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The United States remains a relatively religious country, and, as a result, religious influences maintain a presence in election campaigns regardless of whether or not a "high wall" of separation between church and state prevails.  However, because "off-year" elections tend to be more local affairs, religion tends to play a somewhat more muted, and geographically dispersed, influence in congressional elections than in presidential elections.  Nevertheless, there are several ways in which religion will likely serve to shape and color the outcomes of the forthcoming election.

For many American voters, religion influences both the political agenda they embrace and the particular stand they adopt on various policy positions. All laws impose someone's values on the rest of society, because they specify either directly or indirectly that certain forms of behavior are preferred and enforced over other forms. While not all values necessarily derive from religion, religion frequently serves as the basis of value formation for many Americans. Thus, both the political agenda and the policy stands that many Americans adopt (e.g., on issues related to abortion, gay rights, and capital punishment) may have a religious basis.

However, not all policy proposals are necessarily closely linked to religious values. Policy proposals that are more economic and incremental in nature (e.g., whether the minimum wage should be increased by a certain amount) are less likely to be strongly correlated with religious values. But, even in such circumstances, there is a second way in which religion may be linked to political attitudes, policy positions, and candidate preferences-as a basis of group identity. Americans frequently respond to politics in group terms. The salience of religious identities is likely to vary from election to election and from religious group to religious group. Religious identities, for some voters, may be latent in some elections, but salient in others (depending in part on the extent to which candidates, as well as religious leaders, play). Religious identity (as a Muslim, Jew, Catholic, or an evangelical Protestant, etc.) may affect the ways in which a voter relates to political campaigns and candidates. When a voter's religious group becomes closely linked to a candidate (or party) in terms of their religious identity, then that association is likely to further color and shape the policy positions the voter adopts (as candidate preference shapes policy preference, rather than vice versa).

Finally, religion's role as an organization base for political mobilization can greatly color and shape the final outcome of the election. Not only may candidates choose to make appearances in churches, synagogues, or mosques, but leaders of such religious bodies can mobilize their worshippers through various means: encouraging members to register and vote; providing members with transportation to the polls; permitting voting guides to be distributed within the religious setting; and, publicly addressing political issues in the religious setting.

Corwin E. Smidt is the director of The Henry Institute and professor of political science at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Along with several colleagues, he is currently working on a volume related to the changing religious order of American politics. He can be reached at smid@calvin.edu and 616-526-6233.

Recent Publications on Religion and Politics in the 2004 Election

Smidt, Corwin ed. 2004. Pulpit and Politics: Clergy in American Politics at the Advent of the Millennium. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.

Green, John C., Mark Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox, eds. 2003. The Christian Right in American Politics: Marching to the Millennium. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

Jaenicke, Douglas W. 2002. "Abortion and Partisanship in the US Congress, 1976-2000: Increasing Partisan Cohesion and Differentiation," Journal of American Studies 36: 01 (April) 1-22

Leege, David, Kenneth Wald, Brian Kreuger, and Paul Mueller. 2002. The Politics of Cultural Differences: Social Change and Voter Mobilization Strategies in the Post-New Deal Period. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Bendyna, Mary, John C. Green, Mark Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox. 2001."Uneasy Alliance: Conservative Catholics and the Christian Right," Sociology of Religion 62:1 (Spring): 45-58.

Layman, Geoffrey. 2001. The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kohut, Andrew, John C. Green, Scott Keeter, and Robert C. Toth. 2000. The Diminishing Divide: Religion's Changing Role in American Politics. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Wilson, J. Matthew. 1999. "'Blessed Are the Poor:' American Protestantism and Attitudes Toward Poverty and Welfare." Southeastern Political Review 27 (September): 421-437