MILITANT AND COOPERATIVE INTERNATIONALISM AMONG AMERICAN RELIGIOUS PUBLICS

Abstract

Although there has been much speculation about the way that religion shapes American attitudes on foreign policy, there are few empirical analyses of that influence. This paper draws on a large national sample of the public in 2008 to classify religious groups on Eugene Wittkopf’s (1990) classic dimensions of foreign policy attitudes, militant internationalism and cooperative internationalism. We find rather different religious constituencies for each dimension and demonstrate the influence of ethnoreligious and theological factors on both. Combining the two dimensions, we show that American religious groups occupy different locations in Wittkopf’s hardliner, internationalist, accommodationist, and isolationist camps.