Religious Preference and Practice: Reevaluating Their Impact on Political Tolerance

Abstract

ALTHOUGH surveys conducted in the 1960s and 70s have produced evidence of the public's increasing political tolerance, some scholars have questioned those findings and the methods that produced them. At the same time, visible political action by religious groups and their leaders has created renewed interest in the connections between religious beliefs and practice on the one hand and political beliefs and actions on the other. These two areas of study-political tolerance and religion-are not unrelated. Political tolerance has long been linked to religion, but that linkage has been defined only vaguely. We explore the relationship, examining both religious denomination and church attendance as correlates of political tolerance. This investigation differs from prior studies in looking at political tolerance within rather precise denominational groups and by evaluating the effects of church attendance within denominations. Our findings shed light on the nature and sources of political tolerance, while also suggesting