Despite the growing flight of Americans from religious institutions, these are still the largest voluntary organizations in the United States and they remain significant forces in American politics. As leaders of these organizations, clergy are often visible and influential political figures. In just the past few years, conservative Protestant pastors were frequent visitors to the Trump White House and played a crucial role in mobilizing a large Republican religious constituency. Black Protestant ministers have long been a vital force in Democratic circles and are joined at times by white liberal colleagues, as evidenced by the recent mobilization to preserve abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Given their strategic position within American society, clergy continue to remain important actors in American politics. This article examines the partisan identifications and electoral behavior of American Protestant clergy in the 2016 presidential election. Although clergy partisanship may be of interest in any election, the 2016 contest, given the milieu of political polarization and the presence of the Trump candidacy, provides an intriguing context for assessing the profession's electoral behavior, particularly among Republican clergy. Based on survey results from over 2,500 clergy drawn from ten Protestant (five mainline and five evangelical) denominations, the study finds that, during the early stages of the 2016 nomination process, only a small percentage of Republican clergy supported Trump and that, despite the high level of political polarization, a sizable segment of Republican clergy resisted partisan pressures and refused to vote for Trump in the general election. The propensity of both independent and Republican clergy to vote for the GOP nominee varied largely with the level of perceived “threats”: to the Christian heritage of the nation, from Islam, and from the process of “globalization.”

In this article, we add to the evolving literature examining the importance of religious orientation and political elite behavior. We use data on the religious affiliations of United States House of Representative members to test the influence of religion on military funding for the “War on Terror.” Our findings indicate that, even after controlling for traditional political factors, such as ideology and partisanship, representatives' religious backgrounds often played a role in support for this bill. Roman Catholics, African-American Protestants, and those of other religions and the non-religious were more strongly opposed to funding for military intervention than mainline Protestants, even after controlling for other factors. This article provides a further look at the influence of religion and suggests that factors outside the traditional political dynamics may also be important in examining elite behaviors.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of studies on the determinants of support for the European Union among national publics. Scholars have analyzed economic, political, informational, and identity factors as influences, but there has been less exploration of cultural factors, most notably religion. This article replicates our earlier studies exploring the impact of confessional culture and religious commitment on support for the European Union, expanding the purview from early member states to more recent accessions and candidates for membership. Using Eurobarometer 65.2 (Papacostas 2006), we demonstrate that religion still shapes attitudes toward European integration, but in varying ways and to different extents in several parts of the Union. In early member states, Catholics — especially committed ones — are more supportive of the European Union than Protestants, confirming earlier findings. In more recent accessions, however, religion's impact is weaker and assumes different configurations. Finally, we present evidence that even in the early member states religion is losing its influence over Europeanist sentiment and suggest that this development presents obstacles to further political integration.

School Board Battles: The Christian Right in Local Politics. By Melissa M. Deckman. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004. 240p. $39.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.

Although it is almost conventional wisdom that the Christian Right was born in local political controversies, often over public education, scholars have usually focused on the movement's role in national electoral politics. Melissa Deckman restores some balance with an interesting study of Christian Right activity in school board politics. Although the book provides only a good start in that endeavor, it suggests many avenues for future research.

Early in the 1994 campaign, South Carolina Democratic humorists quipped that only two skills were required to win a Republican gubernatorial nomination—speaking in tongues and handling snakes (Carney 1994). The reference, of course, was to the expanding role of conservative Protestants in the state's Republican Party. Unfortunately, Democratic strategists understood the dynamics of conservative Protestantism no better in South Carolina than elsewhere, and on November 8, the joke was on them.

David Beasley, a born-again Southern Baptist (but converted in an independent Fundamentalist church), received strong backing from Pentecostal and Charismatic activists and votes from conservative Protestants of all stripes, first winning the GOP gubernatorial nomination and then defeating a popular Democratic lieutenant governor for the state's top post. Beasley's success proves that identifying with a Christian Right movement organization is not an insuperable barrier to political success. His victory also brings into focus the broader role of conservative Protestants in South Carolina's continuing development into one of the nation's most Republican states.

When the United States entered World War I, economic interest groups were far better developed and vocal than they had been at the beginning of the Progressive era. Resolving differing views of equitable policy as entertained by these groups resulted in government economic planning for prosecution of the war effort that, so far from being expertly organized and scientific, was confused and ad hoc. Further dramatic proof of this generalization is provided by Professor Guth in his essay on the marketing of fluid milk and its surplus during the war emergency. Producers had been moving towards marketing cooperatives, with all the risk of violation of antitrust laws that entailed. Much of the volume of milk sales had become concentrated in the previous three decades in a few large dealers who were economically strong, especially in the major milksheds. And a new force, the consumer groups, emerged to try the patience of all concerned with orderly marketing of milk in a time of rising production costs, including Herbert Hoover and his subordinates in and around the Food Administration. Quickly dismantled after the Armistice, the mechanisms they worked out nevertheless became the foundation for massive intervention in a highly demoralized industry after 1933.