very interesting.
i have to do this fast...
obviously, we are talking here about claims regarding "religious people" and not the diversity of beliefs and their political correlates out there in the actual world.
american conservatism tied itself to the political fortunes of the rightwing protestant evangelical movement over the past 20 years or so, with particular emphasis on it since the middle 1990s. one of the quriks of this particular movement is that they like to talk about themselves as if they and they alone WERE christianity, so the political reflection of that turns up in conservative discourse. another quirk is that alot of these churches remain curiously anti-catholic--even though the direction taken by rome under teh last 2 popes has engendered a fairly hard jerk to the right for official catholicism---the us catholic church is a curious, split thing, tho, so i suspect that you have a complicated mapping project trying to work out where that population might stand on anything, really--rome is not a particularly powerful force in shaping the attitudes of the population. anyway, this drift right may be another reason for conservative ideological use of the term "christian"--even though tactically, it seems to refer mostly to the bizarre worldviews of evangelical protestants...
two other quick points:
on this one
Quote:
* Conservatives value tradition and the status quo over radical change; this is also valued by churches and their congregations, because religion is very based in tradition.
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american conservatism these days is a strange mixture of old-school conservatism (which the quote describes) and freemarketeers, who have to endorse "creative destruction" even as they hope it doesnt effect them in their gated communities (real or imagine, it doesnt matter so much)...so there is a curious question about how conservative in the older sense the capitalism-uber-alles squad within the conservative coalition (or what's left of it) really is.
this one
Quote:
* Liberalism is seen by religious individuals and conservative individuals as a scourge on society, and so both groups naturally avoid groups associated with liberals.
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is way too simplistic.
think about methodism, for example.
think about the fact that the same catholic church in principle accomodated (at one time) opus dei and liberation theology.
think about the split within christianity over how much weight to give the doctrine jesus espoused concerning the dignity of the poor.
(and maybe ask yourself from there just how christian conservative christians really are politically...which would depend on how you interpret this doctrine, how important you think it is to christianity as a whole...)
gotta go.
interesting thread, though.