Structure and ideology in the mobilization of the New Christian Right: a test of a model

Abstract

The mobilization of the New Christian Right (NCR) has been a topic of scholarly interest and research since the early 1980s. This research attempts to explain this phenomenon by analyzing the mobilizing strategies and tactics of its most successful organization, the Moral Majority, toward its target constituency of Evangelical Christians. Resource mobilization theory explain grassroots mobilization by analyzing how social movement organizations (SMOs) use resources to mobilize people to political activity. Studies from this structural perspective credit the Moral Majority's mobilization of televangelists and political preacher in fundamentalist denominations who recruited from among their followers for the rise of the NCR. New social psychological research explains mobilizations by analyzing how people interact in ways that politicize their view of themselves and the world. Studies from this perspective attribute the political conservatism of Evangelicals to various measures of collective identity and politicized religious consciousness. This research constructs a theoretical model that synthesizes both perspectives and then tests this model with data from the 1983 Evangelical Voter Survey. Results of regression analyses offer limited support for the model. Most of the hypotheses that the model advances are confirmed, but unexpected direct effects of structural variables on dependent political variables suggest weaknesses in theory or measurement and suggest avenues for further research.