Why did Donald Trump attract a record number of white evangelical voters without unified support—and despite nontrivial antipathy from evangelical leaders? The editors and leading scholars that contribute to the timely volume The Evangelical Crackup? answer this question and provide a comprehensive assessment of the status of evangelicals and the Christian Right in the Republican coalition.

The expected “crackup” with the Republican Party never happened. Each chapter in this cogent volume includes analyses of the 2016 election to explain why—and why that is critical. Chapters examine policy priorities, legal advocacy, and evangelical loyalty to the Republican Party; rhetoric, social networks, and evangelical elite influence; and the political implications of movements within evangelicalism, such as young evangelicals, Hispanics, and the Emergent Church movement.

Contributors include: Daniel Bennett, Mark Brockway, Ryan P. Burge, Brian R. Calfano, Jeremy Castle, Kimberly Conger, Daniel A. Cox, Kevin den Dulk, Sarah Allen Gershon, Tobin Grant, Robert P. Jones, Geoffrey Layman, Andrew R. Lewis, Ronald J. McGauvran, Joshua Mitchell, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Jacob R. Neiheisel, Elizabeth Oldmixon, Adrian D. Pantoja, David Searcy, Anand Edward Sokhey, J. Benjamin Taylor, Robert Wuthnow, and the editors.

Religion’s influence on public opinion, politics, and candidates has been widely discussed in political science for a generation. God Talk isthe first volume that uses experimental methodology to establish whether and how that influence works.

 

Paul Djupe and Brian Calfano provide an unprecedented look at how religious cues, values, and identity-driven appeals impact candidate selection, trust, interest group support, and U.S. public opinion about tolerance, the environment, foreign policy, and related issues.

 

By situating their disparate, randomly assigned interventions within the broader framework of elite-based influence, the authors apply their new methodology to three questions: How do clergy affect congregation members? How are religious elites and groups and their public arguments evaluated? With what effect do political elites use religion? The results of their research provide a compelling framework for understanding the links between religion and politics.

In the series The Social Logic of Politics, edited by Scott McClurg

Religious institutions are often engaged in influencing the beliefs and values that individuals hold. But religious groups can also challenge how people think about democracy, including the extension of equal rights and liberties regardless of viewpoint, or what is commonly called political tolerance.

The essays in Religion and Political Tolerance in America seek to understand how these elements interrelate. The editor and contributors to this important volume present new and innovative research that wrestles with the fundamental question of the place of religion in democratic society. They address topics ranging from religious contributions to social identity to the political tolerance that religious elites (clergy) hold and advocate to others, and how religion shapes responses to intolerance.

The conclusion, by Ted Jelen, emphasizes that religion’s take on political tolerance is nuanced and that they are not incompatible; religion can sometimes enhance the tolerance of ordinary citizens.