:Class / Christian

New York Timesの特集、Class Mattersを引き続き読んでいる。
今回の特集は、昨年の大統領選のときに日本でも話題になった（のだと思う）宗教右派について幾分か示唆してくれるところがある。

The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.

What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.
Source:　[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/national/class/EVANGELICALS-FINAL.html?pagewanted=print:title=May 22, 2005　On a Christian Mission to the Top
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK]

宗教右派は、人口比の増大によってその影響力を拡大しているのではない。
彼らは、社会的指導層のうちに占める人口比の増大によって、つまりそこにクサビを打ち込むような仕方で影響力を行使することによって、社会の行方をヘッジしようとしているのである。

Now a few affluent evangelicals are directing their attention and money at some of the tallest citadels of the secular elite: Ivy League universities. Three years ago a group of evangelical Ivy League alumni formed the Christian Union, an organization intended to "reclaim the Ivy League for Christ," according to its fund-raising materials, and to "shape the hearts and minds of many thousands who graduate from these schools and who become the elites in other American cultural institutions."

なかには、あからさまにアイビーリーグの在学生・出身者をターゲットに影響力の浸透を図ろうとする団体もある。彼らは、潤沢な資金力と華麗な経歴を武器にできるのである。

そうした団体の１つ、the Christian Unionの創設者であるMatt Bennettは次のように言う：

And trends in the Ivy League today could shape the culture for decades to come, he said. "So many leaders come out of these campuses. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Ivy League grads; four of the seven Massachusetts Supreme Court justices; Christian ministry leaders; so many presidents, as you know; leaders of business - they are everywhere."

Their commitment to their faith is confounding a long-held assumption that, like earlier generations of Baptists or Pentecostals, prosperous evangelicals would abandon their religious ties or trade them for membership in establishment churches. Instead, they have kept their traditionalist beliefs, and their churches have even attracted new members from among the well-off.

以前のアメリカ社会においては、次のような暗黙の前提が成り立っていたのだという：富裕層が主に属する宗派は、決してその影響力を政治に対して行使しようとはしなかったのだ、と。

そうした社会意識の転換に加え、──あるいはそれと連動する形で──、いくつかの偶発的要因もこのキリスト教右派の政治的肥大を加速させた。

There were also demographic forces at work, beginning with the G.I. Bill, which sent a pioneering generation of evangelicals to college. Probably the greatest boost to the prosperity of evangelicals as a group came with the Sun Belt expansion of the 1970's and the Texas oil boom, which brought new wealth and businesses to the regions where evangelical churches had been most heavily concentrated.

それまでは高等・大学教育に手を出すに至らなかった保守層が、これらの要因によって社会の上層部へ人員を送り出す足掛かりを得たのである。

The rise of evangelicals has also coincided with the gradual shift of most of them from the Democratic Party to the Republican and their growing political activism. The conservative Christian political movement seldom developed in poor, rural Bible Belt towns. Instead, its wellsprings were places like the Rev. Ed Young's booming mega-church in suburban Houston or the Rev. Timothy LaHaye's in Orange County, Calif., where evangelical professionals and businessmen had the wherewithal to push back against the secular culture by organizing boycotts, electing school board members and lobbying for conservative judicial appointments.

そして、彼らの影響力の肥大は、富裕層における圧倒的な共和党びいきとも連動している。民主党支持の旗色を鮮明にしているNew York Timesだが、どうすれば民主党が政権を奪還することができるのか、これらの階級社会分析が示唆する情勢からは、即効性のある方策を引き出すことは容易そうには見えない。