How Iowa Became a Stronghold of the Religious Right

[rug]

It was not always thus.

December 31, 2011
By Randall Balmer

“I prefer to think of Iowa as I saw it through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy,” Herbert Hoover, the only Iowan ever elected president of the United States, wrote at the beginning of his memoir. “Those were eyes filled with the wonders of Iowa’s streams and woods, of the mystery of growing crops.”

Having spent my high-school years in Des Moines, I too have fond and nostalgic recollections of Iowa. Although I initially harbored an adolescent’s resentment at having to move from Michigan to what I reviled as “farm country,” Iowa soon won me over with its lovely undulating hills, its strong progressive tradition, its statewide newspaper, the Des Moines Register, and the sturdy values of its citizens.

And no, contrary to the stereotype propagated by those from the coasts who disdain the Midwest as flyover country, Iowa is not flat. Anyone who has ridden RAGBRAI — the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa — knows that the topography of Iowa is definitely not flat. (I’ve done the ride twice, in 1988 and 1992, and I hope to persuade my sons to accompany me the next time around in the not-too-distant future.)

I don’t get back to Iowa as often as I’d like, but I have family there so I return from time to time. Although there is still much to admire in Iowa, much has changed, especially in the realm of politics. And all of this becomes apparent when the Iowa precinct caucuses come around every four years.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/5541/how_iowa_became_a_stronghold_of_the_religious_right

[AlbertCat]

1. Iowa is not flat.

Oh... well then... that makes up for everything....

[MarkCharles]

2. Iowa also has an East/West division:

East of DesMoines and around DesMoines votes more liberal. West of DesMoines votes more conservative.
The evangelicals populate all areas like polka dots, but they are well organized, and politically active, whereas liberals in Iowa are less likely to become and stay that politically organized.

The gay marriage issue was decided by the state supreme court, and the evangelicals went right out and organized to get those judges thrown off and to get their former conservative governor re-elected.

Evangelical or otherwise, churches in all Iowa's small towns are the center of social and community life. There are literally over 500 rural towns with less than 1000 people in them in that state, and each one of them has at least one very active vibrant church.