Political scientist Janelle S. Wong began writing her book Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics in an Era of Demographic Change (Russell Sage Foundation, $24.95) firmly convinced that the rising tide of non-white and immigrant evangelicals was likely to reshape the evangelical political landscape, given the more liberal positions of these minority Christians on immigration and other social issues. The election of Donald Trump upended that thesis, showing the still enduring political effect of white evangelicals. Wong has reworked her book to now make the case that the white evangelical voting bloc is able to resist challenges posed by demographic changes. Both whites and evangelicals still carry strength in swing states where most political contests are determined, and they are more highly mobilized and organized than ethnic evangelicals. Wong argues that minority evangelicals and the organizations they may support, such as the fledgling group Public Faith, have a mixed agenda, supporting immigrant rights while remaining traditional on abortion and LGBT issues, which does not resonate with either Republican or Democratic parties or their ideological bases. She adds that there is little coordination or centralized leadership among Latino and Asian evangelical organizations and activists. It is also the case that minority evangelical politics are not all cut from the same cloth: Asian-American evangelicals are far more conservative than African-American evangelicals on social issues.
Among the most interesting parts of the book are the qualitative interviews with members of white and minority evangelical congregations about the political messages they hear from the pulpit and from fellow members. They tend to report not hearing much political content in sermons while noting that political information tends to be shared informally (during discussions or Bible studies). Even in predominantly minority evangelical congregations, Wong did not find uniform views even on issues such as support for a path to citizenship (with some supporting a strict stance on immigration control). One of the book’s key findings, drawn from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-racial Post-Election Survey with 10,000 respondents (randomly selected from Internet voting and commercial mailing lists), was that white evangelicals feel they (and whites in general) are facing discrimination in American society—a view widely contested by minority evangelicals. Wong concludes that white evangelical political identity, combining fears of white endangerment with evangelical solidarity, will make minority evangelical influence limited for the near future.
Dillon cites survey research suggesting that American Catholics embrace a similar form of moderate Catholicism as they question Church teachings on a host of issues while affirming basic teachings and viewing the Church and its sacraments as important in their lives. She also notes that these same Catholics may praise the pope but remain indifferent and uninformed about his social teachings, even while these are received more enthusiastically by non-Catholics (she does not mention immigration). She acknowledges the tensions and complications of this dialogical approach in that it could soft-pedal or dilute issues central to Catholic identity, such as the importance of the complementary roles of the sexes in Church and family life and its organizational freedom in the face of secularist challenges (such as dissenting on gay rights and contraceptive and abortion policies). Dillon thinks the Church has done better in translating its concerns about abortion to secular society than issues of sexuality and religious freedom, but is nevertheless convinced that the “cat is out of the bag” on many of these matters. Francis has unleashed expectations and institutional energies favoring a non-confrontational approach and recognizing secular realities that correspond to lay Catholic experiences (here Dillon does not differentiate much between active and inactive Catholics views). By the same token, she argues that the “post-secular turn means that the public relevance of religion cannot be denied and contemporary society must adjust to it.”
Most participants valued these forums as a way to exchange knowledge and to receive and offer support to others. But on the Internet, those who are seen as authorities are “informal experts” who have demonstrated having the most knowledge (and posting the most); being a priest or nun doesn’t necessarily have much clout in this context. While some users did see their forum involvement as an alternative to Catholicism, most did not seek to replace their offline religious involvement with an online version. Kolodziejska concludes that online religious forums and offline religious institutions each supplemented rather than competed with each other—“the informal experts were the translators of (religious and other) knowledge…[but they] did not usually present themselves as more knowledgeable or competent than offline or top-down forms of authority….”
