Paul Tuns, Review
Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and
Politics
by Paul Goren and Christopher Chapp (University of Chicago Press, $42.50 pb, 223 pages)
In their book Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics, Paul Goren, director of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology at the University of Minnesota, and Christopher Chapp, the Morrison Family Director of the Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf College, argue that one’s views on abortion and gay rights influence both religion and politics, standing on its head the more common view that religion helps determine one’s moral views and then political party affiliation. The difference is subtle but important.
Much of Moral Issues gets bogged down in technical numbers and methodology of their studies to illustrate what they say is the causal relationship between one’s views on the most highly contentious moral issues of the day – abortion and gay rights – determining an individual’s religious practices and political affiliation. The authors find that most voters hold “weak attitudes” on the issues that preoccupy political elites and the corporate media, but hold strongly held views on abortion and homosexuality. (Much of the polling was conducted before transgender issues rose to the forefront of political consciousness although Goren and Chapp predict that it will become a central feature of the culture wars.) Quoting other scholars, they note that when politics touches on issues of right and wrong, those issues have greater valency than do economic or other social issues. These issues resonate because they touch upon “moral emotion,” the “gut-level” moral disgust and anger at what people consider morally deviant behaviour. Moral issues “endure” more so than many other bread-and-butter issues and therefore it makes sense that they would drive identity – religious and political affiliation.
The authors provide some data which can be interpreted to conclude that these moral attitudes are not influenced by religious values, but rather individuals seek out both religious and political communities that share their moral anger and disgust. As far as the data goes, Goren and Chapp “prove” their point, but it requires acknowledging that the defining characteristic of one’s moral stances are “moral emotions” and not something as fundamental as core philosophical or religious beliefs. While the data would strongly suggest that the faithful would fall away from religious institutions that have moral codes unaligned with one’s moral emotions, that is about as far as it is reasonable to take the argument. The authors end up having little to say about those born into and raised in a particular religious tradition (which very likely informs the person’s moral emotions). Furthermore, registering all disapproval of abortion or gay behaviour as anger or disgust does a severe disservice to the sincerely held views of millions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims who hold such behaviour abhorrent on moral grounds.
Moral Issues is on stronger ground when making the case that moral emotion helps decide partisan identity. While many people join or regularly vote for parties and then adopt the suite of policies those parties promote as their own (“when parties lead, partisans follow”), Goren and Chapp find that abortion and gay rights are “critical exceptions to the party-over-policy model” of political affiliation and policy preferences. Yet despite all this, the authors find that many socially conservative Democrats and socially liberal Republicans maintain their partisan allegiances although they are more likely to disaffiliate than socially liberal Democrats and socially conservative Republicans. Partisanship is sticky with the vast majority of pro-abortion Republicans remaining in the GOP and pro-life Democrats remaining with their party. Goren and Chapp argue that the popular media narrative about the rise of the “nones” – those who have no religious affiliation – leaving their churches because of the rise of the Religious Right and the politicization of their churches is wrong. They argue, instead, that most nones are leaving churches because they disagree with their faith tradition’s moral teaching on abortion and gay issues.
At times, the thesis of moral emotion relating to abortion and gay rights can seem a too-easy catch-all to explain the rather complex reasons for people’s affiliation with churches and political parties, but Goren and Chapp offer a new and persuasive argument, backed up by data, that a person’s views on these moral issues are not some distraction from other important issues but are core beliefs that shape the most important public elements of our identities. In essence, they are arguing that partisan and religious leaders, political consultants and advisors, and the media should take abortion and gay rights as seriously as many citizens do.
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