Mobilizing Religious Interests

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Mobilizing Religious Interests

• Religion can be a particularly potent resource
  for political mobilization and participation.
• There are at least 120 non-profit organizations
  in the US that seek to influence polity
  formulations from a religious perspective. These
  types of religious groups act much like other
  secular interest groups attempting to influence
  the policy process. Ex. Christian Coalition of
  America http//www.cc.org/ and
  http//www.cc.org/about_us

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Religious Interests and Culture

• Culture (and religion as a potent communicator of
  culture) performs 3 primary functions (1) it
  offers identity, (2) it prescribes norms, and (3)
  it defines boundaries for relationships.
• Religion has so much political potential because
  it prescribes not only how we as individuals
  should live but also suggests the nature of the
  just society.
• Karl Marx said religion was the opiate of the
  masses but religion can be the catalyst for
  tremendous societal change.

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Sources of Motivation

• Group identity religion construct collective
  identities, which can serve as powerful
  motivations for political participation because
  group identifications provide cognitive
  structures through which the world can be viewed.
  
• Group status according to Weber, economic status
  is partially a function of religion. Since the
  beginning of capitalism in Europe, Protestants
  have been more successful than Catholics
  economically because Protestants embraced
  religious values that transformed work from
  drudgery into a calling through which glorify
  God. While Catholics were viewing poverty as a
  sign of grace, Protestants understood material
  gain to be an indication of salvation and favour
  with God.

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Sources of Motivation Theology

• Religious groups become politically active
  because they desire congruence between their
  religious perspectives and public policies.
• Certain common ways of thinking about religion
  may spill over into politics. A conservative
  approach to religion may support a conservative
  approach to politics.
• An emphasis on sinfulness as the essential
  condition of humankind seems quite compatible
  with a skeptical orientation toward the prospect
  of improving conditions through political action.
  Similarly, if human pleasures are judged inferior
  to spiritual rewards, there is little urgency
  about improving material conditions. The liberal
  belief in social sin and the dignity of earthly
  existence, which contrast sharply with
  conservative religious assumptions, spurs efforts
  to eradicate structural barriers to justice and
  to improve the material conditions of life.
  Belief in a warm, caring God who is part of the
  world tend to enhance commitment to social
  welfare, whereas the image of a cold and
  authoritative deity lends support to governments
  role in securing order and property.
  

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Sources of Motivation Theology

• Liberal faith Judaism venerates learning and
  charity as major virtues and is relatively silent
  about the origin of sin and the prospect of life
  and death. That combination of values encourages
  optimism about the human condition and a sense of
  urgency about the application of reason to human
  problems. It seems almost to demand social and
  political involvement on behalf of liberal
  causes.
• Lutheran thought treats humans as creatures of
  passion and sin who should not interfere with the
  divine plan for the world. Lutherans accept the
  world as it is because true happiness for man and
  total release from the bondage of sin are not
  possible until after death. This is also way
  Lutherans have a pronounced economic, social,
  racial, and political conservatism.

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Sources of Motivation Institutional Interests

• Institutional interests provide the final source
  of motivation for the political engagement of
  religious faith. Denominations, faith-oriented
  communions and associations, individual churches
  and synagogues, interest groups, religious
  schools, religious broadcasters, religious social
  service providers, and charitable organizations
  all have a stake in particular public policies
  and may attempt to mobilize constituents in
  support of their causes. While ostensibly acting
  on behalf of the public good, all are
  simultaneously institutions with a more narrow
  economic and ideological interests as well.

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Establishing Means the role of Elites

• The discontent must be framed and organized in a
  manner that supports political activity. It makes
  sense to think of grievances as latencies, tools
  that are available for exploitation by strong or
  aspiring leadership (clergy and leaders of
  organized interest groups). People may hold their
  pastors ideas in particular esteem and give his
  or her issue positions more credibility than
  positions they hear through some other medium.
  Ministers views not only inform their own
  activity they can shape the perspectives of
  their congregations.

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Establishing Means Clergy as Political Leaders

• Clergy might send political messages. Ministers
  views not only inform their own activity they
  can shape the perspectives of their
  congregations. They are by definition opinion
  leaders. They think ideologically, can
  communicate their positions through religious
  culture, have access to institutional resources,
  and have an audience who voluntarily comes to
  hear what they have to say. Ex. Civil Rights
  movement and Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929-1968 Baptist
Minister In 1963 March on Washington he delivered
his Have a Dream speech. In 1964 receive the
Nobel Peace Prize.
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Establishing Means Religious Activists

• Another major set of opinion leaders in the
  religious community are activists in religiously
  based organizations or interest groups. While
  clergy may episodically focus on politics, their
  essential responsibility is to meet and care for
  the spiritual needs of their congregations.
  However, the primary orientation of religiously
  based activists is centered on public policy.
• Religious activists have long used the secular
  media and religiously oriented media to
  communicate their perspective and to
  differentiate themselves from other subcultures
  in society (Ex. Pat Robertson http//www.cbn.com/
  and http//www.patrobertson.com/ )

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Establishing Means Community Activists

• Community activists are harnessing the potential
  of religious faith to organize people to address
  the material realities of their lives. Working
  through congregations, these organizers use
  religious practices, worldview, and culture to
  address the concerns of their communities.
• Elites use religious culture to frame and
  contextualize grievances (deriving from
  structural inequality) and employ religious
  resources to organize and strengthen in
  individual resolve to do something about them.