In another important development, Roman Catholic legislators are no longer predominantly aligned with the Democratic Party. Traditional Catholics land on the Republican side and theologically liberal Catholics on the Democratic.
"Religion is much more aligned with partisanship than it was in the past," said Guth, a professor of political science at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. Evangelical Protestants recruit other evangelicals to run for office, as do theologically liberal Catholics, conservative mainline Protestants, and so forth.
Sociologists Steven Tuch, left, and William D'Antonio completed an extensive survey of congressional voting patterns over a 23-year period.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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The most visible examples of such alignments have occurred among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics, according to D'Antonio and Tuch.
Most mainline Protestant denominations have taken a formal position supporting a woman's right to have an abortion, while the Catholic Church has steadfastly opposed any form of abortion. Yet some lawmakers affiliated with those faith groups in recent sessions have voted the other way.
From 1979 to 2003, mainline Protestant Democrats -- Episcopalian, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist and United Church of Christ -- generally followed their church's teaching, increasing their abortion-rights votes by 13 percentage points, from 62 percent to 75 percent, according to the study.
During the same time, mainline Protestant Republicans in the Senate shifted from being split on abortion -- 45 percent for abortion rights and 55 percent against -- to being 80 percent antiabortion in 1996. Mainline Protestant Republicans in the House have remained steady -- 80 percent are against abortion rights, D'Antonio said.
Not surprisingly, Catholic Republicans remained overwhelmingly antiabortion during the period of the study, voting almost unanimously with the antiabortion position taken by the Vatican and by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, D'Antonio said.
At the same time, Catholic Democrats have evolved from being strongly in favor of abortion rights to overwhelmingly so.
On other key issues taken by the bishops, the roles are reversed, with Catholic Republicans opposing the positions Catholic bishops have taken and Catholic Democrats supporting them. Such issues include taxes, minimum wage, health care, removing sanctions against Cuba and nuclear weapons.
In interviews and in their study, which has not been published, D'Antonio and Tuch said they are concerned that the polarization of Congress will undermine the country's two-party system, which was designed for consensus building.
As ideology has taken over and policy debates have become uncompromisingly brutal, many moderate Americans give up on the political process as potential officeholders or voters, D'Antonio said. "A significant portion of the public has been turned off by the political system, leaving the extremes to fight it out."
