Abstract
U.S. immigration policy over the last 100 years has changed the onus of political acculturation from public programs to private groups like churches. After this significant policy change, how do religion, social capital, and nativity intersect in the political mobilization of racial minorities? Furthermore, after the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the country of origin of immigrants shifted from European countries to Latin America and Asia. Scholars have theorized that churches play a pivotal role in the socialization of immigrants by providing a place of belonging and a community willing to teach newcomers about the goings-on of American political society. How have these acculturation policies worked under new immigration populations? Previous scholarly work has connected social capital with churches, though their relationship to political participation has been minimal. We hypothesize that social capital and religious tradition have a multiplicative effect on the participation rates of believers, but that race mitigates that effect. The positioning of racial groups in broader society impacts the significance and role of churches within these communities. We use Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) 2016 data to examine the connection between social capital, religion, and political behavior in a novel attempt to systematically identify the unique role of churches in the mobilization of racial minority communities. We use these results to suggest that the current policies of privatizing political acculturation have had less success with more recent waves of immigrants.
Highlights
U.S immigration policy over the last 100 years has changed the onus of political acculturation from public programs to private groups like churches
Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) 2016 data to examine the connection between social capital, religion, and political behavior in a novel attempt to systematically identify the unique role of churches in the mobilization of racial minority communities
While religious tradition alone has been shown to be an unreliable predictor of political participation, we argue that religious tradition positively relate to increased political participation when partnered with social capital—a hypothesis that we test directly using an interaction term (Duriez et al 2002; Todd and Houston 2013; Lewis and De Bernardo 2010)
Summary
Despite a noted decline of religious affiliation and attachment, a full 75% of the U.S population continues to identify with established religions (Pew Research Center 2014), and most attend religious services anywhere from a few times a year to once a week, signifying that religion continues to be significant to a clear majority of the U.S population. Religion in politics is still salient, to the level of political and policy support from religious groups (e.g., white evangelicals). The media interviewed White Evangelical leaders throughout the 2016 election about their presidential vote choice and offered their perspective of how their faith and religion influenced the balancing out of options (Whitehead et al 2018; Margolis 2020; Martí 2019). The Catholic Church has a long history of such mobilization, most notably in its support of immigrant rights (Barreto et al.2009; Ramirez 2013), and the annual March for Life protests in Washington, D.C. Lastly and most notably, Black churches have a long history of educating their congregations and facilitating explicitly political engagement (such as organizing drivers to the polls for early voting) that continues to this day (Barnes 2006; Calhoun-Brown 1996; McKenzie 2004; Warren 2001). Religion remains a central component of American politics, warranting continued study to understand how it functions within our increasingly diverse communities
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