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Generational Conversion? The Role of Religiosity in the Politics of Evangelicals MIKAEL L. PELZ Department of Political Science Calvin College CORWIN E. SMIDT Paul B. Henry Institute Calvin College The political environment for evangelical Protestants has changed substantially since the Christian Right reached its aper, as a more issue and ideologically diffuse political environment has emerged. The present study tests two different theoretical perspectives on whether these contextual changes may have altered Millennial evangelicals political perspectives vis--vis those of previous generations of evangelicals. On the one hand, theoretical per spectives related to differential political socialization processes across generations would lead to expectations of generational change among evangelicals. On the other hand, theoretical perspectives related to social identity theory would suggest far less change across generations. Using Pew's 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, we test these expectations by comparing the relationships between religiosity and political attitudes across three generations of evangelicals. Ordered probit and logistic regression models estimate the impact of religiosity on various political attitudes. These models reveal that Millennial evangelical religiosity continues to be strongly related to Republican Party identification and opposition toward abortion, which is largely consistent with the social identity perspective. Generational change is most evident in a variety of nonsocial issues in which religiosity is associated with less conservatism among Millennials . Additional analysis using the 2012 Religion and Politics Survey with a smaller sample of Millennial evangelicals confirms these results. Keywords: Millennial evangelicals, religiosity, public opinion The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun. Jim Wallis INTRODUCTION The study of evangelical Protestants in the United States has begun to set its sights on young evangelicals of voting age frequently analyzed in terms of the Millennial generation, i.e., those who came of voting age after the turn of the millennium. In one respect, this generation of evangelicals is no different from previous generations, as religion continues to be an important characteristic among Millennial evangelicals (Smidt 2013:118-27). In another respect, however, their political preferences may signal a possible departure from older evangelicalsone that appears less tied to conservative or Republican labels and more concerned with political issues extending beyond abortion and homosexuality (Cox 2007; Jones, Cox, and Banchoff 2012). Certainly, the political experience of the youngest generation of American evangelicals has been substantially different from those generations that preceded it. Older evangelicals encountered the formation and rapid expansion of several powerful Christian Right organizations Correspondence should be addressed to Mikael Pelz. Department of Political Science, Calvin College, 1810 E. Beltline Avenue SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546. E-mail: mlp23@calvin.edu "The Millennial generation typically refers to individuals born after 1983 in that they were first eligible to vote following the turn of the millennium. Also known as Generation Y, these individuals came of age in the wake of the events of 9/11 of onnin Stoia that focused almost entirely on promoting conservative positions on several high-profile social issues. Millennials, on the other hand, have witnessed the decline of these organizations and the rise of a more politically diverse set of voices advocating a faith perspective across many disparate issues (Sullivan 2010). Despite these critical changes in the political environment, it is unclear whether generational shifts have actually occurred among evangelicals as to how their religious faith may shape their political views. For example, does religion shape Millennial evangelicals' positions on social issues in the same way it shapes the positions of previous generations of evangelicals? Do Millennials who exhibit levels of religiosity identical to those of older generations of evangelicals display similar or different political characteristics than their older co-religionists? And, have the issue priorities of Millennial evangelicals broadened to other political issues in ways that differ from past generations of evangelicals? This article addresses these questions and tests two alternative theoretical expectations by engaging in a generational analysis of the relationship between religiosity and political orientations among evangelical Protestants. Given that evangelicals comprise a substantial segment of the American electorate, 2 the extent to which different generations of evangelicals may exhibit diverging patterns in political orientations and behavior has significant consequences for both party politics and future election outcomes. TRACING GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES AMONG EVANGELICALS Two alternative theoretical perspectives lead to contrasting expectations related to possible political differences among evangelicals across generations. On the one hand, expectations related to political socialization theory would suggest that generational change is likely to be evident among evangelicals. Political socialization is the process by which citizens learn about politics, acquire their political beliefs, and forge their political practices. As individuals mature from youth to adulthood, as well as over the course of their adult years, they continue to acquire new political information, and it is this continual "process of learning that serves to shape values, political commitments and political skills, which in turn determine which policies, candidates, and political parties are favored (Pearson-Merkowitz and Gimpel 2009:164). One analytical approach in political socialization research is generational analysis. The basic idea behind the assessment of generational differences stems from the assumption that particular factors or events (e.g., different patterns of social relationships, distinctive national and international events experienced, the introduction and diffusion of new technology, or even different patterns of child-rearing) can produce a distinctive kind of shared experience that generates a certain commonality or proclivity among members of one generation within society that serves to distinguish them from those of other generations (Dillon 2007). Thus, members of each generation are uniquely shaped during their formative years by the spirit of the age." whereas older generations continue to be molded and affected by patterns established during their formative years in earlier periods of time (Becker 1993; Mannheim 1952). Certainly, the unique historical experiences of a particular generation can condition members in distinct ways, as the values and perspectives acquired in relationship to such experiences (e.g., the Great Depression, the Vietnam War, or 9/11) are less evident in subsequent generations who have not lived through those experiences (Beck and Jennings 1982; Sears and Valentino 1997; Valentino and Sears 1998). As a result, each generation is shaped by its own distinct historical circumstances, "resulting in political socialization that is generational contingent" (Pearson-Merkowitz and Gimpel 2009:169). Furthermore, research has shown that the attitudes and norms established during one's formative years tend to be rather stable and are carried over into one's adulthood (Jennings and Markus 1984; Rice and Hilton 1996).* Scholars have used the analytical lens of generations to examine political changewhether such change appears in terns of partisanship (e.g., Beck 1974), issue attitudes (e.g., Martin 1994), or social activism (e.g., Demartini 1985). Now a preliminary question in seeking to study generational differences is whether the historical contingencies that shaped the orientations of the most recent generation are substantially different from those that shaped the preceding generation(s). For evangelical Protestants, the answer to this question would seem to be a clear "yes." The historical context that has served to shape the orientations of the most recent generation of evangelicals was (and continues to be) substantially different from that which shaped the preceding generations of their co-religionists. The generation of evangelicals prior to Millennials came of political age during an era in which leaders within the evangelical wing of Christianity, after decades of disengagement, embarked on an extraordinary level of political advocacy to defend traditional positions on abortion, marriage, and religious freedom. These new religious voices enlisted many evangelicals into the so-called culture war of the 1990s (Hunter 1992). More importantly, this new environment patterned how evangelicals approached politics, as religiosity became a strong predictor of conservative attitudes on social issues, particularly abortion, as well as support for the Republican Party (Layman 2001; Leege and Kellstedt 1993). And, these relationships were the strongest among those evangelicals who came of voting age during this period of time (Campbell 2002). However, since the 1990s, the political environment for evangelicals has undergone several notable changes. First, the institutional structures of the Christian Right have either disbanded or withered considerably (Cooperman and Edsall 2006), with a more decentralized and less conservative group of pastors and religious leaders emerging as the new, more "nonpartisan," po- litical voices of evangelicalism (Altman and Scherer 2012). Moreover, these changes have further expanded the type of political issues salient to members of this religious tradition, as environmen- talism (Harden 2005), immigration reform (Golden 2012), and racial relations (Wadsworth 2001) have become critical areas of evangelical advocacy. Finally, the Democratic Party has begun to actively court evangelical voters after years of ignoring this segment of the electorate. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama reached out to faith voters in their respective 2008 presidential bids (Gibbs 2007; Smidt et al. 2010). Pundits and intellectuals articulating a faith-based, center-left political perspective aided these efforts (Dionne 2008; Press 2005; Sullivan 2008). According to the political socialization theory, such transformations in the political environment would lead one to anticipate that the political attitudes and orientations, as well as the political behavior, of Millennial evangelicals would deviate from the patterns exhibited by older evangelicals. An alternative theoretical perspective, social identity theory, would suggest, however, that little, if any, differences are likely to be found across different generations of evangelicals. This theoretical perspective has been used by a variety of scholars as a means by which to study religious phenomena (see, for example, the review and discussion in Greil and Davidman 2007). The starting point of this theory is that, though group membership is generally based on some objective inclusion in a group, not all members of a group necessarily recognize they are members of such a group or feel any sense of attachment to others belonging to the group. Social identity theory focuses on whether one chooses to define oneself as a member of a particular social category or group (Greil and Davidman 2007:553), with social identity being one's "self awareness of one's objective membership in the group and a psychological sense of altachment to the group" (Conover 1984:761). Research has shown that any recognition of group membership, even when group membership is randomly assigned (Billig and Tajfel 1973), cultivates both positive feelings for the in-group as well as negative evaluations of the out-group (e.g., Billig and Taifel 1973; Tajfel et al. 1971). This perception of in-group and out-group differences fosters self-classification as a member of the in- group that in turn promotes conformity to the attributes of typical group members (Hogg, Hardie, and Reynolds 1995), with those who more highly value their group membership being more likely to adopt such normative group beliefs and behavior (Conover 1984; Hyman and Singer 1968). Thus, according to social identity theory, those individuals who feel closer to a group tend "to internalize group membership by seeing [themselves) through group stereotypes and not through personal characteristics" (Patrikios 2008:371), as those who identify with the group "tend to perceive themselves less as unique units and more as group members (Patrikios 2008:372). Moreover, shared political attitudes and behavior within the group rest on the development of these subjective identities, as even weak subjective identities have a more powerful influence on political membership than objective group membership" (Huddy 2003:524). Thus, the recognition that one is a group member not only fosters positive affections for the group and less positive (or negative) affections for out-groups, but it also promotes conformity to prevailing characteristics of the group (including political characteristics) regardless of gener- ational differences. Moreover, this theory provides a theoretical basis for anticipating that higher levels of formal religious participation would lead to stronger religious identities (Greenfield and Marks 2007). Hence, social identity theory would suggest that those evangelicals who are highly religious should be the most aware of various salient differences that distinguish the in-group from the various out-groups, should be the most likely to value their group membership, and should be the most likely to conform to the political characteristics that mark group membershipand that these expectations should hold true regardless of any age or generational differences found among highly religious evangelicals. On the other hand, if there are political matters in which there are no clearly evident group characteristic, then even those who identify most strongly as group members are relatively free to go their separate ways in terms of the issue positions they adopt related to these matters. In other words, the posited expectations related to group political conformity hold only for those matters for which there are clear group characteristics. Despite the expectations associated with social identity theory among evangelicals, there is nevertheless growing evidence suggesting that political shifts may well have occurred among Millennial evangelicals that serve to differentiate them from preceding generations of evangel- icals. For example, some recent surveys have revealed that younger evangelicals identify less with the Republican Party than their older peers, with the generational change in Republican support ranging from 5 to 10 percentage points (Cox 2007; Jones, Cox, and Banchoff 2012). Millennial evangelicals, when compared to previous generations of evangelicals, also suppos- edly attach their faith to a wider array of political issues including poverty, the environment, and immigration (Jones, Cox, and Banchoff 2012; Sullivan 2010). Electorally, the wooing of evangelical voters, particularly Millennial evangelical voters, by the Democratic Party has seem- ingly also had some success. For example, there are claims that Obama's 2008 presidential campaign doubled the number of young white evangelical voters from Senator Kerry's 2004 campaign (Goodstein 2008). It is important to note, however, that most analyses of genera- tional change among evangelicals are based on relatively small national surveys of less than 2,000 respondents, in which the resulting number of Millennial evangelicals analyzed is quite small_making any such conclusions quite tenuous in nature. Hence, the major task of this study is to ascertain whether the patterns in the relationship between religion and politics evident among older generations of evangelicals are also evident among Millennial evangelicals. In other words, do similar patterns of religiosity in Millennial and older generations of evangelicals result in the same, or different, political outcomes? Or, in contrast, are we currently in the midst of some "awakening of a more progressive politics among evangelicals with Millennials leading the charge, as noted Christian writer and political activist Jim Wallis (2008) has argued