Racialize Religiosity, Political Consciousness, and African American Women Voters.

The thesis statement for this research is the more evidence of religiosity and political consciousness among African-American women, the more likely they will vote and participate in the United States political arena to realize their political interests and aspirations. Religiosity and political consciousness are examined as a combined predictor of voting and progressive political action among African-American women. The political interests and aspirations of African-American women are explored by analyzing their progressive political action in eleven United States Presidential Elections from 1964 through 2004. The Hegelian Dialectic Method was adapted in this study to explain the seven dialectical phases of religiosity and political consciousness as determinants of progressive political action among African-American women. The seven dialectical phases were based on the Hegelian Dialectic that identifies the Absolute Spirit placing emphasis on the dialectical relationship between Spirit, God and historical conditions that society and an individual respectively undergoes. The highest phase of development is the Absolute Spirit. By identifying seven dialectic phases, I posited that religiosity and political consciousness enables African-American women to move increasingly to the highest phase of consciousness: progressive political action. The research methodology employed in this research was triangulation. Quantitative data consisted of the National Opinion Research Center of General Social Science1972-2000 (NORC-GSS) national data. Qualitative data consisted of primary focus group research. Eight hypotheses and six research questions guided this study.Three major endogenous variables (e.g. religiosity, political consciousness, and progressive political action) and two exogenous variables (e.g., age, occupation) were tested in this study. All hypotheses were measured at the .05 alpha level. The Hegelian Dialectic Method was confirmed by focus group summary analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]