the generation of the
40 to 59 year olds in Table 13 this value would be only 3 percent (sr2=0.180).

147

 

 

ideology.

However, this is not towards a confirmation of hypothesis 2b). Both demographic
variables predict domestic labor distribution in the opposite direction than hypothesized.
The younger and middle generations’ domestic work distribution is more gender divided
as compared with the older one. And the middle and lower income Catholics’ distribution
of domestic work between the man and the woman is least gender divided. The younger
and the more wealthy Catholic women do more household work than the older ones and
those with little income. For Catholics, their gender ideology (Table 10, B = 0.287) is just
one predictor together with the middle income ([3 = -0.284) and older Catholics (B = -257)
that contribute with approximately equal strength to the explanation of the work
distribution in their homes. It suggests that gender ideology and demographic issues both
contribute importantly to the prediction of Catholic couples’ gender relations regarding
household labor.

The analysis about Catholics’ ideology of gender relations is as hypothesized
(hypothesis 2d), not influenced by their demographic variables and their gender ideology
reveals predictors that are distinct from those found for the Protestants (hypothesis 2c1,
2c2). For Catholics, it is the factor sexual morality that exerts the best prediction of their
gender ideology (Table 12, B=O.3 70) with conservative abortion ideology (B=O.290)
second in line as a religiously distinct Catholic contributor. Abortion ideology is the
major variable contributing to the Catholics’ ahistorical religiosity (Table 3).

From the two issues, domestic work distribution between men and women on the one
hand, and the religious conservatives’ beliefs about gender relations on the other, the

latter indicates clearly that the structure on which the beliefs about gender relations is

148

 

built, is different for Catholics and Protestants. The distinct meaning of sexuality and
gender hierarchy that is indicated from the Catholic and Protestant prediction models for
their gender ideology is reflected in their ahistorical religiosity. There, Catholics’ view
about sex and Protestants’ about gender relations are predicted through channels that are
religious. They are Catholics’ religious-sexual abortion views and Protestants’ Bible
reading. The importance of the religious variables, besides those of sex and gender, can
be found, too, in the gender ideology of the Catholics and Protestants.

Responsibility for Poverty

The study analyzes the question of whether religious conservatives have more an
individualist or structural view about the responsibility of poverty and why. In the first
chapter I argue that the dogmatic feature of the religious conservatives is ahistorical and
that some of the ideological issues that are dealt with in ahistorical way are sexual
morality and the gender relations that follow fiom the morals. I outlined that sexual
morality fi'amed on hierarchical gender ideology has been directly linked to the Protestant
conservatives’ salvation history or in relations to Catholicism to their conservatives’
experience of sacramental grace. In the third chapter I outline the view that religious
conservatives link the individual’s personal immorality to a deteriorated economic
outcome in society. These are the reasons why I expected that ahistorical religiosity is
contributing significantly to the explanation of the religious conservatives’ attitudes about
the responsibility of poverty as predicted in hypothesis 3a). It is not a predictor, however,
as the Table 14 below shows. Ahistorical religiosity is not a significantly contributing
explanation to the economic view of either Catholic or Protestant conservatives.

Maybe one should not be surprised about this after the analysis of ahistorical

149

 

 

religiosity revealed that hierarchical gender ideology and conservative sexual morality
are not significant predictors (Table 3) even though the findings about the predictors of
ahistorical religiosity themselves reveal an indirect link of the gender and moral
components to ahistorical religiosity. Hierarchical gender ideology together with
conservative abortion ideology predicts the Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading and
that one is the best predictor of their ahistorical religiosity. And conservative sexual
morality predicts together with the affirmation of the Pope Catholics’ abortion ideology
which is included as the major component in explaining ahistorical religiosity.

The importance of the conservative views about sexuality and gender relations for
the prediction of the attitudes about poverty is seen from the confumation of hypothesis
3b). Sexual morals and gender ideology are predictors of religious conservatives
economic attitudes. Hypothesis 3c) is confirmed, too. The ideological predictors are
distinct for Catholics (sexual morals) and Protestants (gender ideology). The
demographic issues (hypothesis 3d) that have no influence on the Protestant predictors of
economic attitudes do however modify the economic model for the Catholics.

In order to test the first two hypotheses (3a and 3b) about the economic attitudes of
religious conservatives, I included the six variables that contain gender and moral
ideology on the one hand and religiosity on the other to see which ones are significant
predictors of economic attitudes, as shown in Table 14. We see that ahistorical religiosity
is not an important contributor besides the moral and gender ideological characteristics.
However, the assumption of hypothesis 3bl) and 3b2) are confirmed. Factors describing
gender relations like conservative sexual morality and gender ideology contribute to the

explanation of religious conservatives’ economic attitudes about the individualist

150

 

 

Table 14
Linear Regression Predicting Catholic and Protestant Economic Attitudes

Variables Catholic Protestant

 

 

13 SE 0 SE
Ahistorical Religiosity -0.121 0.237 0.044 0.213
Conservative Gender Ideology 0.046 0.029 0.210 " 0.032
Conservative Sexual Morality 0.368 *** 0.034 0.044 0.045
Conservative Abortion Ideology .0022 0.019 0.070 0.016
Male Church Leader --......... -........ o_19o 0,1 17
Pope's Job Performance 0213 * 0.162 -..-... -_...
R’ 0.26 1.739 0.183 1.718
Intercept 1.795 1.170 1.481 1.165

 

 

Notes: N: Catholics 184, Protestants=l49

"*denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, ‘denotes p<.05

Economic Attitudes: Positive values indicate individualist responsibility, negative values indicate
structural responsibility.

responsibility of poverty. More conservative sexual morality and affirmative

Opinion about the Pope contribute to the Catholics’ individualist explanation of poverty.
And the more hierarchical gender ideology is the more it predicts Protestants’ explanation
that individuals cause their own poverty.

Also it is clear the ideological grounds are different for Protestants and Catholics.

 

For Protestants, gender ideology is the stronger predictor for the view that the individual
is responsible for poverty rather than social structures or policies (hypotheses 3b1), 3c).
Besides the ideological gender variable again the view arises that a church needs to be led
by a male pastor who is the religious link to the economic view of the Protestant
conservatives.

The data in Table 14 show that the variable “male church leader” is not significant
(B=0.190, p<0.061). But this predictor is clearly stronger than the “abortion attitudes” and
stronger than “sexual morality” that has been characteristically Catholic in my analysis.

Also the emphasis of the “male church leader” is a characteristic which implies views

151

Table 15
Linear Regression Predicting Protestant Economic Attitudes

 

Variables Protestant

[3 SE
Conservative Gender Ideology 0.241 ** 0.300
Male Church Leader 0239 n 0103
R’ 0.173 1.709
Intercept 2.394 0.5 17

 

 

Notes: N: Protestants=l49

*"denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.01, "denotes p<.05
Economic Attitudes: Positive values indicate individualist
responsibility, negative values indicate structural responsibility.

 

about gender hierarchy (DeBerg 2000). On these grounds I included the variable male
church leader as a predictor in a new regression that also includes gender ideology, the
significant predictor from the previous regression. In the new analysis (Table 15) “male
church leader” contributes significantly to the explanation of Protestants’ economic

attitudes together with gender ideology.

 

For Catholics, the corresponding findings are opposite (Table 14). Gender ideology
is no predictor for their economic attitudes, but sexual morality is. The religious variable
“job performance of Pope” has a strong association with sexual morals. They are the base
of the Pope’s power (Burns 1992). The analog to the Protestants’ religious predictor
“male church leader,” is the Catholic Pope. The Pope is more strongly linked to sexual
morals (r=0.578, p<0.001) than to gender ideology (r=0.521, p<0.001). Comparatively,
the Protestants view about the importance of the male pastor is associated with gender
hierarchy (r=0.503, p<0.001) more strongly than with the view about sex and morals
(r=0.468, p<0.001). The differences for these correlations are small. However they do go
in the direction as hypothesized (3c) and are an indication for ahistorical religiosity as

defined in the previous chapters. In the context of a bureaucratic ground for Catholics’

152

 

 

 

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153

and a textual ground for Protestants’ views about moral ideologies and gender relations,
sexual morality is the major component explaining Catholic conservatives’ views about
the causes of poverty. Hierarchical gender ideology is the major component of explaining
Protestant conservatives’ views about the responsibility for poverty.

Demographic Influences

In order to know whether the dogma-specific ideology about moral and gender
relations remain predictors when controlled by demographic variables, I included gender,
income, education and generation in the regression model. Table 17 shows that for
Protestants none of the demographic variables presents a unique contribution towards
explaining Protestants’ economic attitudes about poverty besides their gender ideology
and their gender hierarchical view about church leaders. Hypothesis 3d) states that the
demographic characteristics besides conservative sexual morality and hierarchical gender
ideology as major components have no influence on the prediction of the economic
attitudes of Catholic and Protestant conservatives. With Protestants’ demographic
characteristics not contributing to the explanation of their economic ideology, Hypothesis
3d) is partially supported.

Catholic economic attitudes however are, besides sexual morality and the view about
the Pope, also influenced by various demographic variables (Table 16). Catholic men are
more likely to allocate responsibility for poverty to the individual, compared to Catholic
women. It has been the perspective of Catholic women to see the Church and the society
more from a communal angle. It was common for former generations of Catholic women
to be voluntarily involved in Church life. This Church resource of volunteerism is

decreasing, as D’Antonio and colleagues (2001) report for the younger generations. The

154

 

 

 

 

finding from my data that Catholic women include structural and political factors more
than men in explaining poverty, might be a left over from that tradition of specific
Catholic women’s community life.

Also low income and low education contribute to predict Catholic economic
attitudes. The latter group predicts more a view of individualist responsibility of poverty
than those with higher education. However, those that belong to the lower income section
are more ready to include structural and political factors in their explanation of poverty
than those of higher income. It indicates that people with higher income are more likely
to allocate their economic success to themselves than to social structures (Emerson and
Hartman 2006). Lower education leaves people more likely excluded from the culture
shift (Inglehart 1990) that implies a transformation of values towards a pluralist society.

Table 16) suggests that demographic variables are indeed more responsible for
Catholics’ economic attitudes about poverty than their ideological views about sexuality
and the Pope. When all the variables, ideological and demographic, are included in the
model, the variables together explain 34 percent (R2=0.336) of the variance of Catholics’
economic attitudes. After the ideological predictors have been controlled for
demographic effects, they explain only an additional fifteen percent (R2 (Change)=0.154)
of the variance of the model. There is no significant influence of the Pope as a predictor
for fiscal opinions any longer when the variable Pope is controlled for by the
demographic variables. Furthermore sexual morality is barely influenced by the
demographic control variables. Sexual morality is still stronger in explaining fiscal
attitudes than any of the demographic predictors.

In order to finally see whether demographic or ideological predictors are stronger in

155

 

explaining the Catholics’ view about responsibility of poverty, I remove the insignificant
demographic predictors from the model but leave the Pope included, since the Pope has
the connotations of Catholic religion and sexual morals. As can be seen from Table 18

there is a significant effect (B=O.154) of the Catholics’ view about their Church leader on

 

the prediction of their economic attitudes. The influence of the Pope goes in the direction

of the individualist responsibility of poverty.

Table 18
Linear Regression Predicting Catholic Economic Attitudes
Controlling for Gender, Lower Education, and Lower Income

 

Catholic

Demogmhic Variables 13 SE
Female -0.151 * 0.307
Lower Education 0.149 * 0.298
Lower Income -0.203 ** 0.269
Ideological Variables

Conservative Sexual Morality 0.353 "* 0.027
Pope's Job Performance 0_154 vr 0_ 142
R2 . 0.317 1.671
R2(Change) 0.198

Intercept l. 129 0.592

 

Notes: N: Catholics=l83

Economic Attitudes: Positive values indicate individualist
responsibility, negative values indicate structural responsibility
*“denotes p<.001, "denotes p<.Ol, '"denotes p<.05

 

It is clear that sexual morality is the strongest of all predictors (Table 18 B=O.353).
After sexual morality and the view about the Pope’s performance are controlled for by
female gender, lower income'and lower education, the ideological predictors still explain
an additional 20 percent (R2(Change)=0. 198) of the overall model (R2=0.3 l 7), making
them stronger predictors than the demographic variables. Sexual morality remains the
strongest predictor even if the believer’s affirmative attitude about the Pope is removed

as predictor form the final model. In a model including the demographics gender, lower

156

education and lower income, and sexual morality as the only ideological variable, sexual
morality stays strongest (B=O.430, p<0.000) among the predictors of Catholic economic
attitudes. Afier the effect of the three demographic variables on sexual morality has been
controlled, now sexual morality as the only ideological variable explains an additional 18
percent (R2(Change)=0. l 75) of the overall model (R2=0.291). That explains 29 percent of
the variance.

Summary of Findings

In summary ahistorical religiosity is not as expected in hypothesis 3a) directly a
predictor of economic attitudes of Catholic or Protestant conservatives. However,
hierarchical gender ideology in general and specifically with respect to church leaders
(hypothesis 3b], 3c) is a predictor of Protestants’ view of individualist responsibility of
poverty. Income, education, generation and. the gender of the faithful have as
hypothesized (hypothesis 3c) no influence on the gender ideological predictors of
Protestant economic attitudes.

The importance of gender hierarchy in explaining individualist responsibility of
poverty is in line with the inerrant Bible’s word. Public institutions put the gender
hierarchy in question, but those who believe in the inerrant Bible find it necessary to
structure women’s sexuality into motherhood and domesticity. Also the religious meaning
of gender hierarchy for Protestants is revealed from Table 5 where gender hierarchy is
one of the predictors of Protestant frequency of Bible reading. This is pointing in the
direction that the association of gender ideology with ahistorical religiosity is mediated
through the Bible.

With respect to Catholics’ economic attitudes, sexual morality is as assumed

157

 

(hypotheses 3b2, BC) to be the outstanding predictor for their view about the individualist
responsibility of poverty. Sexual morality’s contribution is little affected when controlled
by demographic variables in explaining Catholic’s economic attitudes (Tables 16, 18).
However, the variable “Pope’s job performance” loses explanatory power through the
inclusion of demographic variables, indicating that gender and lower education are more
important in predicting an individualist view about the responsibility of poverty than what
the Pope teaches about the reasons for poverty. And Catholic lower income contributes
towards an opposite influence, towards the perception that policies and social structures
are responsible for poverty. As portrayed in chapter three of this thesis, John Paul II’s
economic philosophy was not endorsing the welfare state and rejected structural
explanations of poverty. That the variable Pope is a predictor of Catholics’ view about
individualist responsibility of poverty (Table 18) supports this suggestion.

The ahistorical nature of the Catholics religiosity as described in the first chapter of
this thesis is located in the Catholic believer’s obedience to the Church bureaucracy, from
where the Pope teaches that sexuality has to be procreative. Any institution that allows
sex without the intention for procreation has to be opposed. Abortion is the symbol for
disobeying the Church’s teaching through sexual promiscuity. Sexual morality and the
Pope are both predictors of abortion and they are predictors of the economic attitudes
about the individualist responsibility of poverty (Table 7, Table 18). Specifically sexual
morality is a predictor of Catholics’ individualist economic attitudes. This suggests that
abortion, which is also a predictor of Catholic ahistorical religiosity, is more strongly
framed by religion than economic attitudes. It is the sexual moral aspect, and less

the religious aspect, that determines Catholics’ view about the individualist responsibility

158

 

of poverty and the welfare state.

159

 

 

Chapter 6

SUD/[MARY AND CONCLUSION

This study has examined the economic attitudes of Catholic and Protestant
conservatives, focusing on the association between strict dogma and moral values and
how this association is transformed into gender ideology and opinions about poverty. The

important contribution of the study is that it accounts for the comparison of Catholic and

 

Protestant religious dogma and moral ideologies on the one hand and views about the “
reasons for poverty on the other, in a new perspective. The association between dogma,
moral ideology and economic attitudes is framed in the concept of ahistorical religiosity.

The hypotheses were derived from the literature on religious conservatives and their

social and political behavior, their gender relations and their social and economic

 

Opinions. The main finding of the study is that there is a different structure of the gender
ideology and sexual morality that are associated with attitudes about poverty, comparing
Protestants with Catholics. The results indicate that, for Protestants, the structure is
gender hierarchical, with the Bible as the religious grounding of the ideological structure;
for Catholics, the structure is based on conservative sexual morals with the opposition to
abortion based on the dogma that sexuality has to be intentionally procreative as the
religious grounding for the ideological structure.

In this chapter, the results are first summarized with respect to the corresponding
topics of ahistrocial religiosity, neo-patriarchy, and the opinion about the responsibility of

poverty. Finally, limitations and further research are discussed.

160

Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to Ahistorical Religiosity

In relation to the concept of ahistorical religiosity, it was expected to find that this
religious feature of Catholic and Protestant conservatives can be explained by the
believers’ views about sexuality and gender relations. The reason for this expectation was
that the unambiguousness of the religion, which teaches Protestant conservatives
hierarchical gender ideology, is the means through which religion becomes salient to
them. The inerrant Bible emphasizes the importance of the hierarchical gender relations
because they are essential for reaching salvation (Denton 2004; Gallagher 2004;
Gallagher and Smith 1999; Grasmick et al. 1990). For Catholic conservatives, it was
expected that conservative sexual morality makes their religion salient to them because
the demands of the Natural Law requirement that sexuality has to serve procreation is
violated through abortion. The act of abortion represents the violation of the necessary
intention of procreation that has to be the reason for sexual intercourse in Catholicism
because the Church’s power is based on sexual morals (Burns 1992; Cuneo 1997; Rudy
1996)

The hypothesis about ahistorical religiosity was not confirmed. Instead, for
Catholics, attitudes against abortion and the importance of the Catholic Church for
decision making and praying were the major predictors of their ahistorical religiosity.
However, both the views against abortion and the Catholic Church are strong indicators
of conservative sexual morality. Abortion represents, in violation of intentional
procreativity, sexual permissiveness. The sexual connotation of the Church is indicated
by the fact that her power is in question without the requirement that sex has to be

procreative (Burns 1999; Weaver 1994). A follow up analysis of abortion as the strongest

161

 

predictor showed that conservative sexual morality indeed explains attitudes against
abortion strongly, together with the believers’ affirmative opinions about the Pope.

This suggests that Catholic opinions about abortion are based on at least two
components: one is a religious factor represented by the believers’ opinions about the
Pope, and the other is with sexual morality an ideological factor. These results further
suggest that abortion attitudes are the channel through which sexual morality is
influencing Catholics’ ahistorical religiosity. In addition to the ideological influence
about sexuality, the Pope as a religious predictor of abortion attitudes indicates that there
are religious components besides the ideology about sexuality that make their ahistorical
religiosity salient to the believer. Demographic controls showed hardly any influence on
these findings.

For Protestants, it was the believers’ frequency of Bible reading, the importance of
the Bible for their decision making, and their support of prayer in the public schools that
was formd to predict their ahistorical religiosity. The Bible in Protestantism is the analog
feature to the Church in Catholicism and praying is for both Protestants and Catholics a
minor component explaining their ahistorical religiosity. Since the literature suggests that
the inerrant Bible has a strong gender hierarchical connotation (Bendroth 1993; DeBerg
2000; Hawley 1994), a follow up analysis was conducted to investigate the ideological
components of the frequency of Bible reading, the strongest predictor of Protestant
ahistorical religiosity. The analysis found that hierarchical gender ideology is indeed a
predictor of Protestants’ frequency of Bible reading, even though attitudes against
abortion is the stronger one. Also, for Protestant conservatives, the literature suggests that

abortion has both a religious (Cuneo 1987; Leege and Kellstedt 1993b) and a sexual

162

 

 

 

feature, in that it is linked to promiscuity (Press and Cole 1999) and disobeying God
because of the rejection of the gender hierarchy that is implied with the act of abortion.
Gender hierarchy is portrayed in the literature as a condition for salvation, however
(Kepel 1994). Compared to the Catholic Church, whose power is based on procreative
sexuality, the opposition to abortion in Protestant conservatism is not of bureaucratic
importance to the local Protestant church. Protestant anti-abortion linked in chapter 5 of
this dissertation the Bible to ahistorical religiosity, as did hierarchical gender ideology.
The results suggest that the frequency of Bible reading is the means through which the
gender hierarchical ideology makes ahistorical religiosity salient to Protestant
conservatives. The indication that conservative gender ideology is contributing to the
religious salience of Protestant conservatives suggests that the ideological structure of
Bible reading is different than the ideological structure of Catholics’ attitudes against
abortion. The abortion component of the Protestant Bible reading suggests, however, that
in addition to the conservative gender ideology there are other components included in
making their religion salient to Protestant conservatives.

Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to N eo-Patriarchy

With respect to household labor distribution, it was predicted that household work
and child care are not affected by conservative religious faiths. The reason for this
prediction was that hierarchical gender relations in the household according to the male
' breadwinner model (Crompton 1999) cannot be maintained in a society where women are
in the labor force and support families economically (Ellison and Bartkowski 2002;
Riesebrodt 1993). This is contrary to the ideology about gender relations, where the

literature (Petersen and Donnenwerth 1997) has reported that the religious conservatives

163

 

 

have revealed hierarchical attitude stability for over three decades of research. The
related prediction in this dissertation was that factual gender relations are less dependent
on the ideology about gender relations than on demographic variables; however, the
gender ideologies are hierarchical.

Only the second part of the hypothesis was confirmed—gender ideologies of the
religious conservatives are hierarchical--but the hypothesis about the factual gender
relations in the household was not confirmed. Both Catholics’ and Protestants’ household
labor distribution is predicted by an ideological factor; this is their hierarchical gender
ideology, even though it is not a strong component. No demographic variables influence
Protestants’ distribution of domestic work and child care. For Catholics, demographic
variables do predict their factual gender relations better than gender ideology, but in the
opposite direction than expected. Low and middle incomes predict more a gender
egalitarian Catholic household than high income, and older generations have a less
gender divided household than younger and middle generations.

The second part of the hypothesis confirms that religious conservatives’ gender
ideology is hierarchical and that there is a structural difference between Catholic and
Protestant gender ideology. Testing the predictors of gender ideology for Protestants
revealed the male church leader as the strongest predictor; for Catholics this was
conservative sexual morality. For Protestants, conservative sexual morality came second
in line and the primary predictor was the male church leader who has a gender
hierarchical connotation (Lazarus-Yafeh 1988). These findings suggest that the structure
of gender ideology is different for Catholic than it is for Protestant conservatives.

A further look at the predictors of Protestant and Catholic gender ideology and a

164

 

 

comparison with the predictors of the responsibility of poverty reveals some parallels.
The male church leader is a predictor with both Protestants’ hierarchical gender ideology
and their economic attitudes. For the Catholics, sexual morality plays this role. Catholic
conservative sexual morality is the factor explaining hierarchical gender ideology and the
economic attitudes about the individualist responsibility for poverty. Taking the gender
hierarchical connotation of the Protestant male church leader into account, the findings
about the same predictors of gender ideology and economic attitudes gives further
support to the suggestion of the different ideological structures between Catholic and
Protestant conservative religious groups.

There are no demographic influences that overturn these findings for the Catholics.
The Protestants’ middle generation is, aside from the religious and ideological variables,
a factor however that contributes to explain hierarchical gender ideology. The
contribution of the male church leader to explain Protestant conservative gender ideology
remains uniquely strong and more important than the middle generation in explaining
Protestant conservative gender ideology.

Finally, the results on domestic work distribution on the one hand and the ideology
about gender relations on the other suggest that there is, in fact, a difference between
factual gender relations and the ideology about it. Catholics’ factual gender relations of
the household situation seem not to have any influence on their view about the
responsibility of poverty. None of the predictors are common. However, Catholics’
hierarchical gender ideology and their opinion about the individualist cause of poverty
have conservative sexual morality as common predictor.

On the Protestant side, the actual gender relations and the responsibility of poverty

165

on the one hand and the ideology about gender relations and the responsibility of poverty
on the other have each a predictor in common. For the actual gender relations and the
issue of poverty it is gender ideology; for the ideology about gender relations and the
issues of poverty it is the male church leader.

Some important conclusions about abortion: For both Catholic and Protestant
conservatives, abortion is a predictor for religion. With Catholics, their ahistorical
religiosity is predicted by abortion and for Protestants abortion contributes to predict their
fi'equency of Bible reading. However, for Catholics, their anti-abortion ideology is also a
factor that contributes to predict their conservative gender ideology. This is not the case
with Protestants.

Summary and Discussion of Results in Relation to Responsibility for Poverty

The hypothesis about the association between ahistorical religiosity and economic
ideology was not confirmed. Ahistorical religiosity is not, as assumed, associated with
either Catholics’ or Protestants’ opinions about the causes of poverty. The reason for the
assumption was that I associated ahistorical religiosity with gender hierarchical ideology
for Protestants. The literature (Bendroth 1999) on conservative Protestants and gender
relations retrieves the importance of gender hierarchy fiom the inerrant Bible in which
women’s sexuality is portrayed as detrimental if not structured in hierarchical marriage
and motherhood. Public institutions that allow undomesticated sexuality (Balmer 1994)
or motherhood without marriage put the gender hierarchy of the inerrant Bible, needed
for earning salvation, in question.

The reason why I associated ahistorical religiosity and Catholic economic attitudes

is that I linked ahistorical religiosity for Catholics with the request of the Church that

166

al..

 

sexuality has to be intentionally procreative whereas public institutions in the realm of
welfare and education allow non-procreative sex. Publicinstitutions violate the identity
of Catholic conservatives who believe that obedience to the Church teaching is necessary
to receive the sacraments and then God’s grace (Dinges 1987).

The discussion about the components of aistorical religiosity shows that the concept
is not directly predicted by sexual morality and gender ideology as assumed, but by Bible
reading and abortion. It is suggested that they are the means through which gender
ideology and sexual morality are linked to ahistorical religiosity. However, the lack of a
direct link between these ideological variables and ahistorical religiosity seems to be the
reason why ahistorical religiosity does not have any direct influence on the religious
conservatives’ view about the causes of poverty.

The second part of the hypothesis about the view of the causes of poverty is
confirmed for both Protestants and Catholics. Both, Catholic and Protestant
conservatives’ ideology about sexuality and gender relations influences their fiscal
attitudes towards individualist responsibility for poverty. Also, in both cases, as
hypothesized, their economic beliefs are based on different ideological structures.
Catholics’ beliefs are most importantly structured on conservative sexual morality, while
hierarchical gender ideology is not of importance in explaining their view about the
individualist responsibility for poverty. The analogy holds for Protestants. Protestants’
beliefs are mainly structured on hierarchical gender ideology, and conservative sexual
morality plays no part in explaining their fiscal views about the individualist
responsibility for poverty.

Also, in both the Protestant and Catholic cases, the economic view about poverty is

167

predicted by the religious leadership. Even though the contribution of the P0pe towards
fiscal attitudes of the Catholics is not very strong, the Pope is, contrary to the notion of
Catholic comrnunalisrn (Dionne 2008; Gilkey 1974), a predictor of individualist
responsibility for poverty. This suggests that John Paul II’s policy proposals on the
economy were more readily received by the Catholic conservatives than the larger
Catholic community (D'Antonio et al. 1989). The larger Catholic community is not very
obedient to the Vatican’s policy endorsements, especially since Vatican H (Greeley
1985). My data about the demographic influences in addition to the ideological predictors
of Catholic economic attitudes suggest, however, that these perceptions about the Pope’s
endorsement of individualist economic responsibility are less accurate in formulating
Catholic’s attitudes about the causes of poverty for some of the demographic groups. This
is for those in the lower income groups and those in the lower education groups as
compared to those in the higher classes and for women as compared to men.

Protestant pastors also influence the explanation of Protestant conservatives’ view in
direction of the individualist responsibility of poverty. There is substantial literature(Guth
et al. 1997: 86; Smith 1997; Weissman 2000; Wilcox 2000) that reports on the Protestant
conservative leadership, pastors, Protestant conservative political leaders and church
administrators. The free market principle is supported and is negatively inclined towards
government regulation. The results of this dissertation indicate that the members of the
Protestant religious community follow their leadership into the free market principle.

Limitations and Further Research
This study describes Protestant and Catholic views on the placement of responsibility

for poverty in relation to their gender ideology and sexual morals, based on their religious

168

dogma. One limitation of this research is the scope of the data set. It is limited to the data
collection from Ann Arbor to Flint and Grand Rapids to Detroit, mid-Michigan, a mid -
western state. Other research (Rob and Haider-Markel 2003) has pointed to the different
political and cultural contexts in different geographical areas for the study of political
Opinions of religious conservatives. Bendyna and colleagues (2000: 329) compared
Catholics ideologically close to Christian Right politics in four different states, Florida,
Texas, Washington and Minnesota. They found that the conservative opinions about
moral and economic issues were also a reflection of the organizational background of
right wing politics in each state. In each state, there is a different mix of uniquely
Catholic conservative organizations that might enlist morally conservative Catholics into
political action groups that are not organized within the Catholic Church. Also, these
states differ in the political context with respect to the views of the non-Catholic religious
conservatives and their organizational relations. More Protestant fundamentalists are
members of the GOP state parties in Florida and Texas, as compared to Washington and
Minnesota (Bendyna et al. 2000: 330). Research in the context of different right wing
political concentration in different geographic areas would allow for testing whether the
influence of the Pope’s economic policy endorsements or the political environment of the
Catholic conservatives is more important to determine their views on moral and fiscal
politics. If the Pope is more influential in building Catholic conservatives’ views about
the causes for poverty and the role the welfare state should play, Catholic Conservatives
fiscal views would stay stable through various regions.

Since obedience to the Church teaching is of identifying importance to Catholic

conservatives (Cuneo 1997), any Vatican policy, not only about moral issues, might be

169

 

 

more salient to them than to the remaining Catholic community, which is less informed
about Church policies (D'Antonio et al. 1989) or ignores them (Christiano et al. 2002). A
reflection of the Catholic conservatives’ fiscal views on the Vatican’s policy
endorsements on the one hand and on the political context, in which the conservatives
live on the other, would allow for learning about the sources of their information.

More research is also needed on the individual level to evaluate the meaning of
abortion for Catholic and Protestant conservatives. The literature about abortion in the
Catholic context has shown that the opposition against it is unequivocally linked to the
definition of the Catholic Church’s influence over its communities. Church power is
based on the intentional procreativity of sexuality (Burns 2005; Weaver and Appleby
1995a). There are two components that describe Catholic abortion ideology, an
ideological and a religious one. The results of the analysis of Catholic abortion attitudes
in this dissertation support this notion. Conservative sexual morality and the affirmative
view about the Pope explain the attitudes against abortion of the Catholic conservatives.

This distinction between religious influence represented by the Pope and ideological
influence represented by sexual morality that both explain the Catholic conservatives’
abortion ideology is in line with newer findings that reject the idea of the secularization
theorists (Berger and Luckrnann 1966) who evaluate religion as one among other
ideologies. The study of the religious movements in the last three decades formd that
religiosity contains a spiritual factor distinct from political ideology (Inglehart and Baker
2000; Leege and Kellstedt 1993b). Research about abortion and political ideology found
that for Protestants there is a link between their pro-life stance and opposition to the

welfare state (Tamney et al. 1992; Wilcox 2000).

170

 

 

 

In the Catholic context, the relationship between moral conservatism and fiscal-
political conservatism is contested (Bendyna et al. 2001; Kelly 1999). An analysis of
ideological and religious variables of abortion could reveal whether their influence on the
political ideology of religious conservatives is the same and whether there is a difference
regarding that influence of ideology and religion on politics with respect to Protestant
versus Catholic conservatives.

Writings about the abortion attitudes of Protestants suggest that the opposition to
abortion is based on the opposition to sexual promiscuity (Press and. Cole 1999), which is
evidence of disregarding the gender hierarchy requested in the Bible. The religious
component involved is directly linked to the believer’s salvation, meaning disregarding
gender hierarchy is a sign of disobeying God. The structure of the religious institution is
not affected by religious belief in the Protestant conservative case compared to the
structure of the Catholic Church. But the direct relationship to God is affected for
Protestants. Future research could reveal, however, the degree to which sex and gender
ideological and religious components of the Catholic and Protestant conservatives’
beliefs influence their view about the causes of poverty and their opinions about free
market principles and government regulation.

A final topic for further research is in the area of religious salience. Religious
salience seems to have special bearing in the context of the American party system. The
political relevance seems to be that those for whom religion is important have a clearer
impression about the parties than those for whom religion is less important. Those with
strong religious salience have more Democratic dislikes and Republican likes than those

for whom religion is not so important. The newer writings maintain cautiously that these

171

likes for the Republicans, or dislikes for the Democrats is related to cultural, non-
economic issues. They further state the trend started in the 19805, and has increased in
strength since (Brewer 2009: 69).

The link between religious salience and the Republican Party is an additional
indication, that those for whom being aware that their religion is important for them for
their daily decisions are dogmatically conservative. The association has ideologically
been found already years ago (Guth and Green 1993) but also politically if we consider
the argument, that the Republican Party has been the voting ground for the religious
conservatives more so than the Democratic Party (Saunders and Abramowitz 2007;
Stonecash 2007).

I defined one of the common grounds of the Protestant and Catholic conservative
dogmas over the last 30 years as their ahistorical character. A distinction between
ahistorical religiosity and religious salience would allow better seeing the relevance of
religion for political ideology, to which the questions about the causes of poverty and
who has to bear the responsibility for it are at the bottom for many social policies.

I lined out the crucial elements of ahistorical religiosity in relations to Protestant
conservative dogma as originated in the inerrant Bible and the formalism of the specific
Biblical words (Barr 2002). I argued that the major component that links Protestant
ahistorical religiosity to the religious salience of the faithful is the hierarchical gender
ideology. The inerrant truth in the Biblical words makes the hierarchical gender relations
portrayed there divine and the subsequent control of female sexuality sanctioned by God
(DeBerg 2000). The feature that is ahistorical in relation to Catholic conservative dogma

is located on the institutional level and there the Church hierarchy teaches its truth about

172

 

intentional procreativity of sexuality. This truth is the power base of the Catholic Church
(Burns 1999). The Church teaches that the morals about the procreative sexuality are
binding for the Catholic identity. The major point that links Catholic ahistorical
religiosity to their religious salience is accordingly the conservative sexual morality. The
conservative faithful believes the Church has the right to act upon the believer (Chang
1998) and draw the boundaries ‘of Catholic identity.

However in both cases, the results of this project showed, that hierarchical gender
ideology is not a predictor of Protestant ahistorical religiosity and conservative sexual
morality is not a predictor of Catholic ahistorical religiosity. Protestant hierarchical
gender ideology and Catholic conservative morals about sex seem to be indirectly linked
to ahistorical religiosity through the Protestant frequency of Bible reading and the
Catholic opposition to abortion.

A more systematic distinction between the religious, sexual moral and gender
ideological components of ahisotrical religiosity would allow seeing more clearly how .
religious and ideological factors overlap and which ones, religious or ideological are
more strongly eliciting the believers’ awareness of their religiosity. In that, the
components would allow distinguishing more clearly between ahistorical religiosity and
religious salience. Knowing the distinction better one could more readily recognize some
grounds of the believers’ political ideology and its relevance for the explanation of

phenomena like poverty and the subsequent party preference of the faithfirl.

173

 

 

APPENDIX A

Questionnaire

Selected Questions

1.11 Are you a religious person? Yes No

1.12 How do you define yourself religiously? Check all that apply to you.
I am a Christian
I am a Catholic
I am a Protestant

I am agnostic

Other: I am

1.13 How would you describe your Christianity? Again, check all that apply to you.
I am an evangelical

I am a fundamentalist

I am a charismatic or spirit-filled

I am a Pentecostal

I am a traditionalist

I am a conservative Christian

I am a liberal Christian

Other: I am

1.21 These days, apart from occasional weddings, baptisms, or funerals, how often do
you attend religious services?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Day A few times a week Every week Almost every
week Once or twice a month A few times a year Almost
never Never

1.22 In which church are you a member or do you participate?

Please write the name and location of the church.
None

 

People follow their faith in different ways. How often do you do each of the

following?

1.221 How often do you pray on your own?
Several times a day_ Once a day_ A few times a week_
Once a week or less_ Almost never_ Never—

1.222 How often do you read the Bible on your own?
Several times a day_ Once a day_ A few times a week_
Once a week or less_ Almost never_ Never__

1.231 How often do you say grace at mealtime?
Several times a day_ Once a day_ A few times a week_
Once a week or less_ Almost never_ Never—

174

 

 

1.232 How often do you make the sign of the Cross?
Several times a day Once a day A few times a week_
Once a week or less Almost never Never

1.24 How much guidance does your religion give you for your daily living?
None Not very much I don't know_ Some
Quite a bit The only guide I have

2.31 1. Which of the following two statements is closer to your own view: "The
church should attempt to encourage individual morality" or "The church
should attempt to encourage social justice"
Individual Morality Social Justice
Don’t know 9

 

 

1 2 __-_3__-___--4._- -----5--- 6- 7

2.31 2. Again, which is closer to your view: The best way to address social problems
Is to .....

 

Change the
Hearts of Change Society
Individuals Don’t know 9
l 2 3 4 5 6 7

2.31 3. And which of the following is closer to your view? Individuals are poor because
of.....

Individual Social, Economic,
failure - or Political Factors
Don’t know 9
1 2 3 4 5 5 7

 

2.31 4. If enough people were brought to Christ, social ills would take care of
themselves.
Strongly disagree__ Disagree_ Don't know_ Agree—
Strongly agree—

2.32 Can you tell me how important is each of the following in helping you to
make decisions about your life? Place your feelings on a scale from 1 to
as shown below.

2.32 1. How important is the Bible in helping you make decisions?

 

Not Very Very Don't Know 9
Important Important
1 2 3 4 5 5 7

175

 

 

 

2.32 2. Your church?

 

Not Very Very Don't Know 9
Important Important
1 2 3 4 5 5 7

Question 2.4 CATHOLICS ONLY
Now, please think about how much you approve or disapprove with the job
performance of the Pope.

2.4 Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Pope is handling his job?
Approve a lot Approve some Don't know Disapprove some
Disapprove a lot

3.1 Now, here are some questions about women.

Do you agree or disagree
1. A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her
children as a mother who does not work.
Strongly agree_ Agree_ Neither agree nor disagree_
Disagree_ Strongly disagree_ Don’t know_

2. All in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know

3. A woman and her family will all be happier if she goes out to work.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know

4. A job is all right, but what most women really want is a home and
children.
Strongly agree_ Agree_ Neither agree nor disagree_
Disagree_ Strongly disagree_ Don’t know_

5. Being a housewife is just as fulfilling as working for pay.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know

6. Having a job is the best way for a woman to be an independent person.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know

7. Both the husband and the wife should contribute to the household
income.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree_ Strongly disagree Don’t know

176

8. A husband's job is to earn money; a wife’s job is to look after the home

and family.
Strongly agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree
Disagree Strongly disagree Don’t know

9. Do you approve or disapprove of a married women earning money in
Business or industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her?
Approve a lot_ Approve some_ Don't know_ Disapprove some_
Disapprove a lot_

10. If your church nominated a women for priest or pastor would you

“\

approve or disapprove?
Approve a lot Approve some Don’t know Disapprove
some Disapprove a lot Not applicable

11. If your party nominated a women for US President, would you vote for
her?
No Yes Don’t know

3.2 In your W who does the following activities, the male or the
female, or do you share equally? If you don’t live in a family or partnership,
please go to 3.21, #8.

For each of the following activities, please "c i r cl e " the number that is nearest
your answer.
1. Shopping for groceries

 

 

 

Share Not
Male equally Female applicable
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
2. Preparing meals
Share Not
Male equally Female applicable
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
3. House cleaning
Share Not
Male equally Female applicable
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
4. Taking care of the children
Share Not
Male equally Female applicable
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9

 

177

 

 

4.1 People are concerned about a lot of different social issues these days. Which of
the following issues is important for you?

1. Supporting prayer in public schools

Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9

 

2. Everybody being able to have a minimum standard of living from their

 

 

 

 

 

salary
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
3. Preventing Abortion
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
4. Providing affordable housing for the poor and homeless
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
5. Nuclear disarmament
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 ‘ 7 9

6. The private moral conduct of politicians

 

Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9

7. Taking care of the environment and preventing pollution

 

 

Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
8. US troops participating in foreign peace keeping efforts
Not important Very Don't
at all important ' know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
9. US troops participating in foreign wars
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9

 

178

10. Giving American economic aid to developing countries

Not important Very Don't
at all . important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9

 

11. Providing equal opportunities for minorities

Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9

 

12. Opposing the death penalty for criminals

 

 

Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9
13. Helping the economic needs of poor single women and children
Not important Very Don't
at all important know
1 2 3 4 5 5 7 9

4.2 These days there is a lot of discussion about morals and attitudes about sex in this

country.
If a man and woman have sexual relations before marriage, do you think
it is
Always wrong Almost always wrong Not sure
Wrong only sometimes Not wrong at all

4.3 What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations
with someone other than their marriage partner. Is it

Always wrong Almost always wrong Not sure
Wrong only sometimes Not wrong at all

4.4 Should getting a divorce in this country be easier or more difficult than it

is now?
Much easier Easier Not sure Somewhat more diffith
Much more difficult_

4.51 Do you think the public schools should give information to teenagers on
how to avoid becoming pregnant.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Not sure_ Probably no_
Definitely no_

4.52 Do you support the public schools offering general sex education if
there is community and parental involvement?
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Not sure_ Probably no_
Definitely no_

179

4.53 Do you support the public schools offering sex education based on
abstinence.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Not sure_ Probably no__
Definitely no__

4.54 At what ages should sexual abstinence be taught in the public schools?
From to At all ages Not at all—

4.6 We hear a lot of talk these days about the abortion issue.
Please tell me: Should a pregnant woman be able to obtain a legal
abortion:

4.6 1. If there is a strong chance of serious birth defect in the baby?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 2. If a woman is married and does not want to have any more children?

Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 3. If the woman's health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 4. If the family has a very low income and cannot afford any more children?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 5. If the woman became pregnant as a result of rape?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 6. If she is not married and does not want to marry the man?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

4.6 7. If the woman wants abortion for any reason?
Definitely Probably Not sure Probably no
Definitely no

QUESTIONS 5.1 T0 5.2 TO BE ANSWERED BY PRO-LIFE ACTIVIST S ONLY

5.1 Do you agree or disagree:
5.11 I work towards the reform of society.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Don’t know_ Probably not_

Definitely not_

180

5.12 I am helping to improve the position of women in society.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Don’t know_ Probably not_
Definitely not_

5.13 I am helping to strengthen families in our society.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Don’t know_ Probably not_
Definitely not_

5.14 I am helping to improve the moral values of our society.
Definitely yes_ Probably yes_ Don’t know_ Probably not_
Definitely not_

5.15 I am working - either as a volunteer or for pay - in an organization that
promotes alternatives to abortion.

Yes No_ Ifyes, which

organization?

 

Approximately how many hours each week on average do you work for this

organization?
0 - 1 hour_ 2-3 hours_ 4-5 hours_ 6-9 hours_ 10-20
hours_ 21-30 hours_ 31-40 hours_ More than 40 hours_

5.16 Could you tell me how often you have done any of these things as a
member of your organization?

1. Work in the office A lot_ Some_ Not very much_
Not at all__

2. Counseling women A lot_ Some_ Not very much_
Not at all—

3. Sort out cloths and toys for children A lot_ Some_
Not very much_ Not at all_

4. Attend committee meetings A lot_ Some_
Not very much_ Not at all__

5. Attend conferences or workshops A lot_ Some_
Not very much_ Not at all_

6. Participate in demonstrations: Yes___ No___

If yes, how many times?

5.16 7. Do you donate money? Yes No If yes, to which
organization?

 

181

5.16 8. Do you write letters to elected officials? Yes No

Ifyes, approximately how many a year?

5.2 Check each one of the following that you feel describes you.
I am a pro-life activist—
I am a moral crusader__
I am a social reformer—

1 am a pro-choice activist

6.1 Please describe your marital status

Married___ Live with a partner_ Widowed Divorced
Separated Never been married
6.2 Are you male or female? Male_ Female_

6.3 If you were asked what is your social class, which one would you choose?

Lower class Working class Middle class Upper middle
class
Upper class No class Don't know

6.4 In what month and year were you born? Month: Year: 19

6.51 Now, I have some questions about your education and work.
What is the highest level of education that you have completed?
_Did not go to school
_Grade School
_High school or GED
_Some college
_Technical school or Junior College
_Bachelor's degree (BA, A.B., B.S., etc.)
_Master's degree (MA., M.S., M.B.A., M.Ed., etc.)

Doctorate degree or first professional degree (Ph.D., Ed.D. dental, medical,
law, theology, etc.)

Don’t know

6.52 In what year did you complete your schooling?
enrolled

 

Currently

182

6. 6 Just approximately as a rough estimate, in which of these groups did
your total W from all sources, fall last year before taxes.

Under $10 ,000_ $10,000 to 12,499_ $12,500 to 14,999—
$15,000 to 17,499_ $17,500 to 19.999_._ $20,000 to 22.499—
$22.500 to 24,999_ $25,000 to 29,999_ $30,000 to 34999—
$35,000 to 39,999_ $40,000 to 49.999_ $50,000 to 59,999—
$60,000 to 74,999_ $75,000 or over___ Don’t know_

What is your race or ethnic group?
6.71 Are you of Spanish / Hispanic/ Latino origin? Yes No I f no go to
question 7.83

6.72 If yes, mark one or several of the following options. Are you
Mexican, Mexican American or Chicano_
Puerto Rican_
Other Spanish/ Hispanic/ Latino group_ Which
one:

 

6.73 Mark one or several of the following options. Are you
White_ Black or African American—
American Indian or Alaska Native—
Asian Indian_ Chinese_ Filipino_ Japanese—
Korean__ Vietnamese_ Native Hawaiian—
Other Pacific Islander__ Other Asian—
Any other race_ Which one:

 

183

 

APPENDIX B

Churches, Activist Groups, and Pregnancy Centers for Data Collection

Churches

The following Table (19) shows the churches, in which the respondents who filled
out a questionnaire were either members or where they participated regularly. The
information of their church membership was taken from their answers to the
questionnaire (Appendix A, question 1.22). In the greater Lansing areas I approached the
churches indicated with # in Table 19 directly for questionnaire collection. Regarding
charities and social services I selected the Protestant churches according to information as
listed in Table 1 (chapter 4) from the Lansing areas phone book, the Catholic churches
according to the information from the Diocese of Lansing for the Lansing Region. I chose
those Catholic churches that focused on the anti-ab0rtion Respect Life activities as a
priority of their social services (Appendix B) and as an additional indicator of sexual
conservatism promoted natural family planning (chapter 4, Data Collection). The
remaining churches in the Lansing areas (listed without # in Table 19) were taken fi'om
the question 1.22 (Appendix A) of the questionnaires that I had collected from the
Christian Right, religious missionary and pregnancy groups located in the Lansing areas
(Table 20)

The names and locations of those churches outside greater Lansing I retrieved from
the questionnaires that I had mailed to the pregnancy service centers located in mid
Michigan between Grand Rapids and Detroit, and Ann Arbor and Flint (Table 20 and

chapter 4, Data Collection). With the exception of the churches indicated with # in

184

Table 19 the list below shows the information as provided from question 1.22 of the
questionnaires as they were sent back from pregnancy centers and religious activist
groups. The label (*) indicates that the respondent provided incomplete information about
name and location of their church.

Eleven of the 408 respondents of my data set did not answer the question about name
and location of their church. Another 1 l of the respondents said they are not
participating in any church and 9 of the respondents were not either affiliated with
Catholic or Protestant religion. This latter group of the non Catholics and non Protestants

were excluded from further analysis.

Table 19
Churches
Religious Group Place of Worship

2

Catholic St. Robert Church, Ada
St. Frances Cabrini Parish, Allen Park
St. Francis of Assisi Church, Ann Arbor
St. Mary Student Parish, Ann Arbor
Women Eucharist, Ann Arbor
St. Anthony Parish, Belleville
St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic Church, Bloomfield Hills
Holy Spirit Catholic Church Hamburg, Brighton
# St. Mary's Rectory, Charlotte
St. Daniel Church, Clarkston
Divine Child Parish, Dearbom
Sacred Heart Parish, Dearbom
St. Linus Parish, Dearbom Heights
Christ the King Parish, Detroit
Day House Detroit Catholic Worker, Detroit
Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus, Detroit
St. Leo Church, Detroit
Sacred Heart Church, Detroit
St. Ignatius Parish, Detroit
# St. Jude Catholic Church, Dewitt
# St. John's Student Parish, East Lansing

OONHNh—v—NN—r-‘NHNNv—h-r-‘NN-d

p—a
\O

185

Table 19 (contd)
Religious Group

Catholic

Place of Worship

Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, Farmington
St. Fabian Church, Farmington Hills

St. Raphael's, Garden City

St Michael Parish, Grand Ledge

Catholic Information Center, Grand Rapids

St. Paul the Appostle Catholic School, Grand Rapids
St. Robert, Grand Rapid

St. Paul Catholic Church and Rectory, Grosse Point
St. Joseph Catholic Church, Howell

St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, Hubbardston
# Church of the Resurrection, Holy Cross, Lansing
Holy Cross Parish, Lansing

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Lansing

# St. Gerard Parish, Lansing

# St. Mary Cathedral, Lansing

# St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic Parish, Lansing

# St. Thomas Aquinas Church, Lansing

# St. James Catholic Church, Mason

St. Mary's Parish, Morrice

The Church of the Holy Family, Novi

St. Martha's Catholic Church, Okemos

Our Lady of the Lakes, Pentwater

St. Joseph Catholic Church, Pewamo

St. Vincent de Paul Parish, Pontiac

St. Patrick Catholic Church, Portland

Shrine of the Little Flower, Royal Oak

St. Rene Goupil Parish, Sterling Heights

St. Joseph Parish, St. Johns

St. Mary of the Woods, Twin City

St. Mark Catholic Church, Warren
St. Martin De Porres Parish, Warren

St. Sylvester Parish, Warren

# St. Mary Catholic Church, Williarnston

St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish, Wyandotte

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Wyandotte

Our Lady of the Rosary (*)

South Eastern Michigan Women Eucharist (*)

St. Germaine Parish, St. Clair Shores (Lawrence) (*)

186

2

P—‘OAD-‘LI‘NI—ih—lI—Ih—INI—Ib—Ir—lw

WNr—fi
U!

b—nu—nv—au—tr—h—nu—ur—w—dNaw—Ir—oNr—‘Nh—Av—oo

 

 

 

Table 19 (contd)

Religious Group

Catholic

Evangelical
Protestant

Total

Place of Worship N
St. Patrick (*) 1
St. Sebastian, South East Michigan (*) 1

200

 

Lakeside Chapel of Park Lake, Bath

Faith Baptist Church, Davison

# Community Church, Dewitt

# Capital City Vineyard Church, East Lansing

# Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) Campus
Ministry, East Lansing

Eaton Rapids Assemblies of God, Eaton Rapids

Farmington Hills Church of God, Farmington Hills

South Baptist Church, Flint

Trinity Baptist Church, Flushing

Most Holy Trinity Church, Fowler

Bethany Baptist Church, Grand Blanc

Oneida Gospel Church, Grand Ledge

Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids

Mars Hill Bible Church, Grandville

# Spirit of Christ, Haslet

# Holy Epiphany Evangelical Orthodox Church, Holt

# Holt Nazarene Church, Holt

# Riverview Community Church, Holt

Graham Church, Laingsburg

# First United Brethem Church, Lansing

# Liberty Christian Church, Lansing l

# Living Hope Church, Lansing

Our Savior Lutheran Church, Lansing

# Reachout Christian Center, Lansing l

# Trinity Church, Lansing

# Mount Hope, Lansing

# Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Lansing

# New Covenant Christian Church, Lansing 1

# South Baptist Church, Lansing

# South Nazarene, Lansing

# Spirit of Christ Church, Lansing

# Mason Assembly of God, Mason

# Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Lansing, Okemos

ydp—spdp‘

p—oNu—ay—nwmmab——Hm\]Nwh——oo—au——an—iv—HHN

187

Table 19 (contd)

Religious Group .

Evangelical
Protestant

Mainstream
Protestant

Total

Total

Place of Worship

Northridge Church, Plymouth

Highland Park Baptist Church, Southfiled
Gilead Baptist Church, Taylor

First Baptist Church of Troy, Troy
Williamston Free Methodist Church, Williamston
Bible Church, Woodhaven

Shalom Ministry, Dearbom Heights (*)
Baptist Church, Lapeer (*)

Calvary Baptist Church (*)

Christ Memorial Church (*)

Faith Bible Church (*)

First Love Christian Fellows (*)

Free Methodist (*)

Grace Bible Baptist (*)

Missouri Lutheran (*)

Missorni Trinity Lutheran (*)
Non-Denominational Church (*)
Presbyterian Living Water, SG (*)

Small Mixed Race Christian Church C“)

2

y—ur—INwNu—uh—IN—t—tu—INNNt—Iv—tn—Iu—Iu—

133

 

# Edgewood United Church of Christ, East Lansing

# River Terrace Reformed Church, East Lansing

# Haslet Community Church: United Church of Christ
(U CC), Haslett

# Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Lansing

# Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Lansing

# Grace Lutheran Church, Lansing

# Plymouth Congregational Church, Lansing

Trinity United Methodist Church, Lansing

Kenwood Church of Christ, Livonia

Memorial Church of Christ, Livonia

# The Presbyterian Church of Okemos, Okemos

Hilltop Christian Church, Ohio (*)

Laingsburg Church, Lain gsburg (*)

Methodist (*)

U)
o—dr—I

p—iHh‘Hs—Ip—ap—ah—ns—a

A
.b

 

188

 

 

Table 19 (contd)

 

Religious Group Place of Worship N
Other First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor,
Ann Arbor 3
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, Detroit 1
Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing,
Lansing 1
Shema Yisrael, Southfield l
Fellowship for Toda Buddha (*) l
Kehillat Israel (*) 1
Searching proper church (*) 1
Total 9
None None 1 1
Total 1 l

 

Notes: N=Number of questionnaires returned per church

C“) The respondent provided incomplete information about name or
location of his or her church.

# Churches located in the greater Lansing areas directly approached

for data collection. The information about the other churches came from
the questionnaires that were mailed back from the pregnancy, adoption
and activist organizations.

Religious Activist Groups and Pregnancy Centers

Table 20 shows the religious activist groups (chapter 4, Description of Data) and
pregnancy centers from which data was collected. Except for Call to Action and
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (Table 20, Progressive Catholic and
Interreligious) all the activist groups were contacted on the grounds of their conservative
views on religion and abortion.

The pregnancy centers provide pregnancy tests and counsel women towards not
having an abortion (United States 2006). The centers I contacted for data collection were
either located in the greater Lansing areas listed in the Directory of Pregnancy Support

Services published by the Lansing chapter of the Right to Life of Michigan (RLM)

189

 

 

(2000) or from pregnancy centers listed online. Right to Life of Michigan (2000) had also
a non-religious adoption and two non-religious children’s aid noneprofit agencies and one
government organization [Ingham County Family Independence Agency (FIA)] listed
from which I collected questionnaires (Table 20). (Most of those respondents had liberal
views on abortion (Appendix B, question 4.6.1 through 4.6.7) and I stopped taking
pregnancy or children’s support groups into consideration if they were not affiliated with
any religion.)

The Catholic Respect Life pregnancy centers listed in Table 20 were contacted
together with their parish church listed in the church directory (Diocese of Lansing 2000).
The online source was Pregnancy Centers Online —Michigan Listings. This list was not
all inclusive. The Catholic Respect Life centers and the pregnancy centers that are listed
under Right to Life of Michigan, Greater Lansing in Table 20 were not listed in
“Pregnancy Centers Online” in 2001.

I got the intemet address about the pregnancy centers through the Right to Life of
Michigan home page, where “Pregnancy Centers Online” was indicated under “Website
Links” in 2001. The listings of pregnancy services centers have different names today
and are continued by different websites such as Lifecall or Ramah International. They are
organized by Christian based religious groups like Heart Beat International or Care Net
(United States 2006) The intemet listings then and now do not represent a specific
religious group and most of the centers identify themselves as interdenominational and do
not indentify a church or religious group as their affiliate. But with the exception of two
participants of Jewish religion, the respondents of the pregnancy centers to my

questionnaire in 2001 were either Catholic or Protestant. Those centers that do identify a

190

religion are Catholic or Lutheran social services or Bethany Christian services. The latter
one is, according to information from their homepage “bethany.org” (Bethany Christian

Services 2009) associated with an evangelical Christianity and active in anti-abortion and

promoting adoption matters.

Table 20
Pregnancy Centers and Activist Groups

 

Pregnancy Support Services
for the Lansing Area, Right to
Life of Michigan, Lansing

Beacon of Hope Pregnancy Care
Center, St. Johns, MI

Bethany Christian Services
East Lansing, MI

Christian Cradle
East Lansing, MI

Catholic Social Services (Diocese
of Lansing), Lansing, MI

Project Rachel (Catholic Diocese
of Lansing), Lansing, MI

Lutheran Social Services
Lansing, MI

Adoption Associates Inc.
Lansing, MI

Child and Family Services
Holt, MI

Michigan Indian Child Welfare
Lansing, MI

Ingham County Family Independent
Agency (F IA), Lansing, MI

19]

Catholic Social Services
Local Parishes, Lansing Region
of Diocese of Lansing

Respect Life
Church of the Resurrection
Lansing, MI

Respect Life
St. Gerard Parish
Lansing, MI

Respect Life
St. James Catholic Church
Mason, MI

Respect Life
St. Mary's Rectory
Charlotte, MI

Respect Life
St. Mary Cathedral
Lansing, MI

Respect Life
St. Mary Catholic Church
Williamston, MI

Respect Life
St. Michael Parish
Grand Ledge, MI

 

 

Table 20 (contd)

Pregnancy Centers Online
Bethany Christian Services
Allegan, MI

Bethany Christian Services
Fremont, MI

Bethany Christian Services
Grand Rapids, MI

Bethany Christian Services
Holland, MI

Bethany Christian Services
Madison Heights, MI
Bethany Christian Services
Paw Paw, MI

Crisis Pregnancy Center Inc.
Allen Park, MI

AAA Crisis Pregnancy Center
Cheboygan. MI

Metro Crisis Pregnancy Center
Dearborn, MI

Crisis Pregnancy Center of Detroit
Detroit, MI

Flint Crisis Pregnancy Center
Flint, MI

Crisis Pregnancy Services of
Midland, Midland, MI

Crisis Pregnancy Aid Center
Taylor, MI

Care Net Pregnancy Information
Center, Berkley, MI

192

Catholic Social Services
Problem Pregnancy/Operation
Stork

Respect Life

St. Therese of Lisieux Catholic
Parish, Lansing MI

 

Respect Life
St. Thomas Aquinas Church ,5
Lansing, MI "

Activist Groups

Political
Citizens for Traditional Values
Lansing, MI

Foundation for Traditional
Values
Lansing, MI

Michigan Family Forum
Lansing, MI

Right to Life of Michigan
Lansing, MI

Catholic
Catholic Homeschoolers
Lansing Areas

 

Catholic League for Religious

and

Civil Rights, Detroit Region, MI
Evangelical Protestant

City Rescue Mission

Lansing, MI

Lansing Teen Challenge
Lansing, MI

Pray America - Manos de Jesus
Lansing, MI

Progressive Catholic

and Interreligious
Call to Action of Michigan
Ada, Dearbom, Warren, MI

Table 20 (contd)

Pregnancy Centers Online
Pregnancy Aid

Detroit, MI

Problem Pregnancy Center
Detroit, MI '

Pregnancy Services of Greater
Lansing, East Lansing, MI

Another Way Pregnancy Center
Farmington, MI

Pregnancy Helpline
Howell, MI

Shared Pregnancy Women's
Center, Lansing, MI

Activist Groups
Interreligious
Reproductive Choice

East Lansing, MI

 

Pregnancy Centers Online
Hannah's House
Lansing, MI

Right to Life, Lifespan
Livonia, MI

Mother and Unborn Baby Care
Southfield, MI

 

193

 

 

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