Evangelical Underdogs

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Abstract
The evangelical crisis pregnancy center (CPC) movement demonstrates both low rates of success and robust support from evangelicals. I draw upon three theoretical frameworks—subcultural identity, organizational solidarity, and doing religion—to explain this seeming paradox. Data stem from a study of this pro-life/antiabortion movement and include fieldwork observations in seven CPCs, thirty-eight semistructured interviews, and analysis of primary and secondary documents. Empirically, evangelicals’ commitment to CPCs is tied to three aspects of subcultural identity: emphasis on intrinsic meanings of success, solidarity among evangelical organizations, and understandings of activism as an identity marker. These findings suggest that evangelicals are doing religion through their activism, making action and identity mutually reinforcing, and insulating activists from forces that might otherwise hinder religious identity. Theoretically, these results indicate that subcultural identity theory should be modified to acknowledge organizational solidarity as a form of religious action and the mutually reinforcing relationship between action and identity as the process of doing religion.

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