Conservative Christian’s Influence on Policy Agendas: State-Level Analysis

• In Event: Representation and Direct Democracy in the US

Abstract

Religion has historically been intertwined with America’s political and social culture. An individual’s religion shapes their worldview and is rarely subject to change once elected, but there is still a necessary expectation for separation between the Church and State. When state legislators, particularly evangelicals and fundamentalists, do not attempt to separate the two, what effect do conservative Christians have on state policy agendas? Scholars understand that religious fundamentalist beliefs influence political attitudes and behavior at the federal level, but there is not an adequate examination of the role of religion on state legislative policy agendas. More recent literature focuses on the Executive Branch and on policies like abortion and education. For the purpose of this paper, I combine Protestant fundamentalists and Evangelicals into a conservative Christian category. I argue that conservative Christians attempt to skew the policy agenda away from the median voter by proposing extreme legislation even if they know it will not likely pass. I created a database for Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas that includes House representative’s denominations and party identifications. For my dependent variable, I use a state legislative bill database created by Alex Garlick (2020). I will compare Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas to each other while using Vermont and Oregon as control variables since they have the lowest religiosity scores in the nation and differing professionalization scores. I hypothesize there is a positive correlation between the number of conservative Christians and the number of extreme legislation, controlling for professionalization.

Author

• Madeline Kittler, University of Missouri- Columbia