Political opportunity structures, evangelical Christians and morality politics in Canada, Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Politically active evangelical Christian populations are found in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Yet their patterns of activism differ not only from the exceptional United States experience, but also one another. This paper applies a political opportunity approach to explain these variations, demonstrating how differences in denominational identities and linkages and political institutions shape evangelical activism, and illustrating these opportunity structures through an examination of the struggles over same-sex marriage in each country. This approach offers a variety of further avenues for the comparative study of ‘morality politics’ in different countries, moving beyond bilateral comparisons with the United States.

加拿大、澳大利亚和新西兰都有政治上活跃的基督教福音派人口。不过，他们的活跃方式迥异于美国的情形，彼此之间也不尽相同。本文用政治机会的理路来解释这些差异，本文通过考察每个国家围绕同性婚姻的争论，描述了派别身份、联系以及政治体制如何塑造福音派的活动。本文为将来不同国家“道德政治”的比较研究提供了不同的路径，已不限于美国的双边比较。

KEYWORDS:

• Evangelicals
• fundamentalism
• Christian Right
• social conservatism
• same-sex marriage

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jonathan Malloy is professor of political science and chair of the Department of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Standard Research Grant [410-2004-1396] and a visiting fellowship at the School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University.