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In the fall of 2000 at the Houston meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), I sat in on a paper presentation by Kraig Beyerlein about a study that he and Mark Chaves had conducted regarding the political activities of religious congregations in the United States. While the results of their study changed somewhat by the time it appeared in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JSSR),1 the story they told in Houston remained essentially the same: namely, that religious traditions tend to specialize when it comes to political activism. Conservative Protestants tend to do one thing, mainline Protestants another, and Roman Catholics still another. One result, more than any of the others, caught my eye: Black congregations are 7 times more likely than mainline Protestant churches, 24 times more likely than conservative Protestant churches and 42 times more likely than Roman Catholic churches to invite a political candidate to come and speak. Since we were in the midst of a presidential campaign, I could not help wondering who was speaking at more churches – Al Gore or George Bush. I suspected that it was Al Gore. That is, if it is true that Black congregations are more likely than any other type of congregation to invite a political candidate to come and speak, and since African Americans tend to vote for Democratic candidates, then it seemed likely that Al Gore was receiving more invitations from churches to come and speak than was George Bush.
I initially planned to test my hunch on the 2000 campaign, but for a variety of reasons it became easier to wait until 2004 to track where and when the presidential and vice-presidential candidates spoke. My working hypothesis, of course, was that Senators John Kerry and John Edwards would visit and speak at more churches than George Bush and Dick Cheney. As it turned out, my hunch was right.
To track where the candidates visited from March 3, 2004 (the day when John Kerry effectively wrapped up the Democratic nomination) through November 2, 2004 (the day of the 2004 Presidential election) I gathered data from numerous sources.2
I tracked the campaign appearances only of President Bush and Senator Kerry until the latter selected a running mate (July 6). From that point on, I tracked the appearances of Vice-President Dick Cheney and Senator Edwards as well. Into one category—Church Campaign Appearances—I sorted all speaking appearances by any of the candidates at places of worship (Christian or otherwise)3 and grouped them according to broad denominational classification (Roman Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Conservative Protestant, Black Protestant, and Other). In a separate category—Other Faith-Based Campaign Appearances—I sorted candidate appearances at non-church events that had ties to faith-based institutions or movements.
Examples of appearances by President Bush in this second category include his appearance at the Knights of Columbus (Roman Catholic) gathering in Dallas, his via-satellite addresses to the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Association of Evangelicals, his meeting with the Pope at the Vatican, his videotape addresses to faith-based gatherings such as the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast, and a speech at Concordia University. Examples of appearances in this category on the part of Senators Kerry and Edwards include Kerry's appearances at the Quadrennial Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the annual gathering of the National Baptist Convention, Kerry's various meetings with Black Protestant and Roman Catholic clergy, and Edwards' speech at the Congressional Black Caucus' Annual Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. Finally, I coded secular appearances by the candidates into a variety of categories: private venues (e.g., homes, hotels); community centers, parks, fairgrounds; convention centers, stadiums, and arenas; elementary and high schools, colleges, universities, and technical schools; other public venues (e.g., White House news conferences and photo opportunities); and television and radio interviews.
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