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Authoritarianism and Public Opinion on Church and State in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2016

Jeremiah J. Castle
Jeremiah J. Castle*
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Jeremy Castle, Department of Political Science & Public Administration, Central Michigan University, Anspach Hall 247, Mount Pleasant, MI, 48859. E-mail: jeremycastle15@gmail.com.
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Abstract

Despite the continued debate over the relationship between church and state in American politics, our understanding of the sources of attitudes on controversies over religious establishment and religious free exercise is limited. I argue that authoritarianism is an unrecognized but important predictor of mass-level attitudes on church and state. I argue that individuals with higher levels of authoritarianism are more likely to support religious establishment as a means of maintaining social conformity and reinforcing the existing social order. Likewise, those with higher levels of authoritarianism should exhibit reduced support for religious free exercise when minority groups are in question as a means of imposing greater costs on social out-groups. Using data from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, I find strong support for my theory. Even after controlling for a variety of alternative explanations, authoritarianism remains an important factor in attitudes toward both religious establishment and religious free exercise.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 57 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2016 

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Footnotes

A previous version of this article was presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. The author would like to thank David Campbell and John Green for the use of their data, and Andre Audette, Chris Weaver, Kira Castle, the editor, and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

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