I think that we are closer together in some ways than my initial post suggests.
Much of the scholarship that I cite (Ault, Wuthnow, and others) doesn’t necessarily portray evangelicals and fundamentalists in flattering terms. Progressives especially will not be heartened by the survey data on evangelicals that continues to document very conservative views on gender roles and many other issues. While ethnographers like James Ault and Marie Griffith have shown how things are more complicated on the ground (and some signs of resistance), there is no getting around the fact that most evangelicals are not gender egalitarians. Likewise, evangelical views of American Muslims are often less than charitable (as documented by surveys conducted by the Pew Forum). In an earlier era, Wuthnow’s teachers Glock and Stark documented some pretty harrowing anti-Semitism among conservative Protestants.

I guess the difference between Frank’s analysis and the findings above is that the researchers are not asserting that there is a causal connection between material deprivation and conservatism. There is no strong social scientific basis for the claims that declining social status and economic frustration cause the views that progressives find distasteful.

My point is not that all evangelicals are irenic Ned Flanders types, but that evangelical and fundamentalist pugnaciousness is not caused by economic factors. The recent piece by Larry Bartels in the NY Times corroborates this claim. Bartels (a political scientist at Princeton) found that it is among upper class voters that social issues really are the determining factor in vote choice. It is hard to explain the conservatism of evangelical upper-middle class voters on the basis on economic deprivation.

So I agree with you that “empathy” can too often slide over into a celebration of the moderation of the religious group in question.

For a style of ethnographic empathy that can reveal both the irenic and the dark impulses of a group, see Robert Orsi’s semi-autobiographical work on American Catholics. Orsi is not reductionist but he is also quite unsparing in his view of Italian-American Catholic devotional culture.

“Empathy” needs scare quotes here, because too often sociologists use it as cover for their own mild-mannered, overly-cautious work. Ault is a perfect example. That’s not empathy, it’s a false dichotomy. You write, “Rather than portraying conservative religion as a reactionary response to emotional strain, Ault argues that fundamentalist churches provide their members with rich social networks that function as an extended family.” Talk about reductionist! Why can’t it be both? Indeed, in the hundreds of evangelical churches and homes I’ve visited over the years, it almost always is. What’s more, many evangelicals recognize it as such and see no shame in naming it as such. It’s only scholars projecting social scientific centrism under the guise of empathy who resist naming that complex overlap of impulses.

This has emerged as a serious problem in the scholarly study of American evangelicalism. Trying to overcome Mencken’s caricature of evangelicals, too many scholars have resorted to another, even more cartoonish representation — Ned Flanders. In doing so, academic scholarship has reproduced the false dichotomy normally trafficked in by my colleagues in journalism — religion as either innocuous spirituality or dangerous fanaticism, perfume or mustard gas. The difference is that scholars, ever wary of appearing sensationalist even when confronted with sensational material, tend to see only sweetness and social networks. To paraphrase the Louvin Brothers, Bitterness is real.