Faith After 2004: The Gap That Shrunk

Book Review: The Disappearing God Gap (Smidt, ed.)

Smidt, Corwin. The Disappearing God Gap. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 278 pages. In the aftermath of the 2004 pr…

In the aftermath of the 2004 presidential election, scholars renewed their attention to the role of religion in American electoral politics. George W. Bush mobilized a sizable religious bloc in his reelection campaign against Senator John Kerry, strengthening the perception that highly religious voters tend to vote Republican while less religious voters tend to vote Democratic. This pattern became widely known as the “God Gap.” The implication was clear: if Democrats hoped to win back the White House, they would need to compete more effectively for religious voters. In 2008, Barack Obama made narrowing the “God Gap” a visible priority of his campaign.

In The Disappearing God Gap, six contributing authors analyze how religion functioned in Obama’s historic victory. The book argues that religion played a meaningful role throughout the campaign process—from both parties’ primaries through Election Day. While American public policy maintains a formal separation of church and state, the book insists that this does not mean religion and politics are separated in practice.

Religion and Presidential Politics: A Persistent Relationship

The authors situate the 2008 election within a longer history of religion shaping presidential contests. They highlight, for example, the election of 1800, in which John Adams’s supporters attacked Thomas Jefferson as an “atheist” and “enemy of Christianity,” and they note how prominent clergy participated in that public denunciation. The book also discusses the election of 1928, when Democratic nominee Al Smith’s Roman Catholicism became a central issue and a target of Protestant criticism—an episode that illustrates how religious affiliation can become a liability depending on cultural and institutional context.

The book then turns to contemporary data to underscore the continued significance of religion for modern candidates. Drawing on survey research, it reports that a large portion of Americans consider it important that a president have strong religious beliefs, including substantial majorities within both major parties. It also notes how Americans’ willingness to support a candidate can vary by religious identity: while Americans often want a president to be religious, the acceptable forms of religiosity tend to remain within perceived “mainstream” traditions.

Religious Traditions as Voting Blocs

A key analytical move in the book is its use of “religious tradition” as a framework for categorizing voters. The authors treat religious affiliation as a meaningful social identity that—like region, class, or race—can shape political behavior. Churches, denominations, and religious traditions provide social settings where religion is linked to public issues, parties, candidates, and civic participation.

The book identifies six major religious traditions that it uses to classify the overwhelming majority of the population: evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, and the religiously unaffiliated.

2004: The God Gap in Full View

In its review of the 2004 election, the book argues that religious factors were significant in Bush’s victory over Kerry. Bush performed especially strongly among evangelical Protestants—both as a share of that group’s vote and as a share of his overall coalition. He also won a majority among non-Hispanic Catholics. Kerry, meanwhile, performed comparatively well among mainline Protestants and received meaningful contributions from a broader spread of religious categories.

One of the clearest patterns from 2004, as the book presents it, is the Republican weakness among the religiously unaffiliated. Bush’s underperformance with this group stands out because it was (and remained) one of the larger religious voting blocs.

2008: Shifts in Party Identification and Primary Dynamics

The book argues that the basic religious landscape in 2008 resembled 2004 in terms of group size: evangelicals remained the largest tradition, followed by the unaffiliated, non-Hispanic Catholics, and mainline Protestants. The more consequential change, the authors suggest, was in party identification leading into 2008. They describe measurable shifts—particularly among mainline Protestants—away from Republican identification and toward Democratic identification.

The book then examines how religion shaped both parties’ primaries.

On the Democratic side, the field featured well-known candidates such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Obama and Clinton distinguished themselves early through fundraising and organization. Both prioritized religious outreach, including hiring advisors to shape messaging toward moderate Catholics and mainline Protestants. The book highlights a 2007 forum at George Washington University (sponsored by Sojourners and broadcast by CNN) as a notable moment in which Democratic candidates spoke explicitly about how faith informed their political commitments—an approach the authors portray as part of the party’s attempt to compete more directly for religious voters.

On the Republican side, the field included John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and others. The book emphasizes how complicated religion was for the leading candidates: McCain was often uncomfortable discussing his faith and had criticized leaders of the Religious Right in the past; Romney’s Mormon faith generated suspicion among some conservative Christians; Giuliani’s views on abortion and gay marriage raised concerns for social conservatives; and Huckabee, though an obvious fit for evangelical voters, began the race with less national visibility.

Iowa and New Hampshire, the book argues, revealed how different religious electorates could shape outcomes. In Iowa, where evangelicals were influential, Huckabee performed strongly and Romney faced continued resistance tied to his religious identity. In New Hampshire, where Catholics and unaffiliated voters comprised a large share of the electorate and evangelicals were fewer, McCain rebounded and positioned himself as the frontrunner.

On the Democratic side, the book portrays South Carolina as a turning point, particularly because of the importance of Black Protestant voters. Obama’s campaign emphasized the authenticity of his Christian faith and invested heavily in messaging that resonated with churchgoing voters, which the authors treat as an important factor in his momentum.

The General Election: Obama’s Religious Outreach Versus McCain’s Minimal Emphasis

One of the book’s most striking claims is that the candidates’ approaches to religion in 2008 were “upside down” relative to common expectations. Obama invested heavily in organized religious outreach—far more than John Kerry had in 2004. The book highlights Obama’s hiring of Shaun Casey as a senior advisor for religious affairs and the campaign’s use of “Faith Forums” as a structured method for engagement with religiously motivated voters.

McCain, by contrast, did relatively little to foreground religious language in public appearances and did not prioritize religious messaging in the same way. The authors describe internal campaign uncertainty about whether to focus on explicitly religious outreach or to appeal more broadly to social and fiscal conservatives without emphasizing faith.

The book also discusses how candidate perceptions mattered. It cites polling that suggested Americans were more likely to perceive religion as important in Obama’s life than in McCain’s—an unusual dynamic for a Democratic nominee.

Battleground States and Narrowing the Gap

Finally, the book turns to battleground states to argue that Obama’s religious strategy made a measurable difference in places where small shifts mattered. The text discusses North Carolina in particular, noting how Obama gained ground among religious voters compared to Kerry, while McCain performed below Bush’s 2004 levels among evangelicals. Obama’s narrow victory there is presented as an example of the broader theme: he reduced Republican dominance among key religious constituencies while maintaining strong support among non-evangelical voters.

Conclusion

Overall, The Disappearing God Gap argues that narrowing the “God Gap” was a meaningful component of Obama’s 2008 victory. At the same time, the book closes with an open question about durability: will Democrats continue sustained efforts to reconnect with religious voters, or will the gap reassert itself in subsequent cycles? The authors suggest that later elections—such as the 2010 midterms—indicate the work of closing the gap remained incomplete.