In an election year and with primaries underway, more and more folks are weighing in on how Catholics will vote, or how they approach political issues more broadly. There is much talk of polarization among Catholics, and in some ways this is accurate, but in theological matters, Catholics remain very much united.

The Politics and Religion Journal recently published a special issue called “Catholics and Contemporary American Politics“; my thanks to Dr. Corwin E. Smidt for his editorial leadership! It is filled with helpful analyses, and you can read my article, “Polarization? Identifying What Divides and Unites American Catholics” to explore this through a national survey of 1500+ Catholics. Here is the abstract to give you a taste:

Polarization among American Catholics has been a subject of both scholarly and media attention. Using a nationally representative survey of over 1500 Catholics, the first part of this article explores the extent to which race, gender, generation, and commitment to Catholicism shape polarization among Catholics; these different characteristics affect Catholics’ political and civic beliefs and practices to varying degrees. The second part of the article parses Catholics into their political party groupings–Democrat, Republican, and Independent–to determine the ways party affiliation affects Catholics’ understanding of non-political religious beliefs and practices. The analysis reveals that political divisions are evident among some of the Catholic subgroupings, but that theological unity nevertheless prevails across party lines.