George Yancey, Marie A. Einstein, Ryan P. Burge
Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, Volume 12, Article 6
Publication year: 2017

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of Christian theology on feelings or attitudes toward liberal and conservative political-ideological groups.  We know how religious affiliations, behaviors, and beliefs in the United States influence voting behavior, political party affiliation and specific issue attitudes, but we do not fully understand how Christian theology influences one’s favorable / unfavorable attitudes to groups across the ideological spectrum.  Using the 2012 ANES data, we test logit models for favorable / unfavorable scores toward four different groups.  While progressive Christians are linked with liberal political ideology and considered more likely to be tolerant of groups that are different than themselves, our results do not support this contention.  Rather, progressive Christians are more likely to exhibit an unfavorable attitude toward groups with political differences while conservative Christians are not.  On the other hand, conservative Christians are more likely to exhibit an unfavorable attitude toward groups with religious differences while progressive Christians are not.