Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Christianity and Conservatism’s Multiethnic Future

At the First Things site today, I have an essay on how a broad, ecumenical Christianity will feature in a new, multiethnic conservative movement. Here’s a sample:

The factors Salam identifies no doubt figure in minorities’ increasing affinity for conservative politics. But I think his explanation misses another important factor: conservative Christianity. The media typically presents conservative Christians as monolithically white, but that is not the case. For example, about one-quarter of evangelicals are members of racial and ethnic minorities, and Republicans apparently did very well among them. According to Gaston Espinoza, a researcher at Claremont McKenna College who conducted a survey of Latino voters, it was “Latino evangelicals” who “helped Trump to do better than anyone expected in Texas … and in Florida.”

I don’t know of studies that analyze minority voters in terms of church attendance, but in the general population, religious observance correlates with voting for the GOP, and that pattern presumably holds for many minorities as well. According to the AP Vote Cast Survey, people who attend church regularly—up to a few times a month—broke solidly for Trump, 54 percent to 45 percent. People who attend church once a week or more voted 61 percent for Trump. By contrast, people who never attend church went strongly for Biden, 63 percent to 32 percent. (This last figure is consistent with surveys that reveal that more than two-thirds of Democrats “never attend religious services.”) To be sure, differences exist among minority communities; black Christians, for example, continue to vote Democrat in very large numbers. Still, it is reasonable to think that, with respect to minorities, as with respect to the American public generally, the religiously observant tend to vote Republican.

If Republicans are to become a multiethnic, middle-class movement, a popular, ecumenical Christianity of the sort I observed at the Museum of the Bible will likely have an important place in it. In fact, the religious identity of the movement need not be exclusively Christian. Americans are famously non-sectarian when it comes to public religion, and it’s possible to imagine a political coalition of the traditionally religious from all faith communities. Although good studies are difficult to find, some suggest that Orthodox Jews increasingly vote Republican. And President Trump drew one-third of Muslim voters in 2020, a large increase over 2016.

You can read the whole essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Law & Religion Roundtable at Lomonosov-Moscow State (Nov. 25)

A programming note: on Wednesday, November 25, I will participate in a roundtable on law and religion sponsored by the Faculty of Law at Lomonosov Moscow State University. The roundtable, organized by Lomonosov Professor Gayane Davidyan, will take place online starting at 17:30 Moscow time. Visitors are welcome. Please use the You Tube link here. The roster for the roundtable, along with the titles of the presentations, is below. Stop by and say hello!

  • Mark Movsesian, Frederick A. Whitney Professor, Co-Director of Center for Law & Religion, St. John’s Law School, United States, Church-State Cases at the US Supreme Court in 2020
  • Lina Papadopoulou, Associate Professor, Law School, Academic Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “European Constitution and Religion”, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, God and the Constitution in a country (Greece) with a prevailing religion
  • Andrea Pin, Associate Professor, Department of Public, International and Community Law, University of Padua, Italy, The Constitution as an ID
  • Kathryn Chan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Canada, The source and scope of religious freedom in Canada
  • Xavier Barre, Ph.D in Law, Avocat au barreau de Paris, Member of New York Bar and Advocat of Moscow Regional bar
  • Anton Kanevsky, Associate Professor of Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, Attorney in Jerusalem, The Divine Name in Earthly Affairs: Non-specific Talmudic Legal Principles and Israeli Practice
  • Gayane Davidyan, Associate Professor, School of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Director Center of Law and Religion, Can God be Constitutional?
Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

A New Work on Patriotism and Other Loyalties

I’ve learned a great deal from Professor Steven B. Smith’s work on political philosophy over the years. A few years back, I watched his terrific lectures (and tried to keep up with the reading!) which are available to everybody, and then read his fine book, Modernity and Its Discontents.

Early next year, Professor Smith has a new book in the offing: Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (Yale University Press) that is worth highlighting. For the law and religion crowd, I’m sure this will be a timely and important contribution on the question of balancing various competing loyalties. Here is the description.

The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism.
 
Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country against other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without.