Second Coming: The New Christian Right in Virginia Politics. - book reviews

Sociology of Religion, Spring, 1998 by H. Wesley Perkins

If politics is the art of compromise and persuasion, then the case of Virginia politics in recent years gives us many examples of success and failure in the practice of this art form by conservative Christians. Second coming provides the reader with an incredibly detailed study of Virginia politics and the role of the Christian Right in the late 1980's through the 1994 elections. Rozell and Wilcox focus their investigation on the transition and struggles within this state's Republican party as a crucial site for a second wave of the New Christian Right involvement in politics. They find the resurgence of this conservative Christian activism as a more compromising and politically sophisticated movement than that of the past and with substantial resources to devote to the Virginia Republican party. Yet the Republican successes during this time period were ironically few in comparison with the national scene where Republicans made tremendous gains in representation in both national and state politics. As revealed in this case study, the failures of some key Republican party nominations representing Christian Right interests in Virginia were not so much a reflection of Democratic party strength, but rather the ambivalence and division among Republicans that divided them.

Through interviews, participant observations at political events, and mail surveys of party activists, the authors document an evolutionary process in the state. As Christian Right representatives became more active in Republican party primaries and caucuses and more powerful in state elections, traditional Republican party supporters with an economic but not necessarily socially conservative agenda became more selective in their support of party candidates. For example, positions on abortion consistently produced one of the deepest divides between the moderate and typically suburban Republicans and their more socially conservative and rural counterparts. The latter group were more likely to be evangelicals, pentecostals, and fundamentalists who disproportionately filled the ranks of the Christian Right supporters in the party. Faced with the difficulty of finding candidates that could effectively bridge these often opposing camps, the Virginia Republican party was sometimes weakened. The Christian Right would threaten a withdrawal of support for moderates and moderates would sometimes run alternative candidates when Christian Right candidates were able to acquire the party nomination. Thus, growth in the Republican party of Virginia to accommodate the conservative Christian groups also produced its own limitations.

This book will be especially useful to anyone interested in a detailed history of recent Virginia politics at both the state and local level. It is filled with descriptions, interview quotes, and insights from key party activists as well as national organizations such as the Christian Coalition that were especially prominent in Virginia. This study also presents extensive survey data of Republican representatives to state and county committees as well as convention delegates. The level of detail here is impressive, but may be more than desired by some readers not especially interested in all of the local color, personalities, and background history of local political organizations and their candidates. This book will also be especially useful to political scientists and sociologists of religion whose specializations lean toward social movement theory and research. In addition to the case study itself, portions of the book devote considerable commentary to debates and distinctions about the Christian Right as a social movement, interest group, and party faction.

The book does have some limitations. Sociologists of religion who are interested in how personal religious beliefs get translated into individuals' decisions about political issues and how these religious beliefs motivate people to engage in causes will not be as satisfied with this study. Attention to actual religious beliefs constitute a small portion of the case study and survey data analysis in this book which is predominantly about political party history and coalition building. The effect of social class experience in accounting for the division between moderates and the Christian Right within the party is not given much attention. Readers with strong interests in research methods may be frustrated by the lack of methodological information. An appendix provides question items of one of the surveys used in the study, but survey sampling procedures and methods used to select and interview party activists are not described in any detail. Furthermore, the potential biases in survey results due to low response rates (notably less than half in each survey) are never discussed.

In short, some of the concerns noted here may limit the book's appeal. Nevertheless, readers of Rozell and Wilcox's account will undoubtedly fund a rich and fascinating portrait of how religious activists can infuse their interests into the life of a political party bringing both resources and constraints in the process.