Religion, Stratification and Politics: American in the 1960s

Religion, Stratification and Politics: American in the 1960sAuthor(s): David KnokeSource: American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May, 1974), pp. 331-345Published by: Midwest Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2110705 .

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DAVID KNOKE Indiana University

Religion, Stratification and Politics: American in the 1960s*

The party identifications of the American electorate in the presidential elections of the 1960s are analyzed in an additive model of effects due to occupation, education, income and religious preference. Religion is seen to have the largest net effect, although the eight-year trend shows education increasing in importance as religion declines slightly. Great variation in party identification between Protestant denominations is noted, indicating that the traditional Protestant-Catholic-Jew trichotomy does not fully reflect the political cleavages between religious groups.

Political sociologists have long been attracted to Marxian models of the economic conflicts inherent in industrial society. The literature abounds with interpretations of political behavior as an expression of underlying social class cleavages in the society. In a succinct summary, Lipset wrote, "More than anything else the party struggle is a conflict among classes."' Alford found numerous causes of the pervasive association of class position and voting behavior in Western democracies, including "the existence of class interests, the representation of these interests by political parties, the regular association of certain parties with certain interests, and the tendency of voters to choose the party historically associated with the social groups to which they belong-groups with both a class and nonclass character."2

Recent research has suggested the importance of nonclass social sources of political cleavage. A greater number of formal party organizations in Western nations apparently have been founded along religious than along class membership lines.3 Especially in societies with substantial religious minorities,

*1 thank Professor Samuel A. Mueller for his advice on the measurement of religious groups. Carolyn Mullins graciously provided editorial assistance. The helpful advice of two anonymous referees on an earlier draft is gratefully acknowledged. The data were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research. None of the above parties bears any blame for substantive interpretations. The Indiana University Biomedi- cal Research Committee provided partial financial support for the research, for which the author is grateful.

' Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City: Anchor, 1963), p. 234.

2Robert Alford, Party and Society (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963). 'Richard Rose and Derek Urwin, "Social Cohesion, Political Parties and Strains in

Regimes," Comparative Political Studies, 2 (April 1969), 7-67.

331



332 David Knoke

certain political parties are often disproportionately supported by particular religious groups. Despite the absence of explicitly religion-based political parties (e.g., the European Christian Democrats), the United States also exhibits a prominent association of religion and party support. This correlation has been noticed since the earliest analyses of sample surveys. Berelson et al., in fact, suggested that "Catholic affiliation is stronger than socioeconomic status in determining vote" for the Democratic party.4 Subsequent researchers have claimed to detect a diminution of intraclass party differences between Protestants and Catholics.5 Lipset initially suggested that the socioeconomic status of religious groups, "rather than religious ideas, is the prime determinant of political values among different denominations," although he acknowledged that "religious beliefs or loyalties ... seem to have some independent effect on voting behavior."6

Several recent research findings point to consistent differentials in the stratification positions of religious groups when denominational distinctions are made within the broad Protestant group. Gockel found that, controlling for the effects of education, occupation, race, region and size of place, Jews, Episcopalians and Congregationalists were substantially above the average family income of his sample, while Baptists, Mormons and minor Protestant sects fell well below the mean.7 Warren reported that most researchers in his literature review "found that with regard to educational attainment, occupational achievement, and income the Jews, Episcopalians, Congregationalists and Presbyterians rank at the top; Baptists are at the bottom; and Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, and "other religions" are in the middle."8 Such socioeconomic rankings, with the exception of the Jews, parallel the rank ordering of propensity to vote Republican, an observation of great vintage in political research.9 The tendency for Jews, a wealthy and high status group, to be liberals and to support the Democratic party is generally interpreted as a consequence of social discrimination and traditional attachments growing out of immigrant experiences. Among the Christian groups, sufficient varia-

'Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld and William McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Election. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).

'Oscar Glantz, "Protestant and Catholic Voting Behavior in a Metropolitan Area," Public Opinion Quarterly, 23 (Spring, 1959), 73-82.

6Lipset,PoliticalMan, p. 308. 7Galen Gockel, "Income and Religious Affiliation: A Regression Analysis," Ameri-

can Journal of Sociology, 74 (May 1969), 632-647. 8Bruce L. Warren, "Socioeconomic Achievement and Religion: The American

Case,"Sociological Inquiry, 40 (Spring 1970), 130-155. 9Wesley and Beverly Allensmith, "Religious Affiliation and Politico-Economic Atti-

tude," Public Opinion Quarterly, 12 (Fall 1948), 377-389; Lipset,Political Man, p. 308.



Religion, Stratification and Politics 333

tion in socioeconomic status exists to raise the question whether variation in party preferences is primarily a consequence of stratification rather than a religious effect per se.

In his later writings on religion and politics in the United States, Lipset appeared to correct the earlier impression of the substantially greater importance of class cleavages for political party support. He noted that the evidence of long-standing religious cleavages depended heavily upon inferences from qualitative historical materials prior to 1936, after which data from national sample surveys allowed quantitative estimates of the relative impact of class and religion on voting behavior. Lipset employed a manual-nonmanual-rural class measure and a Protestant-Catholic religious dichotomy among non- southern whites to provide "rough and relative measures of underlying social forces." While he found "it impossible to reach any definite conclusions," the data suggested "that the Catholic-Protestant difference has been somewhat more important than the manual vs. nonmanual cleavage from 1936 to 1964.''1o Inspection of Lipset's Table 8-2 reveals that his indices of class- and religious-voting are roughly comparable in magnitude and possibly not significantly different in several years. The difficulty in reaching a definite conclusion about the relative impact of class and religion on political choice in part lies, as Lipset acknowledged, in the crudeness of his measures. For two surveys taken during the early 1950s, Lipset found greater variation in party support when he controlled for (1) social class position and (2) membership in separate Protestant denominations, but he was still unable to integrate these findings to arrive at a definite conclusion.

Studies including both political preferences and religion, employing quantitative methods, and distinguishing among Protestant denominations are hard to find. Some suggestive evidence was provided in Laumann and Segal's study of status inconsistency and ethnoreligious group affiliation.11 Separate multiple regressions of party identification upon years of education are presented for 15 groups of white males in the Detroit area classified by religion and nationality. The slopes were not significantly different, but different inter- cepts were noted: "With respect to political and social attitudes, Jews and Catholic groups of the recent or "new migration" generally tend to be more heavily Democratic in party preference than "old migration" Protestant and Catholic (e.g., French and Anglo-American) groups." While the Laumann-

11 Seymour Martin Lipset, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Change and Persistence in Social Structures (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 272 and 276.

" Edward 0. Laumann and David R. Segal, "Status Inconsistency and Ethnoreligious Membership as Determinants of Social Participation and Political Attitudes," American Journal of Sociology, 77 (July 1971), 36-61.



334 David Knoke

Segal evidence came from a community study rather than a national sample, their findings suggest that when stratification is controlled, religious groups may still differ significantly in their political preferences.

To assess the relative importance of socioeconomic and religious factors, this paper uses an approach for measuring independent and dependent variables that is more detailed than dichotomies (which often conceal as much information as they reveal). The analysis uses a multivariate model which employs other measures of socioeconomic position in addition to occupational class. Interdenominational differences in the political behavior of Protestants is determined. Further, the importance of such detailed religious measurement is compared to the traditional Catholic-Protestant-Jew trichotomy. Finally, trends in socioeconomic-religious cleavages over a recent eight- year period are investigated.

The Data

The present analysis investigates the relative effects of socioeconomic status and religious group membership at three points in time (American presidential election years in the 1960s). Previous research suggests that the relationships among these sets of variables are not constant over time. Furthermore, realignment in the political preferences of religious groups can only be detected by sampling several points in time. The three surveys used are the 1960, 1964, and 1968 national cross-sectional surveys conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. These surveys were designed as a representative cross-section of voting age persons living in private households in the United States. The items relevant to the present study contain the necessary coding detail and comparability across surveys. The sample sizes, unweighted, are: 1960, 1181; 1964, 1571; and 1968, 1673. The following analyses use the entire sample.12

For the dependent variable of political party support, the SRC standard item on party identification was preferred to reports of actual voting behavior. To use reported vote for presidential candidate would result in a substantial loss of cases for analysis from failure to reinterview or failure of respon- dents to vote. Subjective party identification, on the other hand, is a stable psychological measure of political party support and, as measured by the SRC item, required the elimination of less than two percent of the sample for

12In the analyses which follow, the data were weighted to preserve representation of the population. Identical analyses performed on a white, non-Southern-born male subsample did not produce substantively different results.




nonresponse.13 For the following analyses, a five-point scale was con- structed: (1) strong Democrat, (2) not-strong Democrat or Independent leaning toward Democrats, (3) Independent (not leaning toward either party), (4) not-strong Republican or Independent leaning toward Republicans, and (5) strong Republican.

Three separate measures of socioeconomic status (SES) were available: occupation of head of household, respondent's education, and total family income expected for the year. Rather than combine these items into an SES index, following the advice of Hodge and Siegel, the objective indicators of SES were treated as separate dimensions of the stratification system.14 The relationship of party identification to occupation, education, and income might not be identical, and separate measurement would permit isolation of effects.

The statistical model used in the analyses requires only a nominal level of measurement for independent variables.15 Six categories were used for each of the three SES variables, five ordered by position in the stratification system and a sixth residual (not ascertained) category. For occupation of the head of household, current or most recent job (the latter classification used for those unemployed or retired), the categories are: (1) professional, tech- nical, and business; (2) clerical and sales; (3) craftsmen and foremen; (4) oper- atives, service workers, and nonfarm laborers; (5) farmers and farm laborers; and (6) residual-housewife, student, or not ascertained. Education of respondent is based upon number of years of formal schooling, categorized as: (1) none to eight grades, (2) nine to 11 grades plus noncollege training, (3) high school graduate, (4) some college or noncollege training, (5) college or graduate degree, and (6) not ascertained. The total income of the family unit was measured with slightly different cutting points in the three years (to compensate for inflation and growth in real income as well as small differ-

13Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960), pp. 148-149.

14Robert W. Hodge and Paul M. Siegel, "The Measurement of Social Class," in D. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), Vol. 15, pp. 316-325.

"For the 1968 data, continuous measures of occupation (Duncan's Socio-Economic Index), education (exact years of schooling), and income (dollar value of category midpoint) allowed the use of multiple regression analysis to test whether interval-level measurement assumptions would alter the conclusions of the nominal-level analysis. In the 1968 case, the use of such quantitative measures of the SES variables did not explain significantly more variance in party identification than did the classificatory measures used below.



336 David Knoke

ences in categories by which incomes were bracketed in the original codes). In all cases (except those in the residual), the categories are ordered on dollar amounts.

For all three surveys, the SRC codes for religious group membership are quite detailed. Thirteen groups were created by collapsing the three-digit codes into the following denominational groupings: (1) Presbyterian and Congregational, (2) Episcopalian and Dutch Reformed, (3) Methodist, (4) Lutheran, (5) Pietistic (Disciples of Christ, "Christian," etc.), (6) Baptist, (7) Fundamentalist (Churches of God, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.), (8) Nontraditional (Mormon, Christian Science, Unitarian, Quaker), (9) Catholic, (10) Jewish, (l1) General Protestant (no denomination given), (12) Other religions (non-Christian, non-Jew), and (13) None (no religion or agnostic). Religious affiliation quite obviously cannot be considered an ordinal level of measurement as could the SES items. Fortunately, the statistical model used was specifically designed to handle nominal-level (categorical) measures of the independent variables.

The Statistical Model

To determine the multivariate relationship of occupation, education, income, and religion to party identification, multiple classification analysis (MCA) was used. The details of MCA are available elsewhere.16 This tech- nique is admirably suited to the levels of measurement and type of sampling design used by the SRC surveys. A dichotomous or interval-level dependent variable (hence the treatment of the party identification scale as a quantitative measure) and independent variables as weak as nominal measures are allowed. In obtaining solutions, no assumptions need to be made about the ordering of categories on the independent classificatory variables, although the information given above regarding the SES variables may be useful in substantive interpretations of results.

One virtue of MCA is its ability to adjust coefficients for each category of independent variable to control for such intercorrelations among independent variables as occur with the SES measures and religion. These net (adjusted) coefficients then express the effect of each category of the independent variable upon the dependent variable after partialling out the effect of the other independent variables. The similarity of MCA and dummy variable

16 T. P. Hill, "An Analysis of the Distribution of Wages and Salaries in Great Britain," Econometrica, 27 (July 1959), 355-381; Frank Andrews, James N. Morgan and John Sonquist, Multiple Classification Analysis (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Survey Research Cen- ter, University of Michigan 1967).




regression analysis has been frequently noted since both methods express the additive effect of a given category of an independent variable, while removing the effects of other variables."7 However, while dummy variable coefficients are deviations from the mean of the omitted category, the MCA coefficients, under the restriction that their weighted sum equals zero, are deviations from the grand mean of the sample. Hence, MCA coefficients, based upon a more stable sample statistic, are more useful in comparing the relative positions of various independent variable categories across different samples.

The MCA program yields several statistics permitting assessment of the relative effects of the several independent variables on the dependent variable. Eta, the correlation ratio, gives the zero-order relationship between independent and dependent variables, while beta is a measure of the partial association between a given independent and the dependent variable after adjusting for the effects of all other independent variables.'8 The multiple correlation coefficient or coefficient of determination (R), when squared, gives the proportion of variance in the dependent variable explained by the additive effect of all the independent variables combined. R2 is also useful in finding the increment to explained variance by a particular independent variable. The MCA analysis is performed twice, first with all independent variables included and then with the crucial variable omitted; the difference in R2 indicates the explained variance in the dependent variable attributable to the independent variable in question, over and above any explained variance shared with the other independent variables. This test is particularly useful in determining the impact of religion on party identification, excluding religion's joint effect through correlation with the SES measures. If the different political party means of the various denominational groups are due entirely to different socioeconomic distributions of the memberships, then religion as an independent variable will not contribute to additional variance in party identification beyond that already explained by occupation, education and income. To the extent that religion increases the explained variance, one must conclude that religion has an effect independent of stratification.

"'The MCA computer program developed by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan was not available for the present analysis. Instead, dummy variable regression analyses were computed and the regression coefficients (B) were transformed into MCA coefficients (ai) using conversion formulae given in Andrews et al., Multiple Classification Analysis, p. 116-117. From these MCA coefficients, the eta and beta statistics were easily calculated. Since the dummy variable regression program finds solutions to normal equations through inversion of a correlation matrix while the MCA algorithm uses an iterative procedure, slight discrepancies might be found in the numerical values obtained by the two methods.

18 Andrews et al., MuAltiple Classification Analysis, p. 2 2.



338 David Knoke

The use of MCA requires a rather stringent assumption: that the independent variables do not interact in their effects upon the dependent variable. Like multiple regression, MCA assumes only an additive effect of independent variables upon the dependent variable, an assumption which may not always be justified in sociological survey data. Two alternative tactics, neither entirely satisfactory, may be used to handle the possibility of interaction in the data. The first is merely to assume, as a matter of faith, that none exists or, if present, is of inconsequential importance, and thence to proceed with the MCA analysis.19 In such a case, interaction is ignored and possible contribu- tions to explaining variation in the dependent variable are concealed by the additive nature of MCA. The second alternative is to search for the presence of interaction in the data.20

The Automatic Interaction Detector was used prior to MCA to check for interaction with the proviso that only where both substantively meaningful and large (in the sense of variance explained) interactions were present would explicit interaction terms be generated for use in the subsequent MCA runs. The AID runs across all three samples produced neither large nor consistent patterns of interaction, suggesting that a model of additive main effects was appropriate for MCA.

The Findings

The eta and beta for each variable in the 1960, 1964, and 1968 samples are presented in Table 1. In each year religion has both the strongest zero-order and the strongest partial relationship to party identification. Re- spondent's education is the second strongest predictor of party preference in each year, while the occupation and income variables trail, approximately equal in magnitude. Over time, the trends of religion and education appear to

19 See Peter M. Blau and Otis D. Duncan, The American Occupational Structure (New York: Wiley, 1967), p. 129; Marvin E. Olsen, "Social Participation and Voting Turnout: A Multivariate Analysis," American Sociological Review, 37 (June 1972), 317-333.

20A computer program developed by Sonquist and Morgan, the Automatic Interac- tion Detector (AID), can be used as a prior step to MCA. The AID algorithm is essentially a sequential partitioning of data into dichotomous and mutually exclusive subgroups based on the ability of an independent variable at any stage of the AID run to further reduce variance in the dependent variable. While AID is a useful heuristic device, the danger here is that the researcher's energies will be distracted from his substantive goals toward a preoccupation with isolating all possible sources of interaction in the data set. In particular, statistical interaction detection may become a primary goal even when substantively meaningful interpretations of findings may ultimately prove elusive.




TABLE 1

Eta and Beta Coefficients for Education, Occupation, Income and Religion as Predictors of Party Identification in

1960, 1964, and 1968

Year Education Occupation Income Religion

Eta

1960 .199 .142 .153 .429 1964 .270 .239 .193 .417 1968 .273 .208 .183 .331

Beta

1960 .085 .075 .079 .329 1964 .119 .097 .067 .288 1968 .179 .072 .085 .250

be moving in opposite directions. As might be expected from conventional wisdom about the importance of religion during the Kennedy election, the 1960 eta and beta for religion are higher than those for the following two elections; the lowest values are found at the end of the series. Respondent's education, however, has its lowest coefficients in 1960 and its highest in 1968, indicating an increasing importance of stratification by education in the prediction of party identification as the decade wore on.

The trends are more pronounced in the time series for beta, which shows the effects of either religion or education after removing the effects of the remaining variables in the equation. While the beta statistic is analogous to a partial regression coefficient, unlike multiple regression standardized coefficients the proportion of variance in party identification attributable to any independent variable cannot be found by squaring the beta value.21 Beta indicates only the relative ordering of the independent variables; to determine the total effect of any variable net of the others, the multiple R2 is the appropriate statistic.

Table 2 displays the results of several MCA runs. The R2 statistics indicate the proportion of total variation in party identification explained by the additive effects of the particular set of independent variables in the equation. The first line of the table gives the R2 for the three stratification variables

21 Andrews et al., Multiple Classification Analysis, p. 118.



340 David Knoke

TABLE 2

Proportion of Variance in Party Identification Explained by Education, Occupation, Income and Religion in

1960, 1964, and 1968

Year Independent Variables 1960 1964 1968

R2 Education, Occupation, and Income .045 .058 .061

R2 Education, Occupation, Income, and Religion (13 groups) .140 .137 .122

Percent of Total Vari- ance due to Increment of 13 Religious Groups 68 % 58 % 50 %

R2 Education, Occupation, Income, and Religion (4 groups) .087 .087 .098

Percent of Increment to Variance Explained by 13 Religious Groups Contained in 4 Groups 44 % 37 % 61 %

combined. The magnitudes of explained variance indicate that these particular measures of social class position account for a small part of the total variation in party identification. Although low, such relationships are expected; Bennett and Klecka, for example, using more categories for the three stratification variables, found that occupation, education, and income ac- counted for .051 and .063 of the variance in voting turnout in 1964 and 1968, respectively.22 Preoccupation with the size of the explained variance is not the focus of the present paper, however. The more important matter is whether the relationships among the variables under consideration have been correctly specified. In the present case, an additive model of educational, occupational, and income effects seems appropriate, and the next question is

22 Stephen G. Bennett and William R. Klecka, "Social Status and Political Participa- tion: A Multivariate Analysis of Predictive Power," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 14 (August 1970), 355-382.




whether religion adds anything to variance explained by social stratification and, if so, how much more. The slight increase in multiple R2 of stratification from 1960 to 1968 largely reflects the growing importance of the education variable, as shown in the beta statistics of Table 1.

In the second line of Table 2, the 13 religious categories are added to the MCA analysis of party identification. The multiple R2 for the additive effects of stratification and religion are substantially greater than those for stratification alone. The difference in R2 between the two sets of MCA equations reveals the increment in explained variance attributable to the 13 religious groups over and above explained variance jointly shared with the stratifilca- tion variables. The alternative method to partitioning variance is, of course, to enter religion into the analysis first and then observe the increment due to stratification. In either case, no satisfactory method for allocating the shared (joint) variance exists.23

In the present paper, the strategy of allowing the stratification variables to absorb the common variance confronts theories which assert that zero-order differences in the political preferences of religious groups arise from the differential stratification positions of various denominations. If this theory is correct, then religion should add little to variance in party identification already explained by education, occupation, and income. Such is not the case, however, for the increment of religion is between one and two times as large as the variance attributable to stratification. Another way of expressing the same fact is found in the third line of Table 2 where the increment to variance due to religion is given as a percentage of the total variance explained by both religion and stratification. Although the net religious portion of explained variance declines from two-thirds in 1960 to one-half by 1968, religion in all three years is a more important cause of party identification than stratification position. Further, it should be remembered that the increment for religion is a conservative estimate of the total effect of religion since it ignores the joint variance.

The decline in the relative importance of religion over the eight-year period may reflect a return to previous levels of religious effects after the strong impact of the 1960 election, which saw unusually high political cleavage along religious lines.24 Unfortunately, the SRC surveys prior to 1960 lack sufficient detail in denominational membership to extend the series further back in time.

23Otis D. Duncan, "Partials, Partitions, and Paths," in E. F. Borgatta and G. W. Bohrnstedt, eds., Sociological Methodology 1970 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1970).

24Converse, Philip E., "Religion and Politics: The 1960 Election," in Angus Campbel et al., eds., Elections and the Political Order (New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. 96-124.



342 David Knoke

Another analysis possible with the present data examines the explanatory power which results from utilizing a measure of 13 religious groups. Most previous analyses of religion and politics have not made use of denominational detail in the large Protestant category; they have distinguished only among Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Line four in Table 2 gives the multiple R2 for stratification and a religious measure which collapses all the Protestant denominations into one category and combines the Others and Nones, yielding only four categories. If the Protestant category is politically homogeneous across denominations, the R2 for increment of four categories should be indistinguishable from that for the more detailed 13-category coding. However, the R2 for the detailed coding is substantially larger, indicating that a general "Protestant" category obscures internal political differences among denominations. The final line in Table 2 shows that only in the third year does the Protestant-Catholic-Jew-Other variable account for more than 50 percent of the variance increment explained by the more detailed religious grouping.

An inspection of the MCA coefficients for the detailed religious codings reveals the wide range of intra-Protestant political differences according to denomination. The left panel of Table 3 contains the frequency distribution of the three samples across the 13 religious groups, while the MCA coefficients are found in the right panel. These coefficients are net deviations of the religious category after adjusting for variation arising from the three stratification variables. To determine the estimated mean party identification of any religious group, holding stratification effects constant, one need only add the MCA coefficient to the sample's grand mean, found at the bottom of the column.

The coefficients show that in all three years the Jews, more than one-half a standard deviation below the mean of each sample, were the most Democratic religious group. At the other extreme, in each year, either the Episcopalian or the Nontraditional groups were the most Republican, having the largest positive deviations on the party identification scale. The range of deviations is considerable, from 1.84 points in 1960 down to 1.28 points in 1968 (again the figures reflect the lessening of religious effects on party preference noted in the R2 analysis). The range in variation among Protestant denominations, while not as large, is still impressive. Two groups show consistently Demo- cratic leanings across all three years-the cluster of Fundamentalist sects and the Baptists. In fact, the Baptists in 1964 are slightly more Democratic than the Catholics, who are otherwise the most strongly Democratic group after the Jews. Closely following the Republican-leaning Episcopalians and Nontra- ditionals are the Presbyterians, with the Lutherans and Methodists moder-




TABLE 3

Frequency Distributions and Multiple Classification Analysis Coefficients for 13 Religious Groups, with Stratification Effects Controlled

Frequency (%) MCA Coefficients Religious Group 1960 1964 1968 1960 1964 1968

Episcopalian 4.2% 3.8% 2.9% 1.04 1.07 .35 Presbyterian-Congregational 10.7 8.6 7.5 .87 .64 .61 Nontraditionala 0.5 2.0 1.9 .89 .30 .64 Lutheran 8.1 8.2 7.5 .15 .27 .23 Methodist 16.6 15.6 16.0 .15 .16 .19 Pietisticb 1.9 2.6 2.4 -.19 .63 .05 General ProtestantC 3.2 3.4 3.2 .15 -.01 .41 None 1.1 3.6 3.2 -.14 -.06 -.12 Otherd 5.1 0.4 1.3 -.28 -.10 .09 Fundamentaliste 5.1 6.0 7.7 -.04 -.05 -.03 Baptist 20.2 18.5 21.1 -.24 -.35 -.16 Catholic 21.1 24.2 22.5 -.45 -.27 -.30 Jew 2.2 3.1 2.8 -.80 -.67 -.93

Total (Grand Mean) 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 2.69 2.59 2.67 Standard Deviation of Mean 1.39 1.36 1.30

aMormon, Christian Science, Unitarian, Quaker bDisciples of Christ, "Christian," etc. CProtestant, no denomination given dNon-Christian, non-Jew eChurches of God, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc.

ately but consistently above the mean of the samples in all three years. The remaining four groups exhibit generally moderate deviations around the mean but only the Nones show any consistent pattern of coefficients across samples.

These MCA coefficients are net coefficients, i.e., they do not reflect political differences attributable to the overrepresentation of Episcopalians and Presbyterians among high-education and high-income groups or Baptists and Catholics among lower-income or blue-collar occupations. In fact, after controlling for stratification position, the Jews, who are disproportionately in the higher-stratification positions which have a general tendency to identify with the Republicans, instead reveal an estimated party mean score which is slightly more Democratic than that observed before controlling for stratification. The MCA coefficients represent the tendency of adherents of a given



344 David Knoke

religious persuasion at all levels of education, occupation, and income to identify in a particular partisan direction.

Summary and Discussion

The evidence of the foregoing analysis substantiates the assertion that religion remained a potent source of political cleavage in the United States through the 1960s. The detailed coding of the religious variable revealed that it was the single most important of four predictors of political party identification, and was comparable to, if not more important than the combined effects of education, occupation, and income. The importance of introducing denominational distinctions within the Protestant category is further supported by the greater explanatory power of the 13-group code over the traditional Protestant-Catholic-Jew trichotomy.

The analysis of trends in sources of party identification over the eight-year period suggests a relative increase in the importance of respondent's education and a diminution in the impact of religion. How much of the decrease in the effect of religion is the result of a falloff from the salient religious context of the 1960 campaign and how much reflects a genuine temporal convergence of religious group political identifications cannot be determined in the absence of comparable analyses from the pre-1960 period. Evidence for convergence of identifications appears in the comparison of the Catholic MCA coefficients with those for the major Protestant denominations. In 1960, the year in which the Democratic candidate for president was a Catholic, the coefficient for Catholics reached its peak pro-Democratic deviation. Not surprisingly, the difference in coefficients between Catholics and the three major Republican-leaning Protestant groups-Presbyterian-Congregationals, Methodists, and Lutherans-also obtained its greatest magnitude. In the following two elections, the Catholic deviation was reduced by a third, to about -.30, and the differences with the three Protestant groups are somewhat smaller. In the case of the Catholic-Episcopalian difference, the convergence over time is more precipitous. While these slight changes in party identification over a short period of time may not point to the future disappearance of religious differentials, impressions from other studies imply that religious cleavages in American politics continue on a downward trend from past polarization.25

"See Samuel A. Mueller, "The New Triple Melting Pot: Herberg Revisited," Review of Religious Research, 13 (Fall 1970), 18-33; Andrew R. Baggeley, "Religious Influ- ences in Wisconsin Voting, 1928-1960," American Political Science Review, 56 (March 1962), 66-70.




The present analysis contains no startling findings which reverse the anticipated ordering of religious denominations by preference for the Repub- lican party. The high-status churches since the founding of the Republic- Episcopal, Congregational, Presbyterian-continued to be overwhelmingly pro-Republican even when socioeconomic status was controlled. The two religious groups most intimately connected with the immigrant history of the nation, Catholics and Jews, still exhibit strong traditional Democratic attachments. Baptists, too, despite controlling the contribution of their low-SES members, are still the most pro-Democratic of the major Protestant denominations. These persistent religious-political alignments may reflect, as the "early" Lipset wrote, the effects of "religious beliefs or loyalties," but a more likely explanation would involve nondoctrinal sources-tradition, socializa- tion, peer-group and work-group interactions among coreligionists. The present study is capable only of measuring which attachments are found among religious groups; it cannot disentangle the multivariate origins of such attachments. That task requires more historiographic and longitudinal sociological evidence than is available in the SRC surveys.

The present analysis has deliberately ignored other possible sources of divergence in party identifications of the American electorate. Racial cleavage, for example, has been partially subsumed by the other variables (e.g., with black overrepresentation in lower stratification positions and in Baptist and Methodist denominations). Possible differences in party identification by age, sex, or region have also been left to other investigators. The task of the present paper has been to make quantitative estimates of the relative importance of religion and stratification in the politics of America in the 1960s. Insofar as estimates provided by the additive model used in the MCA are appropriate and insofar as a baseline for detecting trends has been established, to be extended backward or forward as data become available, then that task has been accomplished.

Manuscript submitted July 10, 1972. Final manuscript received February 5, 1973.



Documents

Religion, Stratification and Politics: American in the 1960s