Summary And Analysis: How Do Religious Interest Become Politically Significant?

Session Six Summary & Analysis: How do Religious interests become politically significant?
This question is the central theme of the session six. Chapter five of Religion and Politics depicted the basic element of crime theory (motive, means and opportunity) to provide a useful framework to help understand the ways that religion interacts with politics. The same context for studying a crime also works for studying religious mobilization in the political arena. Although religious mobilization is not a crime as the authors observed, this analogy is useful for understanding religious interests of the liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Before establishing the crime analogy to explain how religious interests interact with politics, the authors examined two distinctive steps by which religious interests begin the policy process. They are:
 Articulation of the group’s grievance

Aggregation of the group’s members
However, for religious groups to integrate their interests into policy programs, they must engage in the collective action such as:
 Voting
 Protesting
 Striking
 Boycotting
 Lobbying
Consequently, it is important to distinguish the types of political mobilization that turn into collective actions as the policy outputs often depend on the level of involvement of each political interest group. The common types of political mobilization are:
 Unorganized: o political movements
 Organized: o Political interest groups o Political parties
Conversely, utilizing a social movement framework, the authors unraveled the motive and explored the means religious groups have to participate in politics.
Unraveling the motives consist of looking at:
• Religious interest and culture ( Identity, norms etc…)
• Religious justification (i.e. God’s divine will)
• Source of motivation ( Group identity, group status or influence)
Exploring the means consist of looking at:
• The role of elites (Ideological or organizational)
• Clergy
• Community activist

The intersection of religion and politics can be seen on display from this outline, and the correlation yields a unique complexity.
Religious organizations do have interests in the politics. However, they do so with much latent capacity as the authors observed.
Indeed, religious groups can influence by concealing their power under political party’s wings. The Tea Party movement is a perfect example, as Jon and Cox Research on Religion and the Tea Party revealed. This wing of the Republican Party, anti-tax, anti-big government, anti-aborting etc…. was in part responsible for the failure of the “Grand Bargain.” The Grand Bargain refers to a potential agreement between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders in 2012 on how to control spending and decrease the national debt. The most challenging aspect of the bargain was to avoid sequestration or the fiscal cliff for the year 2013 on some of the most important programs in the United States. However, with high polarized House and Senate it was not an easy task for lawmakers to work together in avoiding the sequestration
cuts.
The Tea Party was very worrisome to the Republican Party during the negotiation.Without deep spending cuts and a radical restructuring of expensive health and retirement program, the Tea Party caucus, critical of Obama’s political agendas posed a significant political challenge to the negotiation. The radical “zero tax “position that the Tea Party movement irrationally defended played a huge part in complicating the negotiation. This revolutionary movement is in reality very similar to the old Religious Right as Jon and Cox's research revealed. Nearly half (47%) of Americans, who consider themselves as part of the Tea Party movement also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement. Among the more than 8-in-10 (81%) who identify as Christian within Tea Party movement, nearly 6-in-10 (57%) also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement like the Christian Right . The Tea Party movement is a compelling example of how Religious interests become politically significant. The vast majority of conservative Christian (the groups the Tea Party identify with) is strongly against abortion rights, insurance coverage of birth control, anti-gay marriage, ant-big government, ant-health care reform.
Undeniably, the conservative Christian has the motive and the means to engage in the political process. However, the question becomes, is their ability high enough to influence public policy? The answer lies in the third element of the crime theory parallel (opportunity). Although the opportunity was not part of this session reading, it is important to note that the conservative Christian seems to possess two of the elements that constitute a useful opportunity. They have a partisan political alignment (Tea Party) and an influential ally (Republican Party).

Take Away and Side Note:

Mobilizing Religious Interests and turning them into Political Action is indeed another aspect of the intersection of religion and politics. As Mohandas Gandhi once stated: “Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”

The intersection of religion and politics is a very complex and intellectually challenging subject. However, having such an experienced and knowledgeable instructor with a background in Theological Studies mastered our understanding.