Guth, Green, Kellstedt, and Smidt have written several papers, including analysis of the religious participation in the 1996 and 2000 elections in Interest Group Politics.

“Thunder on the right? Religious interest group mobilization in the 1996 election.”
“A distant thunder? Religious mobilization in the 2000 elections.”

The full text of “Religion and Political Participation” is available here:
http://apsa.cup.org/Site/abstracts/033/033005GuthJames0.htm

The tables in the back are the interesting part.

The “traditionalists,” “centrists,” and “modernists” division is somewhat artificial, but the groups do seem to differ a great deal in political participation. Jewish voters are more active than anybody else, but after them come the Christian “traditionalists.” “Centrists” and “modernists” were less active. Catholics even more so. Here is the quote from the “Religion and Political Participation” article explaining the division:

For the three largest Christian traditions—Evangelical, Mainline, and white Catholic—we have also created a tripartite internal division between “traditionalists,” “centrists” and “modernists,” reflecting contemporary struggles with American religion. We use measures of religious belief, activity and adherence to religious movements to produce this division. Although the details of our procedure are beyond the scope of this paper, we can summarize the differences between the groups by noting that “traditionalists” adhere to orthodox theological tenets, are somewhat more likely to be religiously active, and usually identify with a sectarian movement. Modernists are more heterodox in understanding their faith, tend to be somewhat less active religiously, and identify with a “church-like” movement. “Centrists” fall between those two camps on all three aspects of belief, behavior and belonging.

Interesting. The categories are not the evangelicals’ own self-descriptions, but terms used by sociologists.

Speaking as one who would be labeled “traditionalist evangelical” by the sociologists, here are two key points to remember about evangelicals and politics:

1) Most evangelical churches talk far less about political issues than leftist mainline churches. The ethos is that we should all be able to unite in Christ without having to agree on politics, which would just create divisions in our midst. The connection between Christian orthodoxy and what we believe politically is never made by most evangelicals. All the leftist hysteria about “the Religious Right” is 90% vapor. There is far more mixing of religion and politics on the left than on the right.

2) Evangelicals are wordly and have been absorbed into the surrounding culture. The calling to be countercultural has been largely ignored. George Barna has repeatedly surveyed various groups within Christianity and compared them to society at large for more than two decades. While some interesting and encouraging differences emerge, the similarities are the more common and significant results. For example, Southern Baptists have a higher divorce rate than atheists. More than 20% of self-described “born-again Christians” believe in reincarnation. About 20 years ago, when MTV was a relatively new cable channel and was viewed as the epitome of the decline of Western civilization, it was found that 33% of American high schoolers said they had watched MTV in the last week. Among self-described “born-again Christian” high schoolers, the figure was 37%.

In light of these data and others, don’t be surprised when you read that 30% of “evangelical Christians” vote for a Bill Clinton or Howard Dean or whomever. The mainstream liberal ethos has permeated evangelicalism almost as much as any other subgroup in America. In terms of intellectual foundations, Christian discipleship and counter-cultural living, rejection of the un-Christian world around them, etc., the supposed “Religious Right” or “evangelicals” are pretty much a sickness rather than a cure for our culture.

Mr. Coleman has raised some very valid and relevant points about Evangelical Protestantism as it exists today (in this country, at any rate). As one who has been involved in these churches for a couple of decades, I can second his account of how the liberalism of the general culture has significantly polluted the flock. Divorce and pre-marital sex are as common as they are in the general society, despite much teaching on the evils of such practices. Few took the Disney boycott seriously, despite the great number of valid reasons to do so over and above the sponsorship of “gay days” events. It even descends into the farcial when leaders like James Dobson hold up Martin Luther King as an example of Christianity in action. (Who’ll join the Pantheon next, Bill Clinton?) Even Don Wildmon’s AFA site included a quote from the great “African-American commentator” Mumia Abu-Jamal on their site until I sent them a blistering e-mail pointing out that Jamal was nothing more than a cop killer - and a Muslim to boot!

Perhaps Matt’s assertion that Protestantism leads inevitably to liberalism is correct. Despite traditionalists like Matt and Mr. Sutherland, Catholicism seems to have gone liberal in large part also.