 |
Christian Conservatives in 2008
by Jeffery L. Sheler
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA. -- Despite the diminished influence of Christian conservatives in the 2006 election, and amid signs that the "God gap" separating Republicans and Democrats may be narrowing, religion remains an important factor in electoral politics in this country and is likely to play a decisive role in the 2008 presidential race. Yet exactly how religious values will infuse the political debates, and which candidates stand to benefit the most, are far from clear.
That was the consensus of six experts -- religion scholars, political theorists, and journalists from around the country -- who participated in a recent Regent University symposium on "The Future of Religion in American Politics." The early February event drew some 500 evangelical students, professors, and others to the university's Robertson School of Government, named after Regent founder and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Much of the discussion focused on the impact of religion in the upcoming presidential race. "The coming campaign undoubtedly will involve religion big time," said Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor and editor of the evangelical WORLD magazine. "The question," he said, "is whether the dominant religious discussion will involve a religion of reality" -- which he described as a Bible-based faith that "describes the reality of the human condition" -- or "a religion of nicety [that is] based upon utopian hopes and claims."
Adherents of the religion of nicety, Olasky explained, "believe that poor people everywhere want to do the right thing, so solving the poverty problem is like solving a math problem: Move dollars from X to Y and the job is done." But those who practice a religion of reality -- namely, Christian conservatives -- "see poverty as a complex tangle of spiritual, psychological, political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors" with no simple solution.
Regarding foreign policy, Olasky said, "Those who subscribe to the religion of nicety believe that leaders and nations essentially want peace, so if only we clear up misunderstandings and sign treaties or arms control agreements, all will be well." Adherents to the religion of reality, meanwhile, "understand that leaders and people often covet their neighbor's homes, industries and wealth, and if they can grab such by force they often will. Those who want peace need to stop aggression and terrorism, by force if necessary."
Olasky, who famously helped then-candidate George W. Bush define "compassionate conservatism" as a political philosophy in the 2000 presidential campaign, failed to mention the subject in his talk.
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, noted that religious behavior has proved to be a strong predictor of voting patterns in recent elections. He cited polls showing that religiously active people tend to vote Republican by a 2-to-1 margin while those less engaged in religious activity tend to vote Democratic. But while this "religion gap" or "God gap" is real, he said, it is not as simple as it seems. "It is not entirely religious people in one party and totally secular people in the other." Both parties are riven by the so-called culture wars.
So far, panelists concurred, no 2008 presidential hopeful in either party has emerged as a favorite of religious conservatives. Neither of the two leading Republican contenders, Senator John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have natural ties to the religious right. And even though he shares many of their conservative views on social issues, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's Mormon faith poses an obstacle for some evangelicals who view Mormonism as a non-Christian cult. No other social conservatives among the current crop of Republican candidates were mentioned by name.
Efforts by some Democrats to infuse their campaigns with religious values, several speakers noted, so far have not proven persuasive to religious conservatives who tend to view the sudden religiosity as political opportunism. Cromartie predicted that "any candidate who attempts to contrive a religious sensibility in an inauthentic manner" will be seen as "insincere and politically calculating" by religious voters. "However, any candidate who is tone deaf to religious language and who is uncomfortable speaking publicly about religious themes…will not be nominated by their party, much less have a chance to win the presidency."
But Michael Barone, a political columnist for U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, argued that "events and decisions not yet made" are likely to influence voters, including evangelicals, more than religious behavior or litmus tests. Concerns over terrorism and national security could be decisive. In the face of terrorist threats, he said, "voters eventually will ask, 'Who is better able to protect us?' And the answer for many social conservatives will be Giuliani or McCain." It was as close as the day's discussion came to addressing the turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrorism threat, even though evangelical voters have been among the most persistent in supporting President Bush's war policies. Recent polls have shown a decline in that support among evangelicals.
Not everyone on the panel was ready to concede the religious vote to social conservatives. Darryl G. Hart, director of honors programs at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, Del. and the author of A SECULAR FAITH: WHY CHRISTIANITY FAVORS THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, described what he called a "left turn" among evangelical baby boomers. He said Democratic gains in the 2006 midterm elections "suggest that the religious right may be faltering in its hold upon born-again Protestants."
Since the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 1970s and the Christian Coalition in the 1980s, Hart noted, evangelicals have become a reliable constituency of the Republican Party, focusing much of their political energy on moral issues and biblical values. "But biblical standards of morality have a way of also nurturing an interest in biblical standards of justice," he said.
"Consequently, while the older generation of evangelicals read the Bible for its application to sex and family relations, younger evangelicals turn to holy writ for guidance on war, hunger and poverty…The irony is that once the religious right let the genie of Bible-based politics out of bottle of American conservatism they may have unleashed a Protestant force that Republicans will find impossible to harness."
 |
|
|
|
Hart cited as an example a policy statement adopted two years ago by the National Association of Evangelicals entitled "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." It stakes out positions on a mix of issues dear to social conservatives, such as religious liberty, families, and the sanctity of human life, but also on human rights and humanitarian initiatives generally associated with liberal politics -- economic justice, the environment, and opposition to violence. "By no means radical in its goals," said Hart, "the NAE's embrace of liberal concerns was decisively out of step with the laissez-faire, anti-communist strain of Republicanism that appealed to evangelicals" in the past, either as part of the silent majority or the religious right.
Perhaps the best indication of a leftward political drift in evangelicalism, Hart said, "is the man in the Hawaiian shirt" -- megachurch pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren." Rather than using royalties from THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE -- his 2002 blockbuster which has sold more than 26 million copies -- to augment his lifestyle, Hart noted, Warren formed and funded an organization to mobilize one billion Christians worldwide into "an outreach effort to attack the five global, evil giants of our day…spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, poverty, disease, and illiteracy."
The ambitious project, Hart said, grew out of Warren's conviction that "no government can effectively eradicate these afflictions…By assigning to the church tasks typically reserved for the modern state, Warren's initiative will likely prompt American evangelicals to demand that the United States follow the church's lead in fixing the world's problems."
But if there is a leftward drift among younger evangelicals, Caleb Dalton hasn't noticed it. Dalton was one of a dozen or so students attending the symposium from Patrick Henry College, an evangelical school in northern Virginia that caters to home-schooled young people. In a hallway conversation during a break in the proceedings, he described himself as "definitely a conservative" and said he finds that many of his peers "are at least as conservative as their parents or maybe more so."
While he leans Republican "based on many of the party's policy positions," Dalton said he finds partisan politics in general to be "disturbing."
"It seems to necessitate compromise just for the sake of being elected," he said. "There is a definite danger of making a party your religion instead of the morals or principles that you believe in."
Brian Groves, a graduate student at Yale University, did not hesitate to identify himself as a Republican but quickly added that he is "an open slate" when it comes to the 2008 election. "No one party has a corner on logic or on values or on what's good for our country," Groves said. "I'm interested to see what people of both parties have to say."
He said he is impressed by the fact that Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "are attempting to reach out to those of religious faith. That is an important part of who we are as Americans."
Despite the symposium's forward-looking title, several of the speakers looked back at history more than to the future in describing religion's role in politics. Daniel L. Dreisbach, a professor of public affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., traced religious themes in the speeches and writings of George Washington and other founding fathers to argue that the first president "was convinced that the imitation of Christ by America's citizens was necessary for national happiness," and that "the survival of a civil state depended upon a vibrant religious culture...Washington seemed to be to saying that if you're laboring to undermine the public role of religion, you can't call yourself a patriot -- indeed, you may be a traitor."
Former ambassador Michael Novak, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said that Thomas Jefferson saw Christianity as "peculiarly the religion of freedom and the support of republican government," even though Jefferson's own belief was "on the fringe" of Christianity. And Amherst College political science professor Hadley Arkes explored the philosophical origins of the nation's founding documents, which he said were based on a shared belief in a divine lawgiver. Because that theological underpinning was so integral to the birth of the nation, Arkes said, "To ask about the future of religion in American politics is to ask about the future of popular government." While acknowledging the objections of those who see religious political involvement today as a threat to the separation of church and state, the speakers seemed in agreement that religion is a legitimate part of the American political tableau.
"God talk, at least as much as rights talk, is the way America speaks," said Jean Bethke Elshtain, a political philosopher at the University of Chicago. "American politics is unintelligible if severed from America's religions, most importantly Christianity." She added that while there is always potential for abuse when injecting religion into civic discourse, "it is essential to the health of our civil society that we [recognize] that religions help to provide a critical self-limitation that keeps a political system from moving into a prideful triumphalism" that threatens to erode individual freedom and the free exercise of religion.
After the symposium, Charles W. Dunn, dean of Regent's school of government and the program's moderator, said he is sometimes troubled when he sees Christians "going about supplanting the proclamation of the gospel, placing the reformation of society before regeneration of the heart. When they do that they get off track. Our peace and joy do not depend on whether our political views prevail but on what's inside of us as Christians. When we realize that, then we will have trusting relationships with other people and we will welcome those of different persuasions."
Jeffery L. Sheler is a contributing editor at U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT and the author of BELIEVERS: A JOURNEY INTO EVANGELICAL AMERICA (Viking, 2006).
|
|
