Tolerant (In)civility? A Longitudinal Analysis of White Conservative Protestants Willingness to Grant Civil Liberties

Tolerant (In)civility? A Longitudinal Analysis of White Conservative Protestants Willingness to Grant Civil Liberties SAM REIMER JERRY Z. PARK Past research has found conservative Protestants to be less willing than most Americans to grant civil liberties to unpopular groups. In light of evidence of high and growing civility by Smith (2000) and Hunter (1984), there is good reason to believe that conservative Protestants are becoming less distinctive with regard to granting civil freedoms. We update and expand previous research on conservative Protestants and civil liberties by examining the civil liberties measures in the General Social Survey over a 26-year period, with special attention to explaining conservative Protestantism s rejection of civil liberties. In comparison to mainline Protestants and Catholics, we find that conservative Protestants are still less willing to grant civil liberties to unpopular groups, though important qualifications apply. Various explanations are examined. One of the most consistent findings in the literature on religion and civil liberties has been the unwillingness of those who affiliate with conservative Protestant denominations to grant civil liberties. Lack of support for civil liberties and political tolerance has attracted the interest of both researchers and the media sources. Fundamentalists and conservative Protestant (CP) 1 religious activists specifically, and all conservative Protestants generally, have been viewed as uncivil and intolerant, a stereotype that has recently been challenged by Smith (2000). We look at this issue again because there are good reasons to believe that the degree of CP libertarianism 2 (the term we will use to refer to willingness to grant civil liberties ) is changing, and we extend previous studies in important ways. Furthermore, the topic is important because the smooth running of democratic societies like the United States where opposing groups vigorously challenge each other and those in power requires the protection of civil liberties and support for tolerance. Our purpose is to examine, first, if CP willingness to extend civil liberties to unpopular groups has changed over time; and second, to examine individual (within-cohort) and cohort replacement explanations for change. We start by reviewing explanations of why CPs are nonlibertarian, and then look at reasons to expect change. RESEARCH ON CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANT NONLIBERTARIANISM Researchers have put forth many explanations for conservative Protestants lower levels of libertarianism and tolerance, as compared to other Americans, including: 1. Demographic Differences. Historically, conservative Protestants have been disproportionately female, rural, poor, elderly, poorly educated, and southern, attributes that have been found to be adversely related to libertarianism (Bobo and Licari 1989; Ellison and Musick 1993; Gay and Ellison 1993; Hunter 1983; Nunn et al. 1978; Stouffer 1966). Of these demographic traits, low education has been found to be the most important factor (Stouffer 1966; Protho and Grigg Samuel H. Reimer is an Assistant Professor, Atlantic Baptist University, Box 6004, Moncton, NB, EJC 9L7. Email: sreimer@abu.nb.ca Jerry Z. Park is a graduate student, University of Notre Dame, Department of Sociology, 810 Flanner Hall, Notre Dame, 1N 46556-5611. Email: jpark@nd.edu Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40:4 (2001) 735 745

736 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION 1960; McClosky 1964), presumably because education exposes the person to a broad range of ideas and teaches toleration of differences. 2. Beliefs and Dogmatism. Orthodox beliefs, including Biblical literalism (Wilcox and Jelen 1990; Ellison and Musick 1993), belief in a cosmic conflict between good and evil (Ellison and Musick 1993), premillenialism (Green et al. 1994:35), and distrust of human nature (Tamney and Johnson 1997) are said to decrease libertarianism and tolerance. Biblical literalism encourages the rejection of, and intolerance for, un-biblical ideas or lifestyles. The belief in cosmic conflict encourages CPs to view earthly events, individuals, or groups as instruments of evil, which in turn promotes intolerance. Premillenialism, although not held by all CPs, leads to a pessimistic view of the future, which in turn leads to intolerance. Finally, CPs distrust for human nature drives their reasoning that humans need the control of institutions and laws. Thus CPs are less likely to grant civil freedoms. Jelen and Wilcox (1990) have argued that religious dogmatism a cognitive style based on one, infallible revealed truth is a source of intolerance because the religiously dogmatic are less willing to entertain views or lifestyles that are contrary to truth. 3. Separation from the World. It has been suggested that nonlibertarian aspects of the CP subculture are absorbed by active CPs. Gay and Ellison (1993) have attempted to test this effect by looking at the within-group variation in responses to civil liberties. Separation from the world, where CPs see the world as evil and thus separate from it, reduces their exposure to various ideologies and peoples. Green et al. (1994:35) found that separation from the world part of their measure of fundamentalism had the strongest negative correlation with tolerance among their predictive variables. 4. Institutional Effects. Others have argued that CP institutions, with their hierarchical structure and internal pressure toward conformity, decrease libertarianism and tolerance. Coupled with this is the tendency of CP spokespersons and pastors to pass on negative cues about certain groups and ideas from the pulpit (Wald et al. 1989; Welch et al. 1993). Of course, there are other reasons given in the literature for intolerant or nonlibertarian responses, including personality differences, contemporary information, acceptance of democratic principles, neuroticism, threat perception, and church attendance (Marcus et al. 1995; Sullivan et al. 1982), but these are not unique to CPs. RESEARCH ON CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANT CIVIL LIBERTRAIANISM While most scholars who have examined CP libertarianism have focused on explaining CPs lack of political libertarianism, Smith (2000) and Hunter (1984) state that CPs are, on the contrary, civil. Smith s recent interview data present evangelicals as committed to tolerance, civility, and libertarianism. He reports that five of six evangelicals voiced a strong commitment to freedom of choice and toleration of diversity (2000:64). Hunter s work (1984) suggests increased libertarianism with time. Using data from his coming generation sample of evangelical college and seminary students, with comparisons to a public university sample and the 1982 General Social Survey (GSS), he concludes that The bedrock of social and political intolerance appears then to have come a long way toward breaking up. Nowhere is this process occurring more rapidly than among the coming generation [of evangelicals] (1984:371). With some exceptions most notably the nonlibertarian responses in areas of sexuality and the family the coming generation of American Evangelicals fit well within the boundaries of political civility (1984:370, 375). EXTENDING PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANT CIVIL LIBERTARIANISM Is it true that CPs generally, or younger (more educated) CPs specifically, are as libertarian as Smith and Hunter suggest? A trend analysis of this specific religious tradition may provide

TOLERANT (IN)CIVILITY 737 some answers. The GSS cumulative file provides well-known civil liberties measures over an extended period of time. Recent articles that use these measures have relied on 1988 data, now a decade old. Besides updating these findings, our research extends and improves on past research in at least three ways. First, we use an improved denominational measure of religious traditions from GSS data developed by Steensland, Park, Regnerus, Robinson, Wilcox, and Woodberry (2000). We feel the extensive recoding efforts of GSS denominational data more accurately place denominations into historically appropriate traditions. Inaccurate denominational coding blurs the lines between the traditions and may minimize their distinguishing features. Second, analysis over a 26-year span provides more stable predictors of civil libertarianism. Preliminary analysis (not shown) indicates that some predictors of libertarianism (e.g., income, gender, southern location, political views, etc.) are unstable, fluctuating between significance and insignificance from year to year. As a result, conclusions based on one year of data are more tenuous than conclusions drawn over time. Finally, our analysis distinguishes between the effect of individual change and cohort change over time. METHOD As previously indicated, we use the 1972 1998 GSS cumulative file. Since these data are well known, we will not discuss them further here (see Davis and Smith 1996). We limited our analyses to those civil liberties measures that are available fairly consistently over most of the 26-year span, 3 namely, whether or not the respondent would grant liberties to these five unpopular groups: militarists, communists, atheists, homosexuals, and racists. For each of these groups, we combined the three questions asked of each group into a scale ranging from 3 (no civil liberties granted) to 6 (all three civil liberties granted). The three questions included on each scale are: Speak: If such a person wanted to make a speech in your (city/town/community), should he be allowed to speak, or not? Teach: Should such a person be allowed to teach in a college or university, or not? Library: If some people in your community suggested that a book he wrote be taken out of your public library, would you favor removing this book, or not? The five scales are not combined because we hypothesize that CPs will be particularly nonlibertarian toward homosexuals, communists, and atheists because of their moral, political, and religious conservatism, respectively. 4 Since willingness to grant civil liberties may vary significantly based on the unpopular group in question, we examine levels of libertarianism for each group separately. Our independent variables are those that are consistently available across the years and have been shown in previous research to have an effect on civil liberties. Finally, we limited our analyses to whites only, since African-American religionists have been shown to differ significantly from their white counterparts on civil liberties attitudes (Roof and McKinney 1987; Leege and Kellstedt 1993; Green et al. 1996). To examine change over time in CP libertarianism, we first looked at differences in average civil liberties scores between CPs, mainline Protestants, and Catholics. We computed the yearly mean score and slope (yearly change) for each of the five scales. Second, we used Firebaugh s method for decomposing change over time in repeated samples (Firebaugh 1997, 1992, 1989) to test Hunter s claim that younger CPs are more libertarian than older CPs. Since one cannot say whether change over time is due to age/period effects (change occurring with increasing age; also called within-cohort change below) or cohort replacement effects (change due to more libertarian younger cohorts replacing older cohorts), change over time must be decomposed to demonstrate Hunter s thesis that the coming generation is more libertarian. In Firebaugh s technique, regression coefficients estimate the annual change in a dependent variable using the

738 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION following equation: Y it = b 0 + b 1 Year it + b 2 Cohort it + e where Y it is the value for Y for the i th respondent and the t th survey, b 1 is the estimated withincohort slope, b 2 is the estimated cohort replacement slope, Year is the survey year and Cohort is the birth year (Firebaugh 1997:24). Using regression coefficients, we are able to estimate the contribution of within-cohort change by multiplying the within-cohort slope (b 1 ) by the difference between the year of the final (YR T ) and the first survey (YR 1 ), such that: within-cohort change = b 1 (YR T YR 1 ) Within-cohort change indicates the portion of the total change that can usually be attributed to individual change over time (age and period effects). 5 Within-cohort change answers the question: Do CPs become more or less libertarian as they age? Similarly, to estimate the effect of cohort replacement change on overall change, we use the birth-year regression coefficient (b 2 ) multiplied by the mean birth year in the final survey year (C T ) subtracted from its corresponding mean in the first survey year (C 1 ): cohort replacement change = b 2 (C T C 1 ) (Firebaugh 1997:24). Cohort replacement measures the effect of change in the relative size of the cohorts over time, where the younger cohorts who may differ from the older cohorts in their willingness to grant civil liberties to the group in question occupy an increasing percentage of the total sample as older cohorts decrease. In our analysis, cohort replacement change will test to see if those younger cohorts that are replacing the older CP cohorts are indeed more libertarian. To understand the effect of independent variables on libertarian change, we used OLS regression models. First, we analyzed the effect of selected independent variables on the civil liberties scales for the white CP population. Here we looked for changes in the magnitude of effects across the years. We entered all seven independent variables (listed below) for each scale for each year. Second, we ran regressions on the total white American population, including a dummy variable for CP in our independent variable list. Our goal was to identify those variables that significantly weakened the CP effect. Two models were used for each scale for each year. In Model 1, the CP dummy variable (CPs coded 1, all others coded 0) was the only independent variable. In the Model 2, demographic variables were added (age, measured in years; sex, males coded 1, females 2; education, measured in years; income, categories vary by year), as were controls for church attendance (nine-point scale), and political conservativeness (a seven-point liberal-to-conservative scale). RESULTS Findings from Mean Comparisons We calculated yearly means for each scale and each tradition, and examined the results in chart form. Space limits do not allow us to show these data, but, in general, they show that white American CPs parallel other religious groups, becoming more libertarian over time, but not significantly closing the gap. In Table 1, we present the overall means (total average across all years) and the slope (b coefficient) for the effect of year on each civil liberties scale, an estimate for the average yearly change in each civil liberties scale for each tradition. The overall means indicate that CPs are most willing to grant civil liberties to homosexuals, followed by racists, atheists, militarists, and communists. Even in 1998, CPs, like other white Americans, were most libertarian toward homosexuals. This finding does not mesh with the perceived antagonism CPs hold toward homosexuals.

TOLERANT (IN)CIVILITY 739 TABLE 1 MEAN AND SLOPE FOR CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANTS, MAINLINE PROTESTANTS, AND CATHOLICS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES SCALES, WHITES ONLY GSS 1972 1998 Conservative Mainline Protestants Protestants Catholics Overall Overall Overall Mean Slope 1 Mean Slope Mean Slope Average Gap 2 Atheists 4.43 0.023 4.86 0.019 4.96 0.015 0.48 Communists 4.33 0.028 4.74 0.024 4.82 0.023 0.45 Homosexuals 4.52 0.034 5.04 0.029 5.17 0.029 0.59 Militarists 4.33 0.022 4.71 0.021 4.74 0.024 0.40 Racists 4.48 0.008 4.79 0.010 4.81 0.007 0.32 Column Average 4.42 0.023 4.83 0.021 4.90 0.020 0.45 1 Slope coefficients represent the average yearly increase in the scale mean (the regression slope for year ). All slopes are significant at the 0.01 level. 2 The difference between the average of the mainline Protestant and Catholic means minus the conservative Protestant mean. The consistently positive slopes across all scales and traditions indicate increased libertarianism over time. Although CPs have become more libertarian, the lower mean totals show that they continue to be significantly less libertarian than other white Christians. The average gaps between the CP means and the mainline Protestant/Catholic means are sizable, and the Catholics are only slightly more willing to permit civil liberties than mainline Protestants. While CPs have the highest average slope, meaning their libertarianism has increased the most over the 26-year period, the gains are slight, and they are not catching up with mainline Protestants and Catholics very quickly. It should be noted that the gap for the racist scale (the difference between CP and non-cp libertarianism scores) is the smallest gap of the five civil liberties scales, followed by militarists, communists, atheists, and homosexuals, and this order is fairly consistent across the years. That is, CPs distinguish themselves from other white Christians most in their attitudes toward homosexuals, even though CPs are more willing to grant civil liberties to homosexuals than any other unpopular group. Findings from Decomposing Within-Cohort and Cohort Replacement Effects In Table 2, we present the results of partitioning out within-cohort change (individual change based on age/period effects) and cohort replacement change (the effect of younger cohorts replacing older cohorts) from overall change. In this table, we estimate the total change by multiplying the total number of years (e.g., 1972 1998 or 26 years) by the regression slope for year, which is the best estimate for the yearly change in a civil liberties scale per year. 6 Examining the estimates for the CPs atheist results, we see a significant overall increase in libertarianism over the 26-year period (total change = 0.607). The insignificant within-cohort effect means that CPs, as they age, show little change in their willingness to grant civil liberties to atheists. The comparatively large cohort replacement effect indicates that most of the increase in libertarianism is because of more libertarian younger cohorts replacing older cohorts. Moving down the atheists column, we find significant (though not large) negative within-cohort effects for mainline Protestants and Catholics, indicating that as they age affiliates in these traditions

740 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION TABLE 2 TOTAL CHANGE DECOMPOSED BY WITHIN-COHORT AND COHORT REPLACEMENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO CHANGE, WHITES ONLY 1972 1998 GSS Atheists Communists Homosexuals Militarists Racists Conservative total change 1 0.607 0.728 0.857 0.488 0.179 Protestants within-cohort 2 0.098ns 0.286 0.415 0.077ns 0.009ns cohort replacement 3 0.513 0.444 0.395 0.399 0.170 Mainline total change 0.488 0.618 0.724 0.461 0.216 Protestants within-cohort 0.111 0.085ns 0.222 0.037ns 0.057ns cohort replacement 0.596 0.545 0.525 0.520 0.290 Catholics total change 0.391 0.601 0.730 0.531 0.144 within-cohort 0.132 0.153 0.305 0.085ns 0.024ns cohort replacement 0.508 0.435 0.389 0.428 0.159 Homosexual scale began in 1973; militarist and racist scales began in 1976. 1 Estimates for total change between 1998 and 1972 are based the OLS b (slope) coefficients multiplied by number of years (e.g., b * 26). The sum of the within-cohort and cohort replacement estimates do not always equal the total because of rounding, sampling error, etc. 2 Amount of total change contributed by within-cohort change (age/period effects). 3 Amount of total change contributed by cohort replacement effects. All regression slopes are significant at 0.01 level except those marked ns (not significant). become slightly less willing to grant civil liberties to atheists. Thus, the overall increase in libertarianism is weakened because aging non-cp Christians become less libertarian, even though younger cohorts show higher libertarianism. It is notable that across all scales, these data give no indication that CPs become less libertarian as they age, which is not true of mainline Protestants or Catholics. Furthermore, in the communist and homosexual scales, CPs have the strongest within-cohort effects of the three white Christian groups. To a greater extent than other Christians, aging increases libertarianism for CPs. This difference largely accounts for the fact that CPs have the highest overall increase in libertarianism in these scales. In the homosexual scale, the increased libertarianism of CPs as they age is slightly greater than the cohort replacement effect, the only instance of this in the table. In the militarist and racist scales, none of the within-cohort effects are significant, indicating that increased libertarianism toward these groups is due to cohort replacement. The table shows that CP younger cohorts are not unique in their greater willingness to grant civil liberties, but that aging CPs are unique in that they do not becoming less willing to grant these liberties. Relating these findings to Hunter s (1984) argument that CPs, particularly the coming generation, have shared in the civil ethos of our time, we find some support. It is true that younger cohorts of CPs are more libertarian than the older generations they are replacing, and this trend accounts for most of the total increase in libertarianism for CPs. However, the greater willingness to grant civil liberties to unpopular groups is equally true of younger mainline Protestant and Catholic cohorts. As younger CP cohorts replace their less libertarian forebears, they appear to be only keeping pace with the increased libertarianism of other white Christian traditions. Findings from Regressions In Table 3, we present the standardized regression coefficients (betas) for the five civil liberties scales in 1977 and 1998 only. While we ran regressions for every year, we chose to show 1977

TOLERANT (IN)CIVILITY 741 and 1998 results because these are the first and last years in which our independent variables are available. Our findings for all the scales across all the years are summarized below. Table 3 also shows the relative effect of the independent variables on the civil liberties of the sample of CPs. Matching previous research, the effect of gender and income are rarely significant in the regressions. Age has a significant negative effect in most of the regressions (except for the racists scale), and education is a consistent positive effect for all scales. In other words, the gender and income of the CP makes little difference in whether or not he or she will grant civil liberties, although younger and highly educated CPs are much more likely to do so (which is also true of non-cp white Americans). The noteworthy demographic finding was the weakening effect of the dummy variable south. In the 1970s and early 1980s, southern white CPs were significantly less likely to grant civil liberties than nonsouthern CPs, which is not true of the 1990s (with a few exceptions). The average magnitude of the south beta coefficients for all the scales is roughly three times larger (0.177) between 1977 1984 than it was in the 1991 1996 average (0.061). 7 Thus, southern residence is no longer a significant predictor of nonlibertarian attitudes. Political conservativeness is significant in roughly half the years, and church attendance has a consistent strong negative effect. Of the variables used, willingness to grant civil liberties among CPs seems to be affected most by education (positive) and church attendance (negative). Finally, we ran nearly 200 regressions (separate regressions for each year and each civil liberties scale) on all white Americans to see if CPs are less libertarian than non-cps across all years and scales (results not shown). With no controls added, CPs are significantly less libertarian than other white Americans in all regressions, except one (out of 65). Controlling for demographics, church attendance, and political conservativeness, we still found CPs less libertarian than other white Americans in roughly four out of five regressions. Control variables accounted for CP nonlibertarianism toward racists most often, then militarists, communists, atheists, and never for homosexuals. Thus, these variables significantly narrow the gap between white CPs and other white Americans, but they do not account for CP unwillingness to grant civil liberties consistently across groups and years. DISCUSSION White CPs, according to the GSS data, are still less libertarian than other white Americans, including other white Christian groups. In fact, CPs have not significantly closed the gap between themselves and other Christian groups, although they are keeping pace or paralleling other groups in their tendency to become more libertarian. Even when we considered the possibility of a more libertarian coming generation of CPs, as suggested by Hunter, we did not find clear evidence that CPs were catching up to the higher libertarianism levels of other white Christian Americans. Younger cohorts of CPs, like their non-cp counterparts, are more willing to grant civil liberties, but aging CPs do not become less libertarian with time, unlike non-cps in some scales. Regarding variation between the scales, it is not surprising that CPs were least distinctly nonlibertarian toward racists, as this scale has the smallest mean gap and the difference is most easily accounted for in the regressions. Previous research has shown that racist or anti-semitic attitudes do not characterize CPs (Woodberry and Smith 1998). While CPs are much more likely to distinguish themselves by their (conservative) political, moral, and religious nonlibertarianism, they still match the general U.S. population in being most willing to grant civil liberties to homosexuals. This evidence does not fit a strong polarization suggested by the culture wars thesis, though it should be noted that the church attendance effects are consistently large and negative, which may suggest that religiously active CPs are more polarized. Regression results are similar to previous research, where age and education have significant effects, while region, gender, and income have little or no effect. As noted above, the southnonsouth difference, which was found to be significant in past research (Ellison and Musick 1993), became insignificant by the 1990s. Greater transience and communication within the CP subculture across space boundaries may have weakened the regional effects (Guth 1996; Shibley 1996).

TABLE 3 BETA COEFFICIENTS FOR WHITE CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANTS ON ALL CIVIL LIBERTIES SCALES GSS 1977 AND 1998 Atheists Communists Homosexuals Militarists Racists 1977 1998 1977 1998 1977 1998 1977 1998 1977 1998 (N = 329) (N = 375) (N = 322) (N = 368) (N = 321) (N = 367) (N = 327) (N = 383) (N = 317) (N = 376) Age 0.275 0.252 0.201 0.188 0.122 0.231 0.254 0.179 0.041 0.042 Sex 0.092 0.002 0.135 0.035 0.001 0.088 0.065 0.008 0.047 0.001 Education 0.276 0.251 0.239 0.289 0.271 0.302 0.155 0.298 0.112 0.204 South 0.255 0.071 0.198 0.101 0.157 0.074 0.207 0.047 0.184 0.033 Income 0.037 0.016 0.040 0.048 0.101 0.036 0.053 0.035 0.016 0.009 Political Conservativeness 0.051 0.068 0.012 0.127 0.111 0.096 0.008 0.053 0.045 0.108 Church attendance 0.235 0.132 0.226 0.054 0.325 0.245 0.204 0.112 0.208 0.149 R 2 0.358 0.178 0.257 0.184 0.284 0.226 0.219 0.160 0.100 0.070 Significance: = 0.05; = 0.01; = 0.001. Note: Although the regression betas for church attendance appear to weaken over time in this table, this is not the case. The effect of church attendance fluctuates from year to year, but does not consistently decrease over time. 742 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

TOLERANT (IN)CIVILITY 743 We noted that the effect of church attendance has a strong negative effect on CP libertarianism. Interestingly, regression analysis on the larger U.S. population shows that the negative effect of church attendance on libertarianism is weakening over time for non-cps, but it is not weakening for CPs (analysis not shown). It is likely that committed or attending CPs are more likely to have a shared sense of ingroups and outgroups, and maintain a distinctive identity that allows them to draw symbolic boundaries, thus maintaining tension with outgroups (Smith et al. 1998; Reimer 1996). We also found that education has a strong positive effect on libertarianism across all scales and groups. Notably, the education gap between white CPs and non-cps, according to the GSS data, has not significantly narrowed over the years of this study, even though other research indicates the opposite (Guth 1996). Judging from the consistency and magnitude of the education effect on libertarianism, it is likely that the consistency of the CP libertarianism gap and the education gap are related in these data. Recent research by Christian Smith and others (Woodberry and Smith 1998; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 2000) qualifies the general finding of CP nonlibertarianism. Although Smith uses the 1996 GSS civil liberties measures to show that white CPs tend to be less libertarian, he points out that they are consistently more restrictive across all groups, indicating that Conservative Protestants are not ideologically selective in their censorship (2000:213). Furthermore, he notes that the majority of CPs support civil liberties across most measures and groups in recent years. While these are important qualifications that undercut stereotypes of a monolithic nonlibertarian CP subculture, CPs are still less libertarian than non-cps. CONCLUSIONS All secondary analyses run into limitations in the data, particularly when one looks for measures that appear consistently over time. Limitations in our data have meant that we have been unable to take a look at the effect of important independent variables, including the effect of beliefs, tension, personality, and others. Our longitudinal approach has revealed some interesting changes over time. Most notably, we have found that white CPs have not narrowed the civil liberties gap, and continue to distinguish themselves from white non-cps in this way. We speculate that this consistent lack of libertarianism is related to the distinctive identity and boundary maintenance of CPs that resists both apathy and libertarianism toward unpopular groups. Smith suggests this possibility in his subcultural identity theory of religious strength, which links religious vitality to creating clear distinction from and significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups (1998:118 19). This hypothesis is consistent with the finding that nonlibertarianism increases for attending CPs, with stronger and more stable effects than for attending non-cps. In addition, CPs are less likely to be libertarian because of their unwillingness to privatize their faith (Regnerus and Smith 1998). CPs seek to influence the sociopolitical sphere and infuse it with traditional moral values, which may lead to tension with groups that oppose their public moral vision. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Religious Research Association in Montreal, Canada, 1998. We want to thank Dan Olson, David Sikkink, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. NOTES 1. We use the term conservative Protestants (CPs) because we use a denominational measure with the GSS data. When referring to research where another measurement strategy (self-identification, beliefs, etc.) is used, we use the term evangelicals.

744 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION 2. We think that willingness to grant civil liberties and tolerance are related, but not identical concepts; thus we chose to use the word libertarian to avoid the constant use of the clumsy phrase, willingness to grant civil liberties. After Sullivan et al. (1982), we think that tolerance is best measured by the least-liked approach, which Busch (1998) uses to demonstrate that CPs are not less tolerant than other religious groups. We prefer the term (non) libertarian to (un) civil because of the connotations of the latter word, recognizing that neither word is perfect. 3. All our dependent variables are available in 14 different years (1977, 1980, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998), with individual scales available between 16 and 18 years in the 1972 1998 span. 4. 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