Loyalty Lost: Catholics, Liberals, and the Culture Wars

Abstract

Although the influx of religiously committed evangelical Christians to the Republican Party has dominated both the popular press and the scholarly literature, a similarly stunning shift has occurred among American Catholics. This article addresses the causes and effects of that shift by focusing on how the American Left covered Catholicism in its publications. Content analyses of The Nation, In These Times, and Mother Jones indicate that although the American Left was largely positive toward Catholicism during the late 1970s and 1980s, by the 1990s the religious frames changed. As the religious right rose in prominence and power, the American Left altered its perspective of Catholics and conflated its political values with those of the religious right. This shift among “elite” opinion leaders in the press reflected and may have exacerbated partisan shifts already underway within the general public.