God Talk: Experimenting with the Religious Causes of Public Opinion

Abstract

Acknowledgments Introduction: Obama Is a Muslim? What Religion and Politics Research Has to Say 1 Getting to the Heart of Things: The State of the Literature and the Promise of Experiments in Religion and Politics Research PART I With What Effect Do Political Elites Use Religion? 2 God Talk: Religious Cues and Electoral Support 3 Why People Will Not Vote for Atheist Candidates, coauthored with Chelsea Back PART II How Are Religious Elites and Groups and Their Public Arguments Evaluated? 4 Evangelizing the Environment: Decision Process Effects in Political Persuasion, coauthored with Gregory W. Gwiasda 5 Justification Not by Faith Alone: Clergy Generating Trust and Certainty by Revealing Thought 6 Between a Bloc and a Hard Place: Voters' Perceptions of Group Threat Credibility in Elections 7 Fair and Balanced: Conditional Elite Effects on Threat Perceptions of Homosexuals among Evangelical Protestants, coauthored with Samantha Webb PART III How Can Congregation-Based Elites Affect Members? 8 Divine Intervention? The Influence of Religious Values Communication on U.S. Foreign Intervention Policy 9 The Civil Brake: Values as Contextual Influences on Elite Framing Effects Conclusion: An Emerging Approach to the Study of Religious Influence Appendix References Index