Good questions/points. Let me answer them in turn.

1) My point is basically two-fold. On the one hand, yes, evangelicals are happy to live with a measure of hypocrisy on family matters because their traditional family ideals are a key part of their religious identity; so, they hold on to those ideals even when they do not always live up to those ideals because they are at the core of their religious identity (in much the same way that progressives often hold onto, say, pro-environmental ideals even though they take international flights that have a negative impact on the environment.) On the other hand, I also want to suggest that fragility of family life in many evangelical homes and in many communities where evangelicals make their home (esp working-class communities in Red America) makes it understable that they would promote family-oriented ideals that might strengthen family life both for their own families and the communities where they live.

2) I will just make the point that Chris Smith finds in his work that an evangelical Protestant religious identity is NOT linked to racial prejudice, net of controls for factors like region and class. Of course, this means that white evangelicals may be more racially prejudiced than well-educated secularists BUT their religion is not the issue; rather, their region or class would be the issue.

3) I don’t have data on class per se. But John Green at the Pew Forum has found that John McCain’s support among evangelicals is now as high as George Bush’s was in 2004. He attributes this in part to Sarah Palin’s placement on the ticket. Many of these evangelicals are working-class whites who are putting their “values” ahead of their “class interest” in much the same way that, say, many wealthy New Yorkers are putting their “values” ahead of their “class interest” in siding with Obama.

Hope that helps.

1.) Is this a gloss on saying Evangelicals are happy with hypocrisy as long as so-called “pro-family” lines are mouthed? (Pro-Family, here, refers to supporting a particular, historically contingent, ideologically rooted vision of the family as a political heuristic, not a practiced reality.) If it is not that, how does it differ?

2.) I am a big fan of (my former colleague) Chris Smith’s work too, but it’s a stretch to argue that he’s found there to be no link between attitudes hostile to African Americans as a group and evangelicalism. It’s just that the link is mediated by the more general link between white conservatives and racism—which, in turn, links to the underlying story you’ve told us about white conservatives and the Sarah Palin effect.

3.) Can you provide some (links to) data about Palin’s popularity among the white working class? As is often the case, I suspect this effect is overblown and that voting choices remain pretty economic as Bartels and Gelman have been demonstrating.

Thanks.

But I am surprised that you sound so confident in your assertion that prejudice has nothing to do with evangelical support for Palin. The news media is full of dissections of the race issue right now, finding that it is certainly playing a role in the election (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09blow.html). Basic in-group/out-group favoritism has to be a factor in this election (see Altemeyer’s article below).

Claiming contemporary evangelicals are more prejudiced than non-evangelicals is definitely not a canard. Bob Altemeyer’s 2003 paper found that religious fundamentalists tend to be prejudiced: they hold very negative views of homosexuals, racial and ethnic minorities, and people in other religious groups (just ask Mitt Romney; Altemeyer, Bob. 2003. “Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to be Prejudiced?.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 13:17-28.) While evangelicals are not universally fundamentalist in orientation, they are more likely to be so. Ergo, this is no canard.

I think you need to provide additional evidence to support your argument that prejudice has nothing to do with evangelicals’ support of Palin.

So I think it’s time to retire the canard about contemporary evangelical racism. This is not to say evangelicals aren’t prejudiced. As Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia has argued, evangelicals do have prejudices against secular liberals. But, as he also argues, secular liberals more than return the favor.