The View | American political realignment and spiritual awakening

Since the 1990s, Americans have become more deeply divided and angry with each other than at any time since the 1850s. Now, as then, distrust of leaders and institutions is widespread.

The origins of the current antagonism date back to the religious intensification that began in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when church membership began to grow across all denominations. This soon evolved into a growth in the evangelical religions, which has cut deep into the membership of mainstream churches and drawn many non church-going people into the fold.

Membership of the principal mainline Protestant churches of America has declined by 25 per cent since the mid-1960s, while that of enthusiastic churches (such as Pentecostal, Adventist, and neo­fundamentalist), and also reborn Catholics and Mormons has nearly doubled.

Alongside the growth of evangelical religions, their political presence has grown. First was the Moral Majority which rallied believers in evangelical religionsaround opposition to abortion, re-establishing prayer in schools, and the elimination of pornography. It proved to be too rigid theologically and too focused on the abortion issue to have broader appeal. Tarred by scandals, it collapsed in 1989.

In the 1990s, a broader movement called the Christian Coalition emerged that adopted a less dogmatic and more issue-oriented approach to institutional reform.

The “religious right”, as it became known, successfully broadened its coalition to include more members of mainline churches, Jews, and African Americans. There was also increasing responsiveness from the Democratic Party, although not enough to forestall the rise of the right.

Polls in 1982 revealed that those who identified themselves as believers of enthusiastic religion (about one third of adults) split their vote fairly evenly between Democratic and Republican candidates. But by 1994, only 26 per cent continued to vote Democratic, while 74 per cent voted Republican.

In the 1996 and 1998 elections, the Republicans maintained control of both houses of Congress, forcing Democratic President Clinton to change both his rhetoric and certain policies to increase his party’s appeal to born-again Christians. But the majority of Democrats in Congress resisted his strategy.