Small Business, Status Politics, and the Social Base of New Christian Right Activism

This paper examines the social base of Christian Right activism, using data on approximately 3,000 members and Ž nancial supporters of a single state-level Christian Right organization: the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance (OCA). The Ž ndings of the study are consistent with theories that identify “status anxiety” among marginal or threatened segments of the middle class as a motivation for right-wing activism. The class of small business owners was the most overrepresented group among OCA activists. Members of the salaried middle class were also overrepresented, although to a lesser degree. Contrary to expectations, OCA activism was not disproportionately high among elderly persons or in the most rural areas of the state. The paper also illustrates the prevalence of status concerns in the rhetoric of the OCA’s anti-abortion and anti-gay campaigns. The rise of the New Christian Right has been the focus of extensive study in recent years. Despite a great volume of scholarly research, there is, as yet, little solid evidence on the basic question of who supports the Christian Right. This is particularly true with regard to the social characteristics of those who are activists—i.e., leaders, members, and/or Ž nancial supporters of Christian Right organizations. While there are numerous surveys of the general public that allow researchers to identify the kinds of persons who express positive attitudes toward Christian Right groups, personalities, or issues, information on those who support the Christian Right in more active ways has been diYcult to obtain. This re ects both the distrust with which Christian Right organizations view the social scientiŽ c community as well as the proprietary interest they have in restricting access to their membership lists. As a result, only a few surveys of Christian Right activists have been conducted. Most of these involve very limited samples and some are now quite dated. In this paper I present new evidence on activists in one Christian Right organization: the Oregon Citizens’ Alliance (OCA). During the early 1990s, the OCA emerged as one of the most powerful state-level Christian Right organizations in the country, attracting national attention in 1992 and 1994 for its emotionally charged campaigns to restrict gay rights through statewide ballot initiatives. What distinguishes the OCA from other Christian Right groups, such as the Christian Coalition Critical Sociology 27,1 or the (now defunct) Moral Majority, is that the OCA is legally incorporated as a political action committee. Under Oregon law, political action committees must comply with strict reporting requirements regarding their receipts and expenditures. These include providing the state election division with the names, addresses, occupations, and employers of all persons who have contributed more than $50 in any election cycle. This information, which is publicly accessible, was used as the primary basis for this study. Although limited in scope, these data are more complete (and arguably more reliable) than anything previously available on the active supporters of a Christian Right group. They therefore provide us with an opportunity to explore certain dimensions of the social base of Christian Right activism in more detail and with greater conŽ dence than has heretofore been possible. The Ž ndings of this study are consistent with hypotheses derived from some of the classical theories of right-wing movements—those stressing “status anxiety” among marginal or threatened segments of the middle class as an underlying motivation for right-wing political activism. By and large, these classical theories have fallen out of favor among scholars who study the Christian Right. On the basis of the evidence presented in this paper, I argue that such theories deserve to be treated more seriously in future research. Theories of Support for the Christian Right Theories of support for the Christian Right can be divided into two general categories. The Ž rst approach focuses on conditions of social strain or insecurity and views right-wing activism as an attempt by persons in these situations to preserve or enhance their social status. The second approach focuses on deeply held beliefs and values acquired through socialization and sees right-wing activism as simply a way of putting these beliefs and values into practice.1 The classical literature on support for right-wing movements gave primacy to explanations framed in terms of status anxiety. Theories of this kind were Ž rst proposed by European scholars in the 1920s and 1930s in an attempt to grasp the historical circumstances responsible for the rise of fascism and the reasons for its appeal to particular social classes (Geiger 1930; Laswell 1933; Fromm 1941; Neumann 1951). The central claim of this literature was that fascism was primarily an expression of “status panic” among the marginal segments of the middle class in a period of economic crisis and cultural change. Fascist ideology was seen as uniquely tailored to status anxieties of the lower middle class 30 val burris