Certainly, greater religious intensity and more frequent religious practice among evangelicals may account for why they are more likely to be pro-life than Catholics, but there are probably a couple of other reasons that may be equally important.  Just as Ross has observed when discussing Obama and ”the Catholic vote,” Catholics are more or less fully assimlated in American society and so an article that highlights the divided views of American Catholics on abortion is a bit like an article headlined, “Americans Disagree About Controversial Issue, May Affect Election.”  

As Kilgore suggests, Catholics are on the whole more accommodating of mainstream American culture, while evangelicals make considerable conscious effort (however unsuccessful) to belong to a counter-culture or, perhaps to be more accurate, many seek to establish political markers in lieu of a real counter-culture while creating their own versions of mainstream cultural products.  As Kilgore correctly observes, “they [evangelicals] are famously enthusiastic about adopting contemporary culture in their own liturgical and missionary practices,” but this should be understood as a case of appropriation rather than accommodation and acceptance.  At the same time, my guess is that American Catholics are relatively more pro-choice as a group than their counterparts in other industralized countries for a few reasons.  First, there is no tradition of organized political Catholicism or Christian Democracy here as there is in many European countries, and the history anti-Catholicism in U.S. politics may have discouraged the expression of political views that could be directly related to Catholic Church teaching, so there has not been a natural vehicle for mobilizing Catholic voters in the same way as in, say, Bavaria.  There is also probably a certain reluctance to breach the mythical “wall of separation” that dovetails nicely with the current Democratic platform.  Many American Catholics remain tied to the party supported by their ancestors, that party has since become adamantly pro-choice and a generation of Democratic Catholic office-holders has promoted the idea that one can support legal abortion without compromising Catholicism, which combines with the very American resistance to obeying episcopal authority in “private” matters that has grown up in the Catholic Church in the U.S. in the last few decades. 

This helps to explain why Obama’s position on abortion, as thoroughly pro-choice as it is, will not hurt him much among white Catholic voters, whose support for Obama keeps growing, and it will continue to drive evangelicals away from him.  This has indeed been happening according to the last Pew survey, as Obama lost five points among evangelicals to fall to a lowly 20% and gained seven points to take the lead among white, non-Hispanic Catholics.  This is why Obama will not make a “move to the center” on abortion: all things considered, it is unnecessary.

Filed under: Christianity, culture, politics