Why doesn't Canada have an American-style christian right? A comparative framework for analyzing the political effects of evangelical subcultural identity

Abstract

Political commentators have asked if Canada could see the rise of an American-style "Culture War," where evangelical Protestants are rallied by moral issues to support the Conservative party. This paper argues that even though Canadian evangelicals are just as morally conservative as American evangelicals, they work from very different understandings about the relationship between religious morality and national identity. We predict that rank-and-file Canadian evangelicals will be less responsive to political mobilization around moral issues because they construct their subcultural identity differently than American evangelicals. This paper uses a multimethod strategy to analyze the political impact of evangelical subcultural identity, a cultural mechanism that mediates the political effects of moral attitudes. We illustrate this multidimensional concept of subcultural identity through survey data, in-depth interviews, and comparativehistorical data. This comparative framework for studying subcultural identity helps explain why the content of evangelical Protestant morality becomes linked to political behaviour in some national contexts and historical periods but not others. © Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 33(4) 2008 899.