The Rise of the Christian Right in the South and Its Impact on National Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 108-127
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
Predominantly White ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
White Evangelicals

The rise of the largely Evangelical-led Christian Right movement profoundly altered the Southern political landscape and eventually the national one as well. The “Solid South,” long a predominantly white Protestant and Democratic Party dominated region, has become largely Republican and anchored by white Protestants. As the South has become increasingly diverse and somewhat less distinctive, coalitions of minority groups, including religious minorities, are the backbone of the Democratic Party in the region. Since the 1980s, white Evangelicals have remained firmly committed to the GOP. What began in the South as a marginalized social movement focused on a narrow agenda eventually reconfigured the national party coalitions and played a major role on the election of Donald J. Trump as president.

The Changing Politics of Race in the South and Its Impact on National Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Voter Suppression ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Party Dominance

The long era of racial segregation and black voter suppression coincided with the old “Solid South” of Democratic dominance of the region. Among African Americans who could vote, they were loyal to the GOP, the party of Lincoln. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the civil rights movement more generally moved Southern blacks to the Democratic Party. The emergence of African American voters’ rights and their realigning to the Democratic Party have had the most profound impact on the politics of the region of the past half century. Today, Southern African Americans vote at about the same rate as whites and in some recent presidential elections have exceeded white participation. As whites realigned to the GOP, African Americans became a key component of the Democratic Party dominance of the South, with substantial influence on legislative priorities.

Devotional Sovereignty

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caleb Simmons
Keyword(s):  
Regional Politics ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
South Indian ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Royal Identity ◽  
Changing Role

This book investigates the shifting articulations of kingship in a wide variety of literary (Sanskrit and Kannada), visual, and material courtly productions in the South Indian kingdom of Mysore during the reigns of Tipu Sultan (r. 1782–1799) and Krishnaraja Wodeyar III (r. 1799–1868). Tipu Sultan was a Muslim king famous for resisting British dominance until his death, and Krishnaraja III was a Hindu king who succumbed to British political and administrative control. Both of their courts dealt with the changing political landscape of the period by turning to the religious and mythical past to construct a royal identity for their kings. With their use of religious narrative to articulate their kingship, the changing conceptions of sovereignty that accompanied burgeoning British colonial hegemony did not result in languishing. The religious past, instead, provided an idiom through which the Mysore courts could articulate their kings’ unique claims to kingship in the region, as they attributed their rule to divine election and increasingly employed religious vocabularies in a variety of courtly genres and media. What emerges within this material is an increasing reliance on devotion to frame Mysore kingship in relation to the kings’ changing role in regional politics. The emphasis on devotion for the constitution of Indian sovereignty in this period had lasting effects on Indian national politics as it provided an ideological basis for united Indian sovereignty that could simultaneously integrate and transcend premodern forms of regional kingship and its association with local deities.

The South and the Transformation of U.S. Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Susan A. MacManus ◽  
Jeremy D. Mayer ◽  
Mark J. Rozell
Keyword(s):  
Religious Right ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
Politics And Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Past Half

Analyzing and explaining the transformation of U.S. politics since the explosive events of 1968 requires particular attention to the South—the states of the former Confederacy. Indeed, a strong case can be made that the South has had the greatest impact on the transformation of U.S politics and government. Since 1968 we have seen the demise of the “sold (Democratic) South” and the rise of the Republican-dominated South, the rise of the largely southern white evangelical religious right movement, and vast demographic changes that have altered the political landscape of the region and national politics. Overriding all of these changes is the major constant of southern politics—race. Demographic trends portend new major shifts in the politics of the South that will have profound impacts on US government and politics. The chapters in this book explain how the South has fundamentally changed in the past half century and how that has dramatically altered US national politics.

scholarly journals Growth in Party Competition and the Transformation of Southern Politics

2002 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 93-121
Author(s):  
Robert T. Carey ◽  
Bruce W. Ransom ◽  
J. David Woodard
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Cultural Shifts

The political landscape of the South traditionally has been dominated by the monolith of the Democratic Party. In the last decades of the twentieth century, the political climate was reversed, with many southern states voting Republican, especially in national elections. This political shift is examined in the context of economic, social, and cultural shifts in the South, beginning in 1950, the end of V.O. Key’s seminal work, and ending in 2000. This political shift is quantified with an adaptation of the Ranney Index of Party Competition.

Recent Political Thought in the South

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian D. Irish
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The South ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
Practical Design

In a study of recent political thought in the South, it is necessary to delimit the area called “The South.” Howard Odum included fourteen states in his practical design for the “southern regions.” The President's Committee which reported in 1938 on economic conditions in the South covered thirteen states. The southern governors of fifteen states joined in the regional educational compact. The Manufacturers' Record, published in Baltimore as the industrial organ of the South, reaches out to sixteen states. V. O. Key limits his study, Southern Politics, to those eleven states which have consistently stayed with the national Democratic party. This author in the main refers to the eleven states which once seceded to form the Confederacy; coincidentally, these are the same eleven states that Key found to be “solid” in national politics.

The Cities on the Hill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas K. Ogorzalek
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Social Difference ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Invaluable Tool ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Hill ◽  
The New Deal

Recent electoral cycles have drawn attention to an urban–rural divide at the heart of American politics. This book traces the origins of red and blue America. The urbanicity divide began with the creation of an urban political order that united leaders from major cities and changed the Democratic Party during the New Deal era. These cities, despite being the site of serious, complex conflicts at home, are remarkably cohesive in national politics because members of city delegations represent their city as well as their district. Even though their constituents often don’t see eye-to-eye on important issues, members of these city delegations represent a united city position known as progressive liberalism. Using a wide range of congressional evidence and a unique dataset measuring the urbanicity of U.S. House districts over time, this book argues that city cohesion, an invaluable tool used by cities to address their urgent governance needs through higher levels of government, is fostered by local institutions developed to provide local political order. Crucially, these integrative institutions also helped foster the development of civil rights liberalism by linking constituencies that were not natural allies in support of group pluralism and racial equality. This in turn led to the departure from the coalition of the Southern Democrats, and to our contemporary political environment. The urban combination of diversity and liberalism—supported by institutions that make allies out of rivals—teaches us lessons for governing in a world increasingly characterized by deep social difference and political fragmentation.

Tolerance and Accommodation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lori G. Beaman
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Religious Minorities ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter problematizes the notions and language of tolerance and accommodation in relation to religious diversity, and traces their genealogy both as legal solutions and as discursive frameworks within which religious diversity is increasingly understood in the public sphere. The problem they pose is that they create a hierarchy of privilege that preserves hegemonic power relations by religious majorities over religious minorities. Tolerance in this context might be imagined as the broadly stated value that we must deal with diversity and those who are different from us by tolerating them. Accommodation might be seen as the implementation of this value—that in order to demonstrate our commitment to tolerance we must accommodate the ‘demands’ of minority groups and those individuals who position themselves or align themselves with minorities.

The Military Post-Mugabe

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
Godfrey Maringira
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Military

This article argues that, through the coup, the military has become more visible in national politics in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe. The current situation under President Mnangagwa marks a qualitative difference with the military under Mugabe’s rule. Currently, in now being more prominent, the military is politics and is the determinant of any political transition that may be forthcoming in Zimbabwe. However, if it deems it necessary, the military accommodates civilian politicians into politics in order to ‘sanitize’ the political landscape in its own interests. Simultaneously, despite their involvement in the coup, ordinary soldiers feel increasingly marginalized under Mnangagwa’s government.

scholarly journals Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Voting and the Downfall of the Democratic Party in the South

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 5-23
Author(s):  
James L. Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
The South ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
White Voters

Throughout much of its existence, the Democratic Party was heavily dependent upon the votes of the white South for its electoral success. In the last forty years, that situation has changed drastically. The erstwhile Democratic Solid South has been transformed into a Republican bastion. While many commentators still seek to explain this phenomenon in terms of race, white Southerners publicly are able to maintain political correctness by setting their change of political heart in a quite different context. This paper seeks to place the current political situation in the South in a historical context that explains how the racial issues that actually launched the downfall of the Democratic Party in that region became eclipsed by a national cultural conflict that has allowed an ever increasing number of white voters in the South to explain themselves in the transcending language of morality that comes so easily to Republicans rather than in the debasing context of race.

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