ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the voting patterns of the key religious groups in the electorate—Catholics, evangelical Protestants, "mainline" Protestants, black Christians, Jews, and secularists—in order to present evidence for the existence of value-based cleavages in the American electorate. It examines the implications of the alignment, as well as other features of culture-based politics. The chapter suggests some enduring continuities in addition to changing alignments; that is, value conflict has not entirely replaced other cleavages. John F. Kennedy's election also represented the high-water mark for the Catholic Democratic vote, and for Catholic interest in politics. Most Protestants in the nineteenth century were "pietist" evangelicals, heirs of the Puritan spirit. In one sense American Jews have always been in the vanguard of a secular vision for American politics. Many African American Christians, and especially their leaders, see themselves chosen as carriers of God's prophetic message of justice to a troubled land.
