James L. Guth on George W. Bush and Religious Politics

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read excerpts from an essay by Furman University political science professor James L. Guth on George W. Bush and religious politics. It appears in the new book HIGH RISK AND BIG AMBITION: THE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. BUSH, edited by Steven E. Schier (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004):

George W. Bush has testified that his call to run for the presidency came through a sermon at his second inaugural as governor. In any case, his campaign strategy, shaped by Karl Rove, focused on the GOP’s two key resources: business money and religious votes. Bush’s faith gave him unique advantages in his pursuit of the latter: he was by upbringing and affiliation a mainline Protestant; his Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist roots put him squarely at the center of the old GOP religious clientele. But by experience, belief and sensibility, he was an evangelical, speaking fluently the religious language of the new party constituencies. (This perhaps explains why the 2000 National Election Study shows far more evangelicals identifying Bush incorrectly as a Baptist than correctly as a Methodist.) He often bypassed the most visible (and often unpopular) Christian right figures such as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Jerry Falwell, relying instead on former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, evangelist James Robison, and several Southern Baptist leaders. These enthusiasts assured evangelical clergy that Bush was one of them, aided by the candidate’s famous declaration that Jesus was his “favorite political philosopher.” Although Bush faced other Republicans close to religious conservatives, such as Christian right leader Gary Bauer and anti-abortion activist Alan Keyes, this appeal was effective. Bush not only was the overwhelming favorite among evangelical ministers from the start, but he also carried almost three-quarters of their primary votes and benefited from considerable pastoral activism. Exit polls show that he did almost as well among their parishioners, who gave him a boost in the crucial South Carolina and Super Tuesday GOP primaries. …

Once his nomination was secure, Bush moved again to broaden his religious base, reassuring mainline Protestants that he was not a prisoner of the Christian right. Although he rejected softening the GOP’s strict anti-abortion plank, he insisted that pro-choice Republicans were welcome in the party. He avoided anti-gay pronouncements and signaled that there would be gay appointees in his administration. In touting faith-based programs for solving social problems, he talked more about the poor than is typical of GOP nominees. This was designed to attract religious minorities, such as African American Protestants, and Catholic traditionalists, who find the staunch economic individualism of evangelical Republicans out of tune with Catholic social teachings. The GOP convention itself was replete with highly visible roles for African American Protestant and Catholic clergy. During the fall campaign, Bush stressed broad ethical themes, asserted that America would benefit from spiritual renewal, and repeatedly featured the benefits of faith-based social programs.

Did Bush’s religious strategy work? Obviously, it did not provide him with a comfortable popular vote majority but, together with the religious counter-campaign by the Gore-Lieberman ticket, it probably did enhance the impact of religious forces on the outcome. Many careful observers have argued that the 2000 presidential vote was defined by cultural rather than economic divisions. News magazines printed red and blue electoral maps, vividly depicting Bush’s dominance of the cultural “heartland” versus Gore’s majorities on the “postmodern” coasts. “So what is it that divides the two nations?” asked political analyst Michael Barone. “The answer is religion.” …

One-third of Bush’s votes came from evangelical traditionalists, reflecting their large numbers, strong GOP preferences, and high turnout. Indeed, the entire evangelical community (about 25 percent of the public) supplied almost 40 percent of Bush’s votes. Add mainline and Catholic traditionalists, throw in the Mormons, and the total for theological conservatives rises to 60 percent. (And Bush got a few more traditionalist votes from minorities, such as Hispanic Pentecostals, Orthodox Jews, and some Muslims.) Much of the rest of his total came from mainline and Catholic centrists. While theological modernists, religious minorities, and secular voters formed only a tiny part of the Bush coalition, they dominated the Democratic vote, both for Al Gore and for the Democratic legislators Bush would confront in Washington. …

Like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush had to negotiate the shoals of cultural and religious conflict in the United States. And like Clinton, Bush had an almost intuitive understanding of parts of the American religious community and was a quick learner about others. And even more than the case with Clinton, Bush’s private behavior, public rhetoric and policy proposals were infused by religion. The president’s electoral base was rooted in a coalition of theological conservatives from the three major white Christian traditions, especially evangelicals. His campaign promises and policy initiatives were designed, in part, to solidify his base, while extending the GOP’s appeal to Catholics, as well as Hispanic and African American Protestants. In office, Bush exhibited a deft touch dealing with issues crucial to his traditionalist constituency, such as abortion, satisfying many of their expectations without alienating other religious groups. In the short term, however, he was unable to execute his “expansionary” policies, such as the faith-based initiative and educational vouchers. Solid Democratic resistance in Congress, divisions among his traditionalist supporters, and skepticism on the part of religious leaders in the targeted minority religious communities stymied his efforts.

Bush’s religious strategy was, of course, affected by events unforeseen when he took office. Just as Clinton benefited from economic prosperity that kept his ratings high even in the midst of impeachment battles, Bush’s popularity was sustained by the international conflicts dominating the national agenda after September 11. That popularity largely overrode the normal Democratic propensities of several religious constituencies, at least as long as terrorism and the war in Iraq headed the national agenda. That popularity provided a boost for Republican congressional candidates in 2002, but the Bush religious coalition did not guarantee a national majority for Republican presidential candidates, as the 2000 election had demonstrated. This was especially true if a stagnant economy replaced the war on terror as the main focus of attention. In that event, even the traditionalist coalition backing Bush’s economic policies would be attenuated and his support among religious minorities and secular voters would plummet. Should an economic recovery occur by 2004, the president would still have to go beyond his religious base and pursue an expansionist religious policy, focusing on the very same religious groups targeted in 2000. He would seek to extend his modest success among white Catholics to Hispanic Catholics and Protestants and, perhaps, to still-suspicious African American Protestants. The president and his adviser Rove gave every indication of following that strategy as they planned Bush’s legislative agenda for the fall of 2003 and his presidential campaign in 2004.

The best-laid campaign plans are often upset by unexpected events. The Supreme Court’s 2003 decision striking down state sodomy laws and the subsequent decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court striking down restrictions on same-sex marriage evoked a massive reaction among religious conservatives that threatened to raise these questions to the forefront of the public agenda. Such issues, which Bush had always soft-pedaled, seem tailor-made for dividing traditionalists and centrists within the GOP and potentially reducing the party’s appeal to independent voters. If traditionalist forces mobilize to protect traditional understandings of marriage, whether through statute or constitutional amendment, the Bush administration faces the inevitability of either disappointing core supporters or forfeiting the middle ground. An unexpected vacancy on the Supreme Court would raise similar problems. In any event, whether the election in 2004 brings a focus on economic issues or foreign policy or a revival of hot-button social issues, the Bush administration’s actions will be shaped in part by religious forces.

Leo Ribuffo Extended Interview

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of the R&E interview with historian Leo Ribuffo on evangelicals and politics:

Can you give me a brief history of evangelicals and politics in America?

That depends on what you mean by “evangelical.” American evangelical Protestantism has deep roots, going back maybe to the Puritans, certainly to the Great Awakening of the 18th century. The modern term “evangelical” applies to moderate theological conservatives — people like Billy Graham, say. That only becomes common in the 1950s. So it depends on which type of evangelical you want to talk about. I think evangelicals, in the broad sense, have always been involved in politics. One of the oddest alliances in American political history was fighting against the British for independence. It consisted of Enlightenment deists — people like Jefferson — who were strongly pro-independence, and a lot of the heirs to the Great Awakening, who were also strongly pro-independence. They didn’t agree on much else, but that they agreed on. It seems to me that the modern form of evangelicalism, broadly speaking, has its roots at about the same time as Jacksonian democracy, so-called. I think if Andrew Jackson came back in politics, and Charles Grandison Finney came back in evangelicalism, a lot of what they see now would be perfectly intelligible. The Democrats are the more secular party, of course. Evangelicalism in that sense is really kind of a creation of democracy. Each person can read the Bible and come up with his social conclusions, his cultural conclusions, and his political conclusions. That’s something you get in 19th-century evangelicalism that you wouldn’t have gotten from the Puritans, you wouldn’t have gotten from Jonathan Edwards. Of course, this period in the 1820s, ’30s, and ’40s produces, with evangelical impetus, all sorts of reform movements — from antislavery to temperance to the peace movement. It’s all over the place. So in that sense, there is nothing new about evangelicals being active in politics.

Does the intensity of evangelical political involvement today date back to then?

As with many things in American history, there are ebbs and flows. The period of the 1830s and ’40s is a very intense period of evangelical activism in politics. Then you get a less intense phase in the late 19th century, though there is plenty: the rise of temperance, again; the move to put “under God” into the Constitution; various efforts at morals legislation, Prohibition being the most famous that finally succeeds around the time of World War I. There are lots of periods when evangelical activism and politicized evangelical groups are just as strong as now. It’s not a constant, but there certainly are comparable periods.

Is there a constant factor in all of them as to why the movement suddenly emerges to be so influential?

To be glib, the constant factors are two: 1) evangelicals feel under threat by cultural change, real cultural change; and 2) there seems a good opportunity to forge ahead with their program. We see that in the 1870s, 1840s; in the 1920s, it’s much more of a sense that traditional values, Protestant values, are under threat. But there is also a sense by some of the fundamentalists of the 1920s — and that’s a subset of evangelicalism — that Jesus is coming soon; World War I proves that, so now we’ve really got to get organized.

I spoke with an evangelical congressman who indicated that evangelicals will be out in great numbers for President Bush because we’re getting near “the latter days.” Was he speaking alone, or do you think that feeling is out there?

That’s really a very complicated question. We have a popular literature of folks saying that Jesus is returning soon. But we have the same people taking out 30-year mortgages. Evangelicals and fundamentalists are just as complicated as anybody else. So it’s hard to say how much they really believe it. Certainly, it’s true it was very strongly felt in the 1920s, right after that horrendous, apocalyptic war that theological liberals didn’t predict. Plus, the fundamentalists of the 1920s saw in the potential creation of Israel, through World War I diplomacy, a sign that Jesus was returning. Now, that’s a consistent theme, but I think the fact that it really just begins with the British Balfour Declaration of 1917 would mean that, in the ’20s, the feeling of imminent return is much stronger. These are really hard historical questions. How do you judge the zeitgeist of one era versus another? What I would say, if we’re doing a comparative intensity of expectation of Jesus’ return, is that in the late 19th century and in the 1920s, believers in Bible prophecy actually named the person they thought would be the Antichrist; Napoleon III and Benito Mussolini didn’t work out. I think the fact that they don’t name the Antichrist now leaves a lot more wiggle room. Jesus is coming soon, but not in the life of somebody currently 50 years old.

Are these issues that politicians know will sit well with evangelicals?

Oh, sure. Discontent, fear, optimism do not, by themselves, create mass movements. You need someone shrewd, able to mobilize. And at various periods, those leaders arise within evangelical communities. Intelligent politicians know how to take advantage of this.

Is George W. Bush one of those?

I don’t think so. I think the person who deserves credit, without question, for forming the alliance between theologically conservative Protestants, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Pentecostals, and Republican conservatives is Ronald Reagan. It starts in ’79-’80. By ’84, you already have evangelicals and fundamentalists solidly Republican, at roughly the same percentage they are now. And George Bush the younger has picked up as an heir to that. I don’t think he’s built that coalition; he’s the heir to that coalition.

He has certainly responded in deed more than President Reagan did, though, hasn’t he?

Issues change. Bush has certainly talked more about faith-based initiatives. On the other hand, he hardly talks about abortion as much as Reagan did. And it is also true that he feels very uncomfortable with the constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Now, Reagan, too, used his evangelical supporters. He never gave them much of what they wanted. I think it’s a comparable kind of relationship here. It’s pretty clear that President Bush is personally much more of an evangelical than President Reagan, but I think their political relationship with the movement is roughly the same.

The map of the country seems to be divided between those who “live and let live” and then the moral absolutists. Has religion and the involvement of religion in politics become a divisive factor in this country?

Religion in politics has always been something of a divisive factor. For a long time, it was mostly Protestant versus Catholic. Now it seems to be secularist theological liberals, on the one hand, versus theological conservatives on the other. Yet I wouldn’t overstate it. Theological conservatives are human beings, too, and they change. If you took a fundamentalist from the 1920s and sat him down with, say, Jerry Falwell, he would say, “Boy! Jerry Falwell is this really liberal guy. He hangs out with these Catholics and these Jews. He’s made all these compromises.” The evangelical and fundamentalist communities are constantly changing. We’ve got to be careful not to just infer the beliefs of the rank and file of any movement from the more strident statements of the leaders.

So religion isn’t more intertwined with politics now than it has been in the past?

Religious issues have been much more on the national agenda from about the time of the Carter presidency to the present than they were from, say, ’45 to the late ’60s, even though that was the time of an extraordinary religious revival in the country. One of the reasons John Kennedy was able to be elected president by simply affirming the separation of church and state is that there weren’t so many religion-related issues on the plate. Nobody talked publicly about abortion and electoral politics, let alone gay rights. Now those issues are inescapable.

Are evangelicals the most influential bloc in this administration’s foreign policy? One example would be Sudan. Another would be Israel.

I don’t buy that in the least. It seems to me that the most influential members of the administration in foreign policy are by no means evangelical Protestants. They would be neoconservatives, disproportionately Jewish, and more or less routine Protestants like Cheney. …

… who share a lot of the same religious convictions as evangelicals about good and evil, right and wrong in the world?

I don’t think speaking about good and evil is necessarily just an evangelical perspective. Franklin Roosevelt was no evangelical; he was a midchurch Episcopalian. But he had no doubt that Nazism was evil. Harry Truman was one of those old-time Baptists who believed firmly in the separation of church and state, but in his mind communism was evil. We may be in more relativist times among cosmopolitan Americans who shy away from those moral judgments and say it’s only the religious activists who use such language. But I don’t think that’s true at all. I think the language of right and wrong, good and evil really is ingrained in the American tradition, even in a lot of liberal traditions.

How influential do you think evangelicals have been on, say, the issue of the security wall being built in Israel?

I really think American policy toward Israel is determined primarily by the administration’s geopolitical concerns and also the importance of the Jewish vote. Most of the coverage of President Bush and his administration in terms of religion is way off base. One of the national news magazines said that President Bush is the most religious president in modern times. Well, that would have to mean that modern times began either in 1981 or in 1989, because Carter and Reagan, in their ways, were at least as religious as President Bush.

Is it possible to be both liberal and evangelical?

It is possible to be liberal and evangelical. And if we use “evangelical” in the broadest sense and went back to the early years of the 20th century, there were lots of evangelical Protestants advocating what we would now call liberal issues — economic issues in the progressive era. In practical terms, for a variety of historical circumstances, most evangelicals, and certainly fundamentalists, are now politically conservative. That’s partly because liberalism has gotten to be culturally as well as economically more liberal — with abortion, gay rights, and so forth — and partly because political conservatives have really shrewdly courted the evangelical and fundamentalist communities.

Does the GOP have a lock on evangelicals, by and large?

I can’t see anything that will change that in the foreseeable future, short of some extraordinary disaster, such as a Great Depression, for instance. If you go back to, say, 1928, when all really devout Protestants opposed Al Smith, to one degree or another, you find that some people we would now call evangelicals voted for that Catholic candidate because they were more concerned about the price of wheat, or preserving segregation. And it’s not impossible that some heavy secular issue would trump moral and religious concerns. But I don’t see that occurring in the near term.

For many people, the spokesmen of evangelicals would be Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. But do you think it’s more complicated than that — that there are evangelicals who don’t think they are good spokesmen at all, or don’t represent their views?

In a lot of polls, many evangelicals are skeptical of polarizing figures like Falwell or Robertson. We’ve also got to remember that leaders come and go; organizations come and go. The key organization of the Christian Right in the early ’80s was Falwell’s Moral Majority. Then, after his presidential effort fizzled in ’88, Robertson built the Christian Coalition. That’s pretty much down the drain. But there is still a grassroots, evangelical, fundamentalist culture out there that has a strong conservative political tilt. And even in those years when national religious issues don’t make the front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES or the network news, there still are these battles going on all over the place about sex education, about condoms in schools. That was even going on in the 1950s about some different issues (though sex education was there), before the Christian right was fully built.

The evangelical congressman I spoke with also said that it has become almost an obligation for evangelicals to become involved in politics. Do you think that’s an overstatement?

It depends on what you mean by “involved in politics.” Certainly, most evangelicals, like most other people, are not intensely active between elections. Many evangelicals and fundamentalists just don’t vote, as a lot of the rest of us just don’t vote. I think there’s no doubt that leading evangelical and fundamentalist figures would like the whole rank and file to be particularly active, but I don’t think there’s much sign that they’re more active than the population as a whole, and maybe even a little less.

Would it be fair to say that evangelicals represent the core constituency of the GOP?

I think we can now say that evangelicals are as solidly a core constituency of the Republican Party as blacks are solidly a constituency of the Democratic Party. Twenty-five years ago, we would have said that labor was a solid Democratic constituency, but it’s not anymore. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are much more solid as Republicans than the white working class is solidly Democratic. That’s been quite a change in a quarter century.

What would be required to get the evangelicals to switch to the Democratic Party?

A quick shift, I think, would require something cataclysmic. Political evolution happens. We would not have expected so many theologically moderate Republicans to switch to the Democratic Party on cultural issues, but that has happened, bit by bit, over the last 20 to 25 years. I have a number of evangelical students, no fundamentalists, at a cosmopolitan, secular university. It strikes me how much they are as complicated as anybody else. They go out on dates and sometimes drink beer, but they are considerably more reflective than the stereotype of the evangelical. And a new generation is going to develop, as new generations always develop. My guess is that the cultural shouting matches are going to get a little less loud, unless there is some extraordinary apocalypse.

Should John Kerry spend much of his time courting evangelicals?

I think it would be a political waste of time for Kerry to try to court evangelicals. Clinton, on the basis of his style, did much better among evangelicals than did Michael Dukakis, for example. But I don’t think Kerry can manage to do that at all, particularly with southern evangelicals. There was the joke that Michael Dukakis could not have carried the South with Robert E. Lee on his ticket. I think that probably will also apply to Senator Kerry.

Do you think that politics has in some ways watered down the evangelical theology?

I think American culture has watered down the evangelical theology. Let me give a specific example. If you went back to the advocates of Bible prophecy in the 1920s, they almost all would have said that very few of us will be saved, and lots of us will have to suffer through the tribulation. If you look at the prevailing versions of Bible prophecy now, it’s [that] the best of us will be raptured up, and we won’t have to suffer. That’s a softer view of the end times as the society is softer, more lax in general, than it was in the 1920s.

How did evangelical Republicans become a solid bloc?

It happened for a variety of reasons: the ’60s drove all of these cultural issues to the fore — sex, drugs, rock and roll, and that helped to mobilize evangelicals and give them a sense of threat. Ironically, they were also mobilized by Jimmy Carter, who thought he could win that constituency and keep it. He won it in ’76, to a larger degree than Democrats usually do. Carter was the first Democrat since Harry Truman to carry the Southern Baptists. But the evangelicals discovered soon enough that, though Carter had an evangelical style and called himself an evangelical, he was theologically and politically much more [liberal] than they had hoped. So there was this constituency out there that could be drawn over to the Republicans. And Reagan worked on it very hard. So, by the time we get to 1984, we get roughly the same voting percentage we have now of evangelicals and fundamentalists for Republicans. And if something has been part of a constituency for 20 years, you have to say it’s pretty solid.

Will evangelicals stick with President Bush perhaps longer than the rest of the country on the war in Iraq?

I think evangelical leaders will stick with President Bush much more firmly than the rest of the country. The evangelical rank and file, where you have a lot of families with troops in combat, may begin to ask questions about the merits of the war that would transcend any theological predispositions.

What impact did President Clinton have in the history of evangelicals in politics?

In the medium term, say 25 years, Clinton didn’t play much of a role. He certainly angered evangelicals and other cultural conservatives. Falwell came up with all sorts of peculiar conspiracy theories. But I don’t think [Clinton] affected the pattern of their votes over the medium term. He was just a target. Both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were favorite targets for evangelicals because, without question, they were the culturally most liberal president and First Lady ever — much more so than the previous Democrats, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. Carter was personally opposed to abortion. Clinton said so, but that didn’t ring true. Hillary Clinton was much more a feminist wife than Rosalyn Carter. So I think Clinton provided an extraordinarily apt target, even before the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But I don’t think that’s changed the general trend of evangelical-fundamentalist voting.

So he didn’t draw that many evangelical voters, even though he is one himself?

Is Bill Clinton an evangelical? I doubt very much that Bill Clinton is an evangelical. “Born again” has become such a throwaway term; it doesn’t mean very much. People who say they are born again surely would have not passed the test of Jonathan Edwards, let alone Cotton Mather.

Shaun Casey Extended Interview

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview with ethics professor Shaun Casey about evangelicals and politics:

Many people categorize all evangelicals as being one way, but that’s not necessarily true, is it?

Evangelicals are incredibly diverse. That’s what makes them so fascinating to study. They’re located all across the country. One friend of mine says it’s like trying to herd cats. They are geographically, ethnically, and theologically diverse. And their churches tend to be decentralized. There is no one place you can go, no one person you can talk to who represents all evangelicals.

But there must be some positions and descriptions that would be fairly accurate for them. You could almost bet that evangelicals are opposed to abortion.

For the most part, that’s true. But some surveys show that there are nuances to that position. There are some people who fall in the middle of the American population, who are, on the one hand, uncomfortable with unrestricted access to abortion, but who are, at the same time, uncomfortable with restricting all abortions. So there is some diversity of opinion there, but certainly the preponderance of evangelicals, I think, are against abortion in some form.

How about gay marriage?

There I think you find some interesting things. On the whole, I think most evangelicals are against gay marriage, but the more interesting question then is: How should society respond to the recent raising of that issue? I think there is tremendous ambivalence among evangelicals as to what to do. For instance, some surveys show that only about half of evangelicals support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages. To me, that shows some ambivalence as to how society ought to respond legally to this question. Even though, on the whole, I think evangelicals are probably against gay marriage, they’re not sure how to respond to it.

On a list of priorities, you don’t think that gay marriage would be number one or two?

No. In fact, I think surveys show that, other than some general unease about the state of moral values in America, the issues that concern evangelicals look an awful lot like issues that the average American is concerned about: the economy, Social Security, the viability of Medicare, the war in Iraq. In that sense, evangelicals are very mainstream America, I think.

Let me ask about a couple of issues. Where do you think most evangelicals come down on tax cuts?

I don’t think evangelicals stray very far from the American mainstream on that. I think some of them support tax cuts. On the other hand, I think some of them are deeply troubled by rising deficits. Like most Americans, they understand that you really can’t have both. You can’t continue to maintain government services at a certain level and cut taxes at the same time.

The environment?

By and large, I think evangelicals are less concerned with the environment, although those evangelicals who are concerned about the environment are very passionate about it. That’s an interesting contradiction. When you find evangelicals who care about the environment, they care for theological reasons. They believe that God has created the known world, the physical world, and that we are to be stewards of this. And in fact, we have not been good stewards.

And is there a growing movement of evangelicals who are responding to the Kyoto Treaty?

Absolutely. A couple of years ago, there was this movement, “What would Jesus drive?” which was an anti-Detroit campaign organized by evangelicals and directly targeted to evangelicals to raise some of these fundamental environmental issues as Christian issues, as theological issues. It was very interesting that it was evangelically driven.

I think most Americans would assume that most evangelicals are, or were, supportive of the war in Iraq. Would that be correct?

I think most of them were. However, I think it’s wrong to say that all of them were. Back about six months before the war started, there was a group of a hundred Christian ethicists who maintained a petition campaign against the war. If you look at the signatories, of that hundred, probably a third had evangelical connections. They either taught at evangelical schools or they themselves were evangelicals teaching at other kinds of institutions. So it’s wrong to assume that all evangelicals were pro-war. You’ve got to remember that a significant number of evangelical traditions are pacifist in heritage. Many evangelical groups were unable to come to consensus over the war, because you had a significant but small percentage of evangelicals who were pacifist, so they are against the war.

Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor, says that there were four million evangelicals who didn’t vote in 2000, and they want those votes this time. Are you saying that the Republicans can’t necessarily take evangelical votes all for granted?

This is the fascinating question as we are going into this presidential race, because evangelicals present both peril and opportunity for both parties. Karl Rove is fond of saying that four million evangelicals did not turn out and vote last time. I think you can parse that in a number of ways. If you look at how President Bush reached out to evangelicals in the 2000 race, he chose not to go the red meat route. He didn’t pursue hot button rhetoric. He didn’t do the culture war talk that other people had done in other Republican campaigns. He chose rather to target specific religious-based media, for one. And when he talked about “values” in mainstream media, he used a much softer kind of rhetoric. He talked about being a uniter, not a divider. He wanted to restore respect and dignity to the White House office. He talked not about abortion, not about being against gay marriage per se, but he spoke in a milder code that signaled he knew evangelicals. He walked their walk, talked their talk. It may be that that softer rhetorical line didn’t move those four million people out of their chairs to the polls. Maybe you have to breathe fire to move some of those people on the right. The downside to that strategy is that, if you do it, you’re going to alienate moderate voters who are going to see that kind of culture war rhetoric as divisive and off-putting. That may drive moderates, undecideds into the other camp.

On the other hand, if you’re John Kerry or the Democrats at this point, historically the upside is that you’re not Al Gore. You don’t have the albatross of your relationship with Bill Clinton and the problems he had in his personal life, which alienated so many evangelicals. Since Gore didn’t repudiate him, he had to carry that burden with him. And that put off a lot of evangelicals in 2000. But if you’re John Kerry today, you don’t have that burden.

Historically, the Democratic Party has had a really tin ear for evangelical Christianity in this country. It’s deeply ironic, because if you look at who has run and who has been elected president, it’s the Democrats who had the real evangelicals who have won the White House: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice; and Al Gore at least won the popular vote in 2000.

So there are upsides and downsides to both parties as we face this election. If you look at survey data, about 70 percent of white evangelicals say they’re either Republican or they lean Republican. About 23 to 24 percent say they are Democrats or lean Democratic. That’s a larger number, I think, than most people assume. Certainly, most Democratic candidates don’t realize that about a quarter of the electorate among white evangelicals is already in their camp.

So it would behoove the Kerry campaign to do a little more courting of evangelicals? There might be more votes out there than they are thinking?

Absolutely. In a polity that is so deeply, evenly divided as ours, I don’t think you walk away from any constituency or ignore them, but unfortunately that’s been the history of the Democratic Party.

You said that evangelicals helped elect Bill Clinton two times?

I think that’s right. Clinton was able to recover a significant percentage of evangelical voters who had voted for Ronald Reagan, for instance, in ’80 and ’84. They came back to the Democratic Party because, at least initially, they perceived Clinton as being an evangelical himself. Now, he took some policy stances that deviated from the mainstream of evangelicalism, but he was a southerner, a Southern Baptist. He knew their lingo and their culture. And he was able to win back some of those folks to the Democratic Party.

I interviewed an evangelical, neoconservative congressman a few weeks ago. He said that the Bush administration is the most religious administration in this last century. Would you agree with that?

It depends what you mean by “religious.” At a rhetorical level, Bush’s speeches are probably on a par with Bill Clinton’s in terms of their religious references and their outreach to specific religious groups. I think one gets the picture from the ethos of the workings of the White House that there are more evangelical Christians working on the inside of this White House perhaps than at any other point in America’s history. To that extent, it may be the most Christian administration that we have seen. In terms of actual outreach to religious constituencies, I think that’s a harder case to make. I think this White House has reached out to its base, to evangelical Christians. It has tried to reach out to African-American clergy, with mixed success. And it has reached out to the Muslim community quite effectively. So to that extent, they have had some success. If you go back and look at the Clinton White House, I think they were very deft at reaching out to a broad range of religious groups across a pretty amazing spectrum.

What do you see so far in the Kerry campaign?

It’s really too early to tell. It’s been very interesting that there have been a lot of stories recently about Kerry’s Catholicism and the controversy about his relationship with various bishops and whether he can take Communion or not. He has shown some ability to demonstrate the fact that he is a practicing Catholic. He goes to Mass regularly. He takes Communion wherever he seems to go. He has spent some time in black churches, which is a traditional Democratic enclave. The unknown at this point is to what extent he’s going to be able to reach out to evangelicals, or even to mainline Protestant camps, with any kind of effectiveness, with any kind of skill. It’s too early to tell if he’s going to be able to do that.

Another thing this congressman said is that you’re going to see evangelicals out campaigning for George W. Bush like never before; that they think this choice is stark and important, and they are going to be a factor.

You’re certainly going to see evangelical politicians and evangelical leaders doing that. The real question is, can they motivate the base to actually turn out? There are a number of reasons to withhold judgment on the success of that. Again, I would argue that evangelicals are nervous about where this war is going. They’re nervous about this economy. If you look at the 18 so-called swing states that both campaigns are focusing on, where in 2000 the margin of victory for either candidate was so narrow, some of those states have very interesting religious demographics. You go to Florida, to Michigan, to Missouri, for instance, and there are very significant Catholic populations, significant mainline Protestants, but very interesting evangelical populations. These are states where the economy has suffered. These are places where President Bush’s popularity apparently has slipped in the last three years. What will be interesting to see will be if evangelicals are moved to vote for the president, or if their current ambivalence among the so-called persuadable voters moves them into the Kerry camp. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re all going to be turning out and voting for the president again this time.

How important is being involved in politics to the evangelical community? Has it become more important to get out there and get involved?

I think there is a deep ambivalence in the white evangelical community today about how to be involved politically. The abortion issue is a classic case. For the last 25 years, evangelicals have believed that abortion should be outlawed, that ROE V. WADE should be overturned. And for 25 years, they have gone to the Republican Party saying, “Hear our plea, hear our cry.” And the Republican Party, on the whole, has said, “We are where you are.” But at the end of 25 years, you’ve got to ask yourself, what really has changed? The truth is, ROE V. WADE is still in force. Abortion is still open and accessible to most Americans who want to choose that option. It has not made a radical difference in the actual law in this country. I think a lot of evangelicals are tired, frankly, of being taken for granted by the Republican Party.

There is a sense in some evangelical camps that national electoral politics is a dangerous place for the church to be; that when Caesar shakes hands with the church, it’s Caesar that maintains the tighter grip; that there is more to be lost than to be gained on the part of the church. So there are a number of evangelicals who want to opt out of that process, some of whom never entered into national electoral politics. On the other hand, in the last 25 years, a lot more evangelicals have jumped in with both feet. So it’s a mixed bag. I think there is still some ambivalence in the minds of many evangelicals about whether or not they should be investing their time and energy in those pursuits, as opposed to other sorts of Christian outlets. But certainly the amount of participation by evangelicals has increased in electoral politics in the last 20 years.

Historically it seems as though we have more involvement in religion today than in a long time.

It really began in the campaign of 1960, when John Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon. For the first time, the Republican Party turned to evangelicals and said, “For religious reasons, you need to vote for us and against John Kennedy, because if a Catholic becomes president, you’re going to lose religious freedom, which we hold so dear here.” The Nixon campaign had a very sophisticated outreach to a number of evangelical leaders in that election and brought them into the inner circle, really for the first time in American political history. There was an extensive effort to reach out to fundamentalist and evangelical white voters, in the South in particular, to prey on the latent anti-Catholicism that had been there for generations. That began this relationship between the Republican Party and evangelical Christians, which has since multiplied in the 25 years afterwards. But I think that 1960 moment was the time at which a lot of evangelicals who had no commitment to national politics were drawn in. And interestingly, it was an oppositional move, an attempt to preserve American religious freedom, to oppose the threat that they thought Catholicism posed. If you trace the history of the next 25 years, it’s that oppositional mode sometimes which is so effective in mobilizing evangelicals. You mobilize them to oppose pornography, to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, to oppose abortion. It seems if you’re trying to get evangelicals energized, it’s by holding up a threat to them. That seems to be the most effective tool. That makes it difficult in contemporary times if you’re a Republican president and have a Republican-controlled Congress, because if you’re opposing something, in theory the good guys are already in charge. It makes it much harder in that environment, when you’re in power, to run the kind of campaign that attracts the politics of opposition.

Among evangelicals, is there concern about the separation of church and state?

I think there is some concern about that. On the other hand, you do hear a lot of leaders talking about prayer being banished from schools — that prayer needs to be restored, and God is being driven out of the marketplace so that we have this naked public square. Again, that’s an appeal to the fear factor among evangelicals. This is part of the double-mindedness among evangelicals today. Surveys show that evangelicals, on the whole, feel like they are part of mainstream America. They really feel like they’re part of Main Street American culture and experience. At the same time, evangelicals will say they feel like their values are under assault, or that their moral views are on the margins of society. If you turn on the television, evangelicals are rarely portrayed in a positive light there. You rarely see evangelicals in the mainstream media in positions of leadership. So there is this tension or ambivalence in the evangelical mind that, on the one hand, “We want to see ourselves,” they say, “as being in the mainstream, representing mainstream American values”; but on the other hand, there is this feeling, “We’re always under assault for what we believe.” You find tension between those two poles and sometimes gravitation back and forth between them.

Evangelicals voted for Ronald Reagan twice, didn’t they?

I don’t know. It would be interesting to go back and look, because Jimmy Carter, of course, was an evangelical. In ’76, he attracted a lot of them, because he was really the first contemporary evangelical to run for president. In terms of the 1980 vote, I couldn’t tell you. Certainly, by ’84, against Walter Mondale, I think you could argue that the evangelical vote had, in fact, turned to Ronald Reagan. My hunch is that 1980 was much more evenly divided.

People assume Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson represent the mainstream of evangelicals. That isn’t necessarily true, is it?

That is correct. In fact, your own survey shows a fair amount of ambivalence among white evangelicals towards those two figures in terms of favorability rating. The pope has a similar, or better, favorable rating among white evangelicals than those two, which is astonishing.

Has George W. Bush lived up to evangelical expectations, would you think?

I think in the minds of some he has not, certainly on a number of social issues. There has been no real progress on abortion.

He got the so-called partial-birth abortion ban.

Right, but in empirical terms, nobody can give a number of how many of those abortions are actually performed in a year in America. To the extent anybody has put up a number, it’s a tiny fraction of the overall number of abortions performed in America. So its value is more symbolic; it’s not really a significant victory for antiabortion folk in this country. In terms of being a uniter, not a divider, there certainly has not been much progress on that. Washington remains as deeply divided on a partisan [basis] as perhaps [at] any time in recent memory. The war certainly has caused some ambivalence. I think a lot of evangelicals supported the war, thinking that our troops were going to be welcomed as liberators when they came into Baghdad. And here we are, a year later, and the war is getting worse. We’ve had 600 American deaths and almost 3,000 wounded. There is some ambivalence and nervousness there. And the economy has not improved. Evangelicals, who are mainstream Americans in the sense that their income level seems to put them pretty much in the middle of American society, have felt the disappearance of jobs. They have felt the decline in manufacturing. They have felt all of the fallout in some of these key states. The real question becomes, to what extent does the economic downturn trump some of these hot button values issues? It remains to be seen. It’s not clear how that’s going to play out when evangelicals enter the polling booth.

Is there any feeling among evangelicals that they’re beginning not to trust President Bush?

I think the whole question of the credibility of the president cuts across all levels of American society. Again, it’s too early to say that evangelicals have turned against this president because of his credibility problem. What it does say is that this election is a toss-up at this point, and that there is a significant percentage of evangelicals who are now willing to take a look at the other guy in a way that three years ago was probably not conceivable. The assumption would have been that the evangelicals will be completely behind this president. I think that’s up for grabs at this point.

Do you think it’s appropriate for politicians to equate their religious beliefs with their political outlook and to act on them?

I think it’s completely appropriate for a presidential candidate to explain to the American people how his or her religious beliefs shape their policy. Particularly if a candidate is going out to religious constituencies and saying, “Vote for me,” I think it’s completely fair for Americans to ask, “Tell me a little more about your beliefs. How did you get here? How does your particular form of piety shape who you are as a politician?” I don’t think politicians are particularly skilled in connecting those dots. Many times politicians of both parties look at constituencies as potential voters, not necessarily as people they need to explain themselves to. I have no problem whatsoever with political figures connecting the dots between their own theological beliefs and their policies. I think they owe that to voters, if in fact there is a connection.

Do you think that evangelical involvement in politics has altered their religious or theological views at all?

I guess it has some. Compared to 40 years ago, many evangelicals feel their values ought to be in play in shaping the national ethos. Forty, 50 years ago, a lot of evangelicals did see themselves — and perhaps rightly so — on the margins of American society. They were more interested in simply living their own lifestyle and less concerned about global issues and national issues. Certainly there has been an increase of influence on the politics of the day as evangelicals are drawn more and more into the political fray.

I’ve read that probably there is no more influential bloc of voters than evangelicals when it comes to this administration’s foreign policy; Israel, for example. Do you agree with that? Or do you think it’s overstated?

I think that’s there. Certainly, evangelical support of the state of Israel — and there are a host of theological reasons for that — has had an impact. Perhaps in a less well-known way, countries like Sudan I think are now on this president’s radar screen in a way they would not have been, had not specific evangelical voices held up Sudan as a country of concern. I think the whole issue of international religious freedom is one that was born in the ’90s and was primarily driven by a handful of evangelicals. Now it is a mainstream human rights issue. We have a State Department office devoted strictly to international religious freedom. We have an independent U.S. commission on international religious freedom that brings together a broad coalition of religious voices in America. Interestingly, this issue had resonance with Bill Clinton, I think, because he was an evangelical. So there are many ways in foreign policy where the evangelical presence has in fact made a difference, I think.

Can it be counterproductive? I’ll give as an example the security wall in Israel. While I was there recently, there were representatives of evangelical groups out in these settlements pushing the wall and saying, “Don’t worry about the administration’s position, this is the right thing to do.” It may not be the right thing to do, at least certainly not in the near term. It could exacerbate more violence.

That’s really the open question — to what extent some of the evangelical leaders who support Israel so vociferously, how open are they going to be to the compromises that are going to be inherent in any kind of real peace settlement? How are they going to view Palestinian rights? I think that’s an open question at this point. It’s a question that needs to be answered. My hope is that the evangelical leaders who push American support for Israel will be equally eager to nudge the peace process along in a way that’s going to have to happen in terms of compromise, where Palestinian rights are taken seriously. That’s a huge, complicated nexus of issues. And it’s not clear to me that evangelical leaders who support Israel so strongly are going to manifest the same level of energy for a peace settlement that involves compromise. It’s just not clear where that’s going to go.

Christ was always saying that you should look out for the least amongst you. Certainly, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians are “the least.” With our economic policy in this country, some people think if you aid those who have the most money, the money will trickle down to those who need it the most. Is there any kind of conflict [among] evangelicals on that?

Absolutely. I think there is a network of progressive evangelicals for whom poverty, and the relief of poverty, both domestically and globally, is the central political issue that comes out of their theology. These progressive evangelicals are increasingly uncomfortable with this president. In the last three years, poverty has gone up in America almost 10 percent. We have almost 35 million people living below the poverty line. The gap between rich and poor globally has never been wider than it is now, and it has grown in the last three years. That, I think, is part of the evangelical critique of this administration: that politically it has not made good on some of its promises to deal with the problem of poverty. The president’s whole faith-based initiative, his willingness to bring churches into the federal social service provision network in a greater way, attracted a lot of moderate and progressive evangelicals before the election. Now, after three years, there is a growing sense of discontent that, while he has done some things through executive orders, he has not been able to expand that program and bring new money into the federal social service provision network to some of these faith-based organizations. They are upset with that. They are frustrated that he hasn’t made progress on what seemed to be a central issue of his campaign when he first got elected.

Do you think evangelicals who have not seen as much progress on domestic issues as they would like are putting more emphasis on foreign policy issues?

I still believe that domestic issues are primary in the minds of most evangelicals. If you look at the issues that concern them most, it’s the decline of moral values in America, the loss of jobs, the overall downturn in the economy, the lack of access to quality health care, Social Security. It seems like domestic issues still dominate their thinking. Iraq, for instance, in your own survey, is sixth or seventh on the list of the most pressing issue in the minds of evangelicals.

If you are a religious conservative, that you will also be a political conservative?

No. That’s what makes this such a fascinating subject. Certainly, the majority of evangelicals who are conservative theologically, by definition, tend to vote conservatively. There is a correlation. Yet a significant number move into progressive politics. It’s that strain of folk that I find particularly interesting. Go back to the civil rights movement, for instance. There were people like Clarence Jordan in Americus, Georgia, who established the interracial Koinonia Farm. Out of their vision of what New Testament discipleship was supposed to be about, they felt compelled to address race. You have groups like Call to Renewal today, founded by evangelicals. They have tried to bring together a number of Christians across a wide theological spectrum to address poverty as a central Christian concern. So the quick answer is no; the not-so-quick answer is to say, yes, most of them do tend to vote conservatively, but there is a significant number of conservative Protestant Christians in America today who see themselves as moderates, or see themselves as progressive politically. It would be remiss not to note those folks.

How big a factor are Hispanic evangelicals?

That’s really hard to tell. It’s not clear that they’re going to be decisive, but certainly, if demographic trends continue, it’s only a matter of time in places like Florida, Texas, New Mexico, maybe Arizona and California; their vote is going to become increasingly crucial. The Hispanic vote as a whole is becoming extremely crucial. Now, what slice of that can actually be called an evangelical vote, I don’t think is clear at this point. But they certainly bear watching. I think they’re going to be increasingly influential in a very short period of time.

You mentioned that the president has not really been the unifier so far that he spoke of being. Isn’t it possible that, with so much religion in the air, in some ways it has become a divisive factor?

That’s possible. I think what has complicated his task has been the war. It’s difficult to call oneself a war president at the [same] time as trying to be a prewar uniter. Part of the rhetorical strategy of this administration has been: if you’re not with us on the war, then you’re against us. That immediately divides the country. Now, initially, the country supported the move to go into Afghanistan and also into Iraq. Those numbers have now changed. There is a deep ambivalence in American society over the viability of this war in Iraq. Religion is not going to be a tool that’s going to help you paper over that difference. Until we come to some kind of resolution in Iraq, religion is not going to help a president of whatever party to unite the country completely. It may be that we’ve become too diverse and too pluralistic in our society to see religion as the thin veneer that unites us all. There was a day when scholars talked about “civil religion” — a sort of non-Christological theism; in other words, invoking God as creator, God as sustainer of our country. You didn’t hear people talking about God as the redeemer of our country, or Jesus as the sustainer of our country. It may be that we are so diverse now that that thin language of civil religion can no longer be the platform that brings the “unum” out of the “pluribus.” It remains to be seen how a president can govern a country that is increasingly as diverse as ours. Religion is a source of division at some times. It’s not clear if religion will serve as it used to, as a thin veneer that united the whole country because it presumed a certain set of Christian assumptions. As we become more pluralistic as a country, you can no longer assume there is that kind of unity of belief across this wide spectrum of American citizens. It remains to be seen.

People talk about the lack of civility on Capitol Hill in Washington. Is it possible that, because of the efforts of the Christian right, of evangelicals, that issues have changed to being about good or evil, and that really raises the stakes and somehow makes the end justify the means?

It’s one of the sad ironies of Washington that on the Hill there is probably more public display of piety that at any other point in the history of the republic, and yet there is more personal animus between members of Congress across the aisle than in recent memory. To me, that’s tragic, whether you’re a liberal or conservative, or you’re religious or irreligious, that you can’t find within yourself a way to reach out across some of the political and religious divides on the Hill. It’s sad to me, at least theologically, that the faith that is so deeply and dearly held on both sides of the aisle has not allowed people to bridge some of these gaps, but has fed it at times. I think that’s absolutely tragic.

I spent some time a few weeks ago with Ray Flynn. I was asking him about the Catholic Church, and particularly Archbishop Burke’s decision to deny Communion to candidates like Kerry. He sort of pooh-poohed it. He said, “Listen, we’ve never had less influence.” It’s almost like Catholics getting lost, with all the influence of evangelicals. What do you think of that whole phenomenon and what’s happening in the Catholic Church?

I think this is a very fragile time for the leadership of the Catholic Church in the United States. Obviously, the clergy sexual misconduct scandal has deeply undermined the leadership’s standing within the Catholic Church itself, but also in the wider society. It’s not clear if they’re going to be able to recover their voice anytime in the short run. I think that’s sad, because, frankly, on the war, for instance, the Catholic Church had a very sophisticated, nuanced, deeply held, moral, Christian position of opposition to that war. And basically it got very little currency in the media, because it was being stomped by the larger scandal story. Catholic institutions in this society are providing help to the poor and marginalized. Catholic Charities are continuing to do their work on the ground. It’s not clear if the institutional Church itself is going to recover the kind of public voice it had back in the ’80s and the ’90s. Certainly, it can make a great contribution to the common good in this country. It’s not clear to me if they’re going to know how to get back on track. At the same time, both political parties don’t know how to relate to that hierarchy today. Obviously, John Kerry has a very ambivalent relationship to a couple of bishops at this point. I think this White House has distanced itself some from the Catholic leadership in the last three years, given some of the public scandal as well. They seem to be reaching out to a set of neoconservative Catholic intellectuals. I don’t see that they have developed a strategy of reaching out beyond that small subset. This is where the rhetoric of compassionate conservatism helped them in 2000. It helped Bush reach out to persuadable Catholics. It helped him maintain his evangelical base. And it helped him reach out to some African Americans. You don’t hear the president talking about compassionate conservatism anymore. I think it’s tough to hang on to that at the same time you’re saying we’re on a war footing. Somehow, those two messages don’t hold together. Compassionate conservatism has fallen out of the rhetorical arsenal at this point. I don’t think either political party knows how to relate to the Catholic Church. It remains to be seen how that’s going to play out.

Tony Campolo Extended Interview

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview about evangelicals and politics with author, teacher, and Baptist minister Tony Campolo, an evangelical Democrat:

Evangelicals aren’t all of the same stripe, are they?

The reality is that at least 35 percent of us (that’s a large group; it’s a minority, but it’s a large group of evangelicals) voted for Bill Clinton the last time he ran for president. Many of us have concerns about the Democratic Party, but we have even more concerns about the Republican Party. Thus, we vote Democratic not because we’re totally in agreement with that party allegiance, but because it seems to be more slanted in the direction that we want to go.

You describe yourself, then, as maybe a reluctant Democrat?

Yes. I think the real place where most evangelicals have trouble with the Democratic Party is on the issue of abortion. But it should be noted that in 1950, when abortion was illegal, 27 percent of women over the age of 35 had had an abortion. In short, I’m not sure that the abortion problem can be solved by legislation. I think it can only be solved through moral persuasion. The churches and the mosques and the synagogues of this country have really failed to convince the American people that this is a sin. And until we do, we shouldn’t be trying to impose our values by law — not because it’s wrong to do so, but because it won’t work.

It’s one of those moral absolutes, but you think that until most Americans have a better understanding that it is, you can’t be quite so absolute in your voting?

I think it is an absolute. For some of us, it’s a very, very strong absolute. We just don’t know, and we are not convinced, that passing laws is going to solve the problem, especially in the age of a pill, where people can have abortions without an surgical operation, where it all becomes a very private matter. Prior to ROE V. WADE, abortions were common even though they were illegal. I don’t think making them illegal again is going to solve the problem.

Is gay marriage another one of those absolutes?

The reality is that people like me have very strong feelings about the gay situation. I feel that the government should not be in the business of marrying anybody; that, in reality, what the government should do is recognize civil unions, both homosexual and heterosexual. That’s what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you’re religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved. I don’t know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don’t want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we’re not ready to see it used in ways that offend us. Now, I have to say this. My wife and I differ on this issue. She goes to a church that does marry gay people. I don’t. We go to different churches. That’s all right. It seems to me that a gay couple could go to a church like hers and get their marriage blessed. They couldn’t come to mine and get their marriage blessed. But I think it’s up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn’t be up to the government.

I’m a minister, and I serve as a minister in addition to being a university professor. I always found it very strange that, at the end of the ceremony, I had to say things like, “By the authority committed unto me by the state of Pennsylvania. …” When did my authority come from the state of Pennsylvania? As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I thought my authority came from God and from the Holy Scriptures. All of a sudden, the ball game changes and I am no longer a servant of God; I’m a servant of the state. That kind of duplicity upsets me. I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.

But you don’t put this issue in the same category as abortion?

Certainly not. And I would have to say, if you look at the two candidates, Kerry and Bush, coming up in this election, you’ll find that they hold identical positions, that both of them say, “We believe that gay couples should have civil rights. We just don’t want to call it marriage.”

Tell me about your relationship with President Clinton.

I got to know the president early on in his first term of office. We shared a common commitment to helping oppressed, poor people in the city. I teach at Eastern University, which is highly committed to doing work among the poor and the oppressed peoples of the world. We have a special commitment to the city. He found out about that and invited me to the White House to talk to him about this. That resulted in a friendship. About every five to six weeks, I would go down to the White House and spend an hour, an hour and a quarter, talking to him. I would open Scripture, because that’s my thing — I’m a Bible guy; I’m an evangelical to the core — and try to explain to him what his responsibilities were to society. I think my failure was that I did not focus at all on his personal morality; I focused on his social morality from Scripture. For that I am very sorry, because I think I had an opportunity that I missed. When he messed up his life after that Lewinsky mess, it was horrible. He called me one day. I know the day. It was Labor Day. I pick up the phone and it’s the President of the United States at the other end of the line, who says, “I’ve made some terrible mistakes and I’ve messed up my life. Will you help me?” I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. What do you say? “I only pray with Republicans?” What do you say? “Of course I’ll help you.” I think the call of every Christian is to help any brother, or any sister, who is in need. Anybody who would refuse to help a person who reaches out for spiritual assistance because of political affiliation ought to raise some very serious questions about his spiritual affiliation, or her spiritual affiliation.

So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present. I continue to see him, so don’t get the idea that he was just doing this in order to maintain his political stature, whatever it might have been at that point, among the American people; that he was trying to convince the people that “I’m your President, see how careful I am about spiritual things.” He has continued to seek spiritual guidance and direction. And I continue to see him with some degree of regularity and talk to him on the telephone, trying to make sure that he lives up to his desire to be a faithful husband and a faithful father.

Would you describe President Clinton as an evangelical?

Yes, I certainly would consider him as an evangelical. I consider him an evangelical in the following way. I have to define what I mean by “evangelical.” An evangelical is somebody who, first of all, has a very high view of Scripture, believes it’s an infallible message from God. He would say, “Yes, I believe that.” Who believes in the doctrines of the Apostles’ Creed. He would say, “Yes, as I go over that list of doctrines that are outlined in the Apostles’ Creed, I believe every one of them.” And the third thing is that an evangelical Christian is somebody who claims to have an intimate personal relationship with Jesus. President Clinton claims to have that kind of relationship with Jesus. It’s not for me to judge whether he’s telling the truth. I judge no one. Jesus says I have to judge no one. I can’t go to a higher authority than that. On a personal level, I have to say I have a real good spiritual fellowship when I’m with the president. And that gives me a great deal of comfort.

Because of his actions, did President Clinton drive evangelicals to President George W. Bush?

His behavior in the context of the Lewinsky scandal didn’t win him any evangelical votes. I think we’d have to say that. But I’ve got to tell you this: long before the Lewinsky scandal, the visceral negativism among evangelicals in general was so great that all the Lewinsky scandal [did] was add fuel to an already hot-burning fire.

Why was that fire burning so hot?

I think it goes back to the fact that the evangelical community often does not have a biblical vision of God. That’s a strong statement. George Bernard Shaw once said that God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor. I think that’s what happened. Many evangelicals have re-created God in the image of a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republican. And they end up worshipping a God that is an incarnation of their own values, instead of worshipping a God that emerges out of Scripture when we read it with honesty. The God that emerges out of Scripture, I think, would be angry with both parties. I think that the policies of the biblical Jesus would, in fact, stand in opposition to both the Democrats and the Republicans. The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor. Note: 2,000 verses. On the contrary, when you take the issue of homosexuality, which has become the defining issue among evangelicals, I love to ask this question: What does Jesus say about homosexuality? And they always look at me blankly. And I say, “That’s right. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. What does he say about responding to poor people? A great deal.” Now, the Apostle Paul speaks on the homosexual issue. And there are passages in the Hebrew Bible. But Jesus never puts this on his top-ten list of sins. Neglecting the poor is right at the top of that list. And when it comes to neglecting the poor, I think our government has a lot to answer for. Of the 22 industrialized nations of the world, we’re dead last in per capita giving to poor people. Compare that with Norway, where, for every dollar we give on a per capita giving basis, people of Norway give 70. I think we’ve got some answering to do. So I really would like to see both parties respond to the poor with greater commitment. But I’ve got to tell you, the Democrats, I feel, are doing a better job in that respect than Republicans are.

Some people have said that the evangelicals have enormous, maybe outsized, influence on this administration’s foreign policy. Israel is usually the prime example. Would you agree with that?

I think that President Bush would be a lot more even-handed in Middle East policy, providing more justice for Palestinian people, if it wasn’t for what TIME magazine calls “evangelical Zionists.” There are some evangelicals who buy into these LEFT BEHIND books that are now the rage of the day, that suggest that Jesus can’t return to Earth unless all the Arab peoples are driven out and the temple is rebuilt, which of course has no biblical basis whatsoever. There is no biblical basis for that kind of thing. It comes out of books like LEFT BEHIND and the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible. It’s not in the scriptures. Please make that known. But evangelicals believe it’s in there, that somehow all the Arab peoples have to be driven out of the Holy Land before Christ can return. What a stupid idea! So they end up advocating ethnic cleansing. I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people. My theology is such that the God who loves Israel and will not forsake Israel — which is why I want to see Israel have a secure nation with secure borders — also loves the Palestinians. He loves the Palestinians every bit as much as he loves the Israelis. And if it’s just for the Israelis to have a nation of their own, with secure borders, without having to worry that terrorists will blow up their children on the way home from school, I say that the Palestinians are entitled to a land of their own, with secure borders, and that they shouldn’t have to worry that Israeli tanks are going to come in, level their homes, and shoot up the town. I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice. But it seems to me that evangelicals push the president in the direction where he is so Zionist in his commitment that he isn’t doing what’s right for the Palestinian people. I think that in his heart, he wants to do what’s right for the Palestinian people, every bit as much as Clinton did, and recognizes there can be no peace in the Middle East until there is both a Palestinian state and an Israeli state, with secure borders.

What’s your position on the war in Iraq?

The most important [Bible] verse for our nation, which is on the Liberty Bell, is 2 Chronicles 7:14. In the bicentennial year, we quoted that verse over and over again. It reads something like this, God saying, “If my people who were called by my name will humble themselves and repent, I will restore them and I will make them whole again.” I love that verse. I believe that America should live up to its nationally designated Bible verse. The time has come for America to do what a powerful nation has never done: say we’ve tried to do right; we know we did right in getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But the way we have gone about doing it, without bringing together an international community, without really dealing with this thing in depth, rushing ahead on faulty intelligence, was wrong. We made mistakes, serious mistakes. We are humbling ourselves before the world. We repent. If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it’s not the kind of country that God wants it to be. And in that repentance, we need to say to the peoples of the world, “Inherent in our opposition to Saddam Hussein, we have nurtured an anti-Muslim attitude, which has to be criticized.” When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. I am saying the time has come to repent of all of that and to say, “We want to be brothers and sisters. We may not agree, but we want to be brothers and sisters. And we want to do what’s right.” And what’s right is that the time has come for the United States to withdraw from Iraq and for an international army, sent by the United Nations, to take our place. Our soldiers are being hated more and more every day. It’s time for us to recognize it’s a no-win situation. We’re sorry. We made a mistake. We tried to do what’s right. There’s no question in my mind that President Bush tried to do what’s right. But it didn’t turn out right. Does a great nation continue to pursue stupid policies? Or does it say, “We’ve made a mistake. We repent. We humble ourselves and call upon the rest of the world to send in armed forces that will, in fact, be welcomed by the Iraqi people, instead of being shot at, as our soldiers are”?

How many evangelicals, do you think, agree with you on that?

Not many. I daresay, when you get it down to the bottom line, maybe I could get 20 percent. That’s a generous guess.

Karl Rove said that there were four million evangelicals who didn’t vote in the last election, and he wants them in this election. Other evangelicals we’ve talked to said that this is a watershed, that evangelicals are going to be out in great numbers, with great fervency, for George W. Bush. Do you agree?

I think there’s every evidence that the evangelical community will get people registered to vote and will urge them to vote along Republican lines. The two hot issues are the gay issue and the abortion issue. These are the two defining issues in the evangelical community these days. I’m sure that these hot buttons will be pushed, time and time again.

You don’t think they ought to be the paramount issues?

I think there are other issues that the Democrats could use to rally evangelicals. There are a lot of us, for instance, who believe that the Bible calls us to be environmentally responsible. And this administration has had a very bad record on the environment. They’ve deregulated the automotive industry, for instance, so that we have SUVs that are consuming gasoline at rates that are making us more and more dependent on Middle East oil. We are producing automobiles that are polluting the atmosphere, but the regulations on emissions have been cut. We are cutting into national forests. We’re doing a whole host of things that are detrimental to the environment. I think that if the Democratic Party said, “How about the environment? How about the poor of the Third World? How about medical care?” and the fact that there are elderly people in this country who have to choose between medicine or buying food is an abomination. We have promised every man, woman, and child in Iraq total medical coverage. But I contend that if we’re providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn’t we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States? Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change. For instance, Jesus taught the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful.” Most evangelicals I know are supportive of capital punishment. Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” I contend that it’s impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment. For that matter, it’s pretty hard to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out as a pacifist. I lean in that direction, to be perfectly honest.

When you talk about evangelicals, don’t forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans — well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical — will probably vote Democratic. The black community often feels that when we talk about evangelicalism, they are left out. They are a significant part of the evangelical community, and they are not Republican, and we’d better not forget that.

Would it take something cataclysmic to turn evangelicals from Republicans to Democrats again?

I don’t know that it has to be cataclysmic. I think that the pendulum has a way of swinging. During the Sixties, the pendulum had swung very much to the left. I once said to President Clinton, “What I really would love for this country to have is a truly liberal president, like Richard Nixon.” He gulped. I said, “Who was it that invented affirmative action? Richard Nixon. Who was it that first proposed universal health care? Richard Nixon. Who was it that created OSHA? Richard Nixon. Who entered into public policy and international policy with the People’s Republic of China? Richard Nixon. Who proposed the Model Cities programs for the poor? Richard Nixon.” Sometimes we get so caught up with our political allegiances that we do not really listen to what candidates are doing. I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America. And I said that to President Clinton. And he said, “You know, there is some truth to what you say.” We’ve got to go beyond party labels. We’ve got to go beyond the hot buttons. And we’ve got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money — I hate to bring this up — are pushing hot buttons. I mean, how many guys do you see on the air saying, “Send us your money and we will lead a crusade against gays. Send us your money and we will lead it, please.” God doesn’t need money; he needs voices of righteousness to speak to this nation.

The real problem that I think those of us who are evangelicals and Democrats have to face up to is that the political right controls the religious media. When you listen to Christian radio stations — and there are thousands of them now in the United States — and when you listen to Christian television networks — and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country — they are all politically right. They control the media. Consequently, you’re probably right: it would take something cataclysmic to move them away, because the political right in the evangelical community controls the microphones.

What about evangelical attitudes toward social issues like poverty?

When it comes to taking care of the poor, the evangelicals have a very good record on the micro- level. They are establishing more homes for the homeless than any other groups. They are out there on the streets giving food to the hungry, clothing the naked, ministering to the sick. They are doing wonderful things on the micro- level. But let me say this. Bishop Romero said, “When I take care of poor people, they call me a saint. When I ask why the people are poor, they call me a communist.” What evangelicals are willing to do is to help poor people on the micro- level, face to face, person to person. They are brilliant at this. They are doing more about this than anybody else. But when it comes to addressing the structural problems that create poverty — the role of large corporations, the role of the world economy — they are not about to take a stand on those issues. We all want to buy sneakers at bargain prices at WalMart. Children have to be exploited in factories in Thailand to produce them. If we want to stop that over in Thailand, we’ve got to be able to pay a price here in the United States. I’m afraid that most evangelicals don’t want to deal with this, in this manner. In short, they don’t want to change the system. I always say about evangelicals, we are great as God’s ambulance squad. Whenever there are casualties of the system, we run out there and patch up their wounds and try to put them back in the system. But down deep underneath, we know that, for every casualty of the system that we patch up and send back into the system in one piece, the system produces five to ten more to take his place. At some particular point, we have to say, “Let’s change the system.” That’s where the evangelical community gets angry. They don’t want to change the system. Let me put it this way. We’re Good Samaritans. You know the story of the Good Samaritan. The guy going from Jericho to Jerusalem gets mugged and left for dead. And the Good Samaritan comes along and rescues him. That’s what we’re good at. But if somebody gets mugged the next day, and two people get mugged the day after that, and five the day after that, there comes a point at which we have to say, “Maybe, instead of just picking up the casualties, we need to put in a lighting system and we need to have police patrolling this road. We need to change the system so that people don’t get mugged anymore.” We’re good at picking up the victims of mugging. We’re not good at changing the system that produces mugging.

President Bush did an excellent job as he talked about being a “compassionate conservative,” because most evangelicals I know are that. They are compassionate conservatives. They want to help poor people. And he talked about these faith-based initiatives that he was going to introduce. He was going to help the churches to help poor people. Christian groups drooled at the mouth about all the money they were going to get. I head up programs in nine different cities of the United States. We haven’t gotten a dime. And we’ve applied. I don’t know what that means. I guess it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. But, be that as it may, there is money going out to faith-based organizations. The question that John DiIulio [first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives] raised is: Is this becoming a political instrument rather than the good thing that we thought it was going to be? But he created that image. Even if he did that, let me point out the following. In order to finance this tax cut that just was put into place for rich people — and it is a tax cut primarily for rich people — 500,000 children lost after-school tutoring programs. … The talk is good. And there are faith-based initiatives that have benefited from the Bush efforts. But on the larger scale, it hasn’t happened. It hasn’t happened at all.

Let me just put it this way. I’ve been on the international board of Habitat for Humanity from the very beginning. When it comes to building houses for the poor, evangelicals are right there with their hammers. When it comes to changing housing policies at HUD, evangelicals are not interested. We’ve got to do both. We’ve got to build houses on the micro- level. We’ve got to change housing policies coming out of Washington.

Do evangelicals vote Republican mostly for moral reasons?

The real change came when Jimmy Carter got elected, interestingly enough. Jerry Falwell declared verbal war on Jimmy Carter, as did Pat Robertson. A lot of evangelicals said, “Oh, these people don’t control influence.” Yes, they do. They are very powerful influences. And here’s the reason why Jerry Falwell got so upset with Jimmy Carter. Shortly after being elected, Carter called a White House Conference on the Family. It was to live up to a promise. The promise was: “If elected, I’m going to do all that I can to restore the family, the basic institution of society.” Well, he called this White House conference and people came to talk about the family. Lo and behold, they couldn’t even define a family! Was a gay couple with children a family? Was the single parent with children a family? What about abortion? All of these family issues came up. And nothing good came out of that conference except for this: it was an incendiary conference that blew the lid off. From that point on, the religious right said, “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! This government does not concern itself with family issues.” And they came down strong.

I would have to say, there was a virtue in that position. The problem is, if you get the voting guide to the Christian Coalition — and they will be out again this year with their voting guide — there is nothing said about poor people. There is nothing said about the environment. There is nothing said about medicine. And I want to tell you, caring for the elderly is a family issue, providing housing for poor people is a family issue, providing decent education for inner-city kids is a family issue. I live in Radnor Township, just outside of Philadelphia. If you live in Radnor Township, they spend $16,000 a year on a child’s education. If you live in Philadelphia, they spend $7,000 a year on a child’s education. Extrapolate that to a class of 30 and see how much more money is spent on educating a class of kids in the suburbs, as opposed to educating a class of kids in the city. I believe that the government needs to correct that and set that right. And giving out vouchers and setting up charter schools is not the way to make the public school system really work. That’s where I am.

One evangelical congressman I spoke with said that, when it comes to being a conservative and a Christian, George W. Bush is closer to that than any president in history. Would you agree with that?

I believe that George Bush is a good man and I believe he is a Christian. I believe he lives a decent life. But I’ve got to say that presidents should be evaluated not just on their personal behavior but on their social policies. I daresay that if Jesus was President of the United States, his social policies would likely be different than those of this administration. I’m not sure that they wouldn’t also be different than the policies of a Democratic administration. But depending on how you feel about poor people is how you would answer those questions that were raised by this conservative. George Bush took a Democratic Congressman, Tony Hall, and appointed him as special ambassador to address the issue of poverty around the world. Here’s a Democratic Congressman who has now become an ambassador in a Republican administration. In that respect, my hat’s off to George W. Bush. He recognizes that caring for the poor transcends party allegiance. And I bless him for that. George W. Bush calling for $15 billion to be spent on the AIDS crisis in Africa is doing what I believe a president should do. I believe that’s according to the will of God. I don’t want to sanctify any president, nor do I want to demonize any president. I simply want to look at policies.

Rep. Mark Souder Extended Interview

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview about evangelicals and politics with Congressman Mark Souder (R-Indiana):

Your congressional seat was once held by Dan Coats and Dan Quayle.

From 1970 to 1976, it was Ed Rausch, who was a Democrat. Then Quayle defeated him and was in four years. Then Coats won for eight. Then a Democrat, Jo Long, took the seat when Coats moved up to Senate. Then I turned around and beat her. She had three terms. There were twelve years of Democrats and twelve years of Republicans. Then I came in and kind of stabilized it. So it was kind of back and forth a number of years. It wasn’t a straight line. But it is accurate to say it was a seat that Coats and Quayle held.

And it’s a fairly conservative area?

Yeah, the Democrats are relatively conservative. This is kind of tricky. It’s accurate to say that the district I currently represent is Republican. But up until this last redistricting, probably it went Democrat for governor 58 percent. [Birch] Bayh has never lost a single county in the district, even when he won statewide with 52 percent. So it’s a conservative social district, but it has two-and-a-half times the national average of unions. That’s really probably the defining thing. Ross Perot got 18 percent in his peak year. Because of the unionization, the industrialization, it’s a Republican social issue district, but a swing economic district. And so it goes back and forth.

It’s always a struggle?

For me, it’s easier, because I am more populist on economic issues. I do better than a typical Republican [with African-American voters]. I might get 12 percent where the rest of the ticket gets 8 percent; where they get 15 percent, I’ll get 20-some. Where I get opposition is some of the country club Republicans don’t support me as much. But I’m a different breed, as was, quite frankly, Dan Coats — a little more populist breed. So it’s correct to say it’ll be Republican for president, but it’ll be split down the ticket. It’s just a different nature that’s always kind of resistant to. … Now I have a much safer district; but every other election, it was like a brawl. At any time, it could go back to being Democrat again. Interestingly, I am the second longest any member has ever served, going back to the beginning of Indiana, in our district, because it’s historically back and forth.

What was your childhood like — your religious upbringing then and your religious life now?

I go to a United Brethren in Christ church, which is Anabaptist, very conservative. Most people would call it fundamentalist, but it’s somewhere between fundamentalist and evangelical.

My first big election battle was after I got elected at Leo High School, which was a little high school. My class [size] was 68 after the Amish dropped out, 80 before the Amish dropped out. I got elected to eighth-grade class president, in junior high and high school together. Our big controversial vote that year was whether to allow a sock hop, a dance, at the school. It passed by one vote. The Apostolic Christians, like myself, the Mennonites, United Brethren in Christ, would have been against dancing. The more liberal people, who would be the Missouri Synod Lutherans, the Missionary Church, and so on, wanted to have a sock hop. We weren’t arguing about real radical things; we were arguing about basic dancing. I would be part of the fundamentalist evangelical movement that still has doubts about dancing. We’re not arguing about abortion; we’re arguing about whether you should go to a dance.

Didn’t your parents believe that you should not participate in sports?

In many fundamentalist Anabaptist organizations, the tradition is that you don’t get baptized into a conservative faith; you choose that. You reach an age of accountability when you decide, if I don’t accept Jesus Christ as my personal Savior, I’m going to go to hell. And that age of accountability — up till then, all children go to heaven. They’re not going to go to hell because God forgives them; they don’t fully understand. You can’t really join a church when you find out you can’t play basketball, you can’t go to a movie, you can’t go to a dance. You can’t have a seven-year-old come forward in church and commit to these Holiness churches, would be another way to say it.

At a point you make a decision for Christ which, typically in the denomination I grew up in, would more likely be after you’re out of high school or into college. I made an unusual decision in that sense, because I did it between my junior and senior year in high school. My parents were very conservative. They tried to give me alternatives, did not force me. They didn’t tell me I couldn’t be in sports, but they said, “This is what we don’t do.” Even though I wasn’t a member of the church at that time, I didn’t participate directly in sports even though I was sports editor of the paper. I couldn’t go to games after I became a Christian and joined the church.

My parents looked to say, “If we’re going to restrict his behavior as members of the Apostolic Christian Church, what interests can we do? Rather than just say no, what can you develop in a positive way?” So they encouraged interest in me as a young child in music, so I played the French horn. My parents then tried to give capitalist incentives — my dad was a businessman — to say, “What alternatives can we develop?” Because I was a little capitalist and earned 35 cents an hour sorting pop bottles down at our general store, I would use that to go out and buy baseball cards, which turned out to be a great investment, from the early ’60s — lots of Mickey Mantles and that type of thing. But they told me then, because I was spending all my money on baseball cards: “If you buy nonfiction books that are nonsports, we’ll pay half.” So my little capitalist mind — because I liked to read anyway and always was an avid reader, I started to get interested in history and politics. Then they broadened it, if my mom cleared the literature — like Shakespeare or Dickens — or if I bought classical music. In a positive way, they tried to steer me rather than saying just no — develop other interests. When I became 15-16-17-18, I was more interested in student government, more interested in working on the student newspaper, more interested in being in band than necessarily lots of the other interests. It wasn’t as painful to me to make that kind of adjustment in lifestyle.

Did you imagine then, when you started reading and getting interested in politics, that you would become a politician?

In a little town, you hope that maybe you can get a staffer for a county commissioner to sometime know where the town of Grabill would be. Now it’s a little different, but back then we were much isolated. It never crossed my mind. Furthermore, I thought Washington, DC, if it wasn’t hell, it was a suburb of hell. The classic thing that I would hear growing up is: “Well, you might be able to provide a little salt, but they’ll suck you up, and then they’ll suck the salt out. You’re too small to really influence a city like that.” In fact, in our denomination, one person had been a state senator in Illinois, but nobody had ever gone beyond that. There are very tough questions in the Anabaptist pacifist tradition on war, on capital punishment, on lots of different issues — funding questions, what do you do on Sunday. Lots of tough questions — whether you go to receptions where people are drinking. Whether you wear a tux and go to places that are highly formal with dances. All those kinds of things were kind of contrary to this very conservative Holiness lifestyle. So I never conceived of it. Not only was I from a small town, from a family that didn’t have much money and that worked hard, but even philosophically and with my religious background I never really conceived of that. … If you talk to people in my school, they would say, “He’s going to be a politician,” but that’s because they didn’t understand where I was mentally. I thought maybe I could influence politicians, through writing or other things, but I never thought I’d be one.

Karl Rove has said that four million evangelicals failed to vote in 2000.

“Evangelical” is a very broad term. Often, when it’s talked about in the media, or even sometimes my conservative Republican allies will say, “All these evangelicals aren’t voting.” First off, almost all African Americans call themselves evangelicals, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for conservative Republicans. Secondly, in the evangelical movement, there are lots of liberal evangelical churches that may have different views on the war in Iraq, on socialism versus capitalism. And then there are many people in every church who don’t go to church. The key question is: Are you a conservative evangelical who goes to church on a regular basis? On that [basis], it’s a growing number [of evangelicals] in Congress compared to, say, 20 years ago. I want to make sure that those who share our values and understand politics turn out to vote, not just those who pay lip service or who don’t understand. I’m one who believes that if you don’t take the time to learn what you’re voting about, and if you don’t care enough, as easy as it is to register in the United States, if you don’t care enough to register, if you don’t care enough to pay attention, I really don’t want you voting. That’s why we’re a republic. The people who will inform themselves participate, because it’s so easy here. We want knowledgeable voters in the system. I don’t think all those four million are going to vote our way. I have a little difference of opinion about the silent majority, but we ought to identify responsibly from our party those who share our values and make sure they vote.

Have you felt a certain prejudice in the nation’s capital, being an evangelical congressman? Has it been difficult for you?

I thought it was going to be harder. As a staffer — because I came out here first as a staffer and then went back home, was there for a while and ran for Congress — it was more of a novelty. When I came into the conservative movement as a young person, I came in through Young Americans for Freedom, which was in the ’60s the big conservative alternative — the William Buckley/Barry Goldwater/Ronald Reagan young conservative movement. When I grew up in the conservative movement, it was defined pretty much by Catholics and Jews, and there weren’t evangelicals in the political movement. So my terminology and my frame of reference and the people that I knew in the political system talked differently.

The evangelicals really didn’t start to come in until ’76 and towards 1980 and start to get involved in the political system. So my background is more really neocon, even though I am an evangelical. Then, when I came to Washington as a staffer, you started to see that transition — more and more openness [to] the evangelicals in the ’80s.

In 1994, when I won, it was the biggest single wave of evangelicals, because when Bill Clinton was president, some of his first actions — homosexuals in the military, openness on that issue; his three initial actions to repeal everything Reagan and Bush had done on abortion — activated social conservatives. Health care came later. The tax increases came later. The defense policies came later. But the social conservatives were activated. So in 1994, we brought a wave in of really not just lip service evangelicals.

The Campus Crusade for Christ Christian Embassy, as it’s called here — Bible study on the Hill — went from about 10 members to, all of a sudden, 40. The hard-core, conservative evangelicals jumped up. When I came here, we were part of the big wave. Gingrich even came to one of our Bible studies. Wherever there were three conservatives gathered, he found us, because he was looking to figure out what these freshmen were doing. We came in as a big wave. The discrimination against us was not as pronounced, because there were so many of us. At a pivotal time, we were now suddenly in the majority. We were trendy new kids on the block. It was different when my former employer, Dan Coats, was here. People didn’t quite know what you were. The media didn’t quite know what you were. I think there was a little more prejudice.

What are the big issues right now with evangelical politicians in Washington?

The evangelicals are pretty much like the rest of America. If you said to evangelicals in my district, “What’s the number one issue?” Jobs. Number two, terrorism. Number three, war in Iraq. Number four — and maybe even jumping to the front, depending on the family and the pressures — health care. If you’re a senior, it’s Medicare.

The things that are more uniquely evangelical — because we’re just like everybody else, with the same pressures as everybody else — but what is uniquely evangelical, there is a deep-seated concern about the homosexual marriage question. Probably the single biggest issue is the courts, which people blame for that decision. They blame the Senate for not moving the more conservative nominees from President Bush, so the court question has superseded even the homosexual marriage question or the abortion question. You would see a lot of concern about Janet Jackson or Howard Stern, but really those are the epitome of the kind of coarseness of the public media today.

What influence are evangelicals having on foreign policy issues?

Evangelicals are having a big impact on foreign policy, but in different ways. Just like all blacks aren’t the same, all Hispanics aren’t the same, it depends where you were. We have different evangelical blocs that are influencing different parts of foreign policy. The fundamentalist tradition that I am out of says, “Stand with Israel at all costs.” It’s one of the ways you measure, just like abortion: Do I understand that Christians are grafted on? That God gave Israel to the Jews? And we [evangelicals] are stronger, in many cases, in support of Israel than the national Jewish population is in support of Israel. A different type of foreign policy [issue is] human rights questions. Different branches of the evangelical church will be more concerned about human rights. Then you have the religious liberty question, which unites the more liberal and conservative branches of the evangelical church. That would be Sudan and Egypt and Syria; even in the constitution of Iraq, where it’s become a question about religious liberty.

Mission organizations are huge in my district, because I have United Brethren in Christ, Church of the Brethren, Mennonite, and Missionary headquarters, as well as a huge Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services that bring refugees into my district and have huge mission organizations. In my district, Haiti is a big issue, because so many have been down in Haiti. I met with a group of a hundred different people from Africa one evening — 20 countries from Africa — that have been brought in. And, all of a sudden, they’re asking me to get involved in African issues. …

On some issues, are you willing to compromise to reach certain goals?

Yes. I believe that there are some issues. The way I would work this through in my mind is, the closer to the clearness of the Bible, the less ability I should have to compromise. So I view, on abortion, there’s really not much room to compromise. On certain very difficult issues, because I have friends who are homosexual — gay — but there just isn’t much room to compromise. On other issues — faith-based organizations and how we do that funding — there’s a lot of lack of clarity in how we work this through, how we precisely work through stem cell lines and adult stem cells from embryonic cells — you have some room to try to sort this through. How we deal with the question of rape, how we deal with spouse abuse and domestic violence. A lot of times, evangelical Christians don’t work through these issues and try to figure out those types of things. And we need to be concerned about how we deal with poverty. It isn’t absolutely clear, even though I am a hard capitalist, that there isn’t a role for government. Where should that role be? What is our responsibility, when we’re public officials, to try to address that? There is not one clear biblical answer in any tradition that says there’s a certain way to do that.

On foreign policy matters, are you concerned about the separation of church and state and getting involved where you shouldn’t be?

Let me separate that into two parts. There is all foreign policy, and then there is Israel. Let me do foreign policy first. I think that you need to be very careful about being too ethnocentric when you try to go into countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, how we deal with North Korea, how we deal with Russia, how fast they can move, what their histories are. I’ve learned more about the differences between Shi’a, Sunni, northern Kurdish Shi’a from southern Shi’a, who may be more like Iran. You have to be understanding [of] the process they’re going through. Even as a Christian, if you wanted to witness, you need to be like the apostle Paul, who understands, when he goes in an area, what an area will take and how they would adjust. It’s just logical that not everybody is going to agree with you.

Israel is a different subject. I went with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee to Israel. We were the first group, right after we got elected in 1994, that was all evangelicals. The guide said, “You’re our favorite group, because for you the history of Israel is the Bible, then silence, and then 1948 on.” We don’t have a sense for what really happened in between the end of the Bible and 1948, when the state of Israel was created. That does give us kind of a distorted view of history in the sense of human terms, but we believe, in this case, it is God’s chosen people with a unique mission, that they’re going to stumble and there are going to be problems, but it’s unique.

So when you come to a question like the wall, I would prefer, just personally, that Israel handle things a little bit differently from time to time. But the bottom line is, they’re God’s chosen people. He’s going to stand with them. The question is: Are we going to stand with them? Because God’s going to stand with them. And once that drives my impression, it doesn’t preclude me from doing more sophisticated things as well. But it does say that I’m going to stand with Israel. I’m the only person from my denomination who was a member ever to go to the University of Notre Dame. There, they have a branch in Israel that’s trying to work with Palestinians and young Jews. They said, “Look, we’ve got to figure out how to get along long-term. This fighting is one thing, but long-term we have to have some solutions.” I know Christians, and I’ve talked to Christian Palestinians. Even in talking with the leaders of Israel, they realize Palestinians aren’t their number one problem. What’s more, we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to live together. To them, Syria and Iran, and for a while Iraq, are the longer-term problems. The Palestinians are a poor people who get pushed around by everybody. But the bottom line is, the Palestinians continue to terrorize Israel; there is going to be this reaction. And the question is, How can we get the young people to work together better, long-term? But there is always going to be conflict in that region — whether it’s the Palestinians or others. The fact is, [for] many nations in the Arab world and in the Muslim fundamentalist faith, the literalists there, Israel has to be destroyed from the face of the earth. And if you really believe in a fundamentalist Bible, the Book of Revelation is pretty clear.

Is part of the motivation here converting Jews?

No. There are movements — Jews for Jesus and other groups — that try to convert Jews. I believe, like most fundamentalists, that the Jews didn’t understand that Christ came back the first time. And when the Second Coming occurs, the leaders and those who are devout Jews will be the first to rally around him. And they may recognize him more than many of the so-called Christians in the world. We have the same Old Testament. They just believe that Christ hasn’t come back for the first time. We’ll see it as the second time; they believe it is the first. So there is no real need to convert them, because they’ll be converted. That is pretty much the fundamentalist doctrine.

They’ll be converted by Christ?

Yeah. One of my pastors when I first moved to Washington as a staffer — Barry Leventhal was a Jew who became a Christian and made the Old Testament sing. And Lon Solomon at McLean Bible Church is another Jew who’s become a Christian and has a big following here in Washington. But that isn’t the primary goal. I don’t support Israel because I think they’re going to be converted; I think that they’re wrong in many cases. All of us are wrong at different times. But they’re God’s chosen people. And he gave, in the Old Testament, Israel to the Jews, more or less, right or wrong. They were going to drift. At the end, they’ll come back. And with that kind of confidence, it doesn’t mean there’s not going to be drifting, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to influence their policy and say, “Look, can’t you kind of cool it here or there? Maybe a settlement — back off here or there.” On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that some fundamentalists would be harder-line than the government of Israel about which areas they should be giving up, because God gave them certain areas, and yet they’re negotiating some of the areas away that maybe God gave them. So sometimes the fundamentalists would be worse to be negotiating than even [Ariel] Sharon — which is an irony.

What about some other issues, such as the budget deficit? Does that trouble you?

There are, in the evangelical movement and fundamentalist movement — which I don’t see as totally, exactly the same, but I’ll use “evangelical” for both purposes of this — in the evangelical movement there are divisions. There is a movement that says, “Owe no man anything,” which means don’t have any house debt, don’t have any car debt. If you are part of that movement, it would be inconsistent to back federal budgets. But if you believe in having a bigger house payment, bigger loan, as you get more income; if you believe in having a bigger car payment as you get more income, then you’re focused not on deficits; you’re focused on what is the deficit in relationship to the growth of the economy. If, in fact, we suddenly collapse and go to no deficit, we’ll cause a recession, in my opinion. That’s why I say I’m more of a neocon; I’m not a libertarian. Therefore, I believe there is a role for government. I am concerned that the deficit doesn’t get too big, but as my economic guru, Jack Kemp, would say, I don’t worship at the altar of a balanced budget. I believe the key thing is economic growth. If people get the tax cuts, if they can reinvest money, they’ll create an engine of growth, which is the only way you really eliminate a deficit.

How many evangelicals do you think are also neoconservatives?

There’s not as many who understand the term, because it may be more that just believe that way. But there are, around the country, many people, for example, in any evangelical church who would support programs in health care for the poor, who would say, “I believe in vocational education,” who say, “Congressman Souder, can you do this over here for this particular kid who has special needs in education?” They aren’t saying, “I have a philosophical opposition to the federal government.” They’re saying, “There are particular needs here; can the federal government do it?” Then there’ll be other ones who come up in church and say, “Federal government ought to just get out of everything. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.” But I think it’s close to 50/50, even in conservative churches.

Is there a movement among some evangelicals who think that the administration has not protected the environment enough?

Yes. They tend to be more liberal on a number of other issues. I’m a little more moderate on environmental issues. Now, an environment group will tell you I’m not moderate. I’m a big supporter of the national parks, but I also represent a district that is very manufacturing oriented, and therefore, in my area we make things that suck up gas when you use them — we’re the biggest area for making pick-ups or SUVs. We design the big international trucks — number one in recreational vehicles in the United States. The Hummer — most of the parts come from my district, and it’s made next door. We make things that use a lot of gas. So when you come to whether we should drill, really Christian concerns get mashed up with job concerns and other type things.

But many evangelicals believe that God created the universe, the Earth, and everything in it, and that we are stewards. While we have dominion over the earth, if we absolutely need an area for energy, we should balance that out with the environment, but it can be used. But we also have an obligation to protect the grizzly bears, to protect the parks, to work these things in balance. At what place does going for too-clean air put your neighbor out of work and they can’t support their family, they start drinking, they beat their wife? At what point does having the air clean make it better for all of us and protect God’s universe for our children? There are those evangelicals who are deeply involved in that question, trying to think it through. But it isn’t as conspicuous, because we’re doing that trade-off. So they aren’t as likely to be involved in the environmental movement, which doesn’t really look at that kind of trade-off and balance. But they are also a little nervous about this “Drill anywhere, use the Earth as though it’s kind of an industrial division of the United States.” So there is an uncomfortability. I don’t know that it’ll play through in the election precisely, because other issues will trump it. But I think there is some uncomfortability at the administration pushing too hard in reaction to the Clinton administration that pushed too hard the other direction.

A lot of the environmental movement has been captured by almost an antireligious segment that worships nature in and of itself. And the environmental movement also is a big promoter of evolution — that we all evolved from some amoeba, and therefore we ought to treat the grizzly bear [well] because it’s our ancestor. That turns off a lot of conservative Christians to the environmental movement. But if you ask them, “Where would you like to go?” “A national park. I like to camp.” “Why? Why do you like to watch the sunset?” “Because it’s God’s creation. I feel closer to God. I want to have this preserved for my kids.” There are consensus items where we could work, if it wasn’t seen many times by the radical environmental groups and the liberal environmental groups as almost anti-Christian.

You use the words “radical and liberal.” People probably use the words “radical and conservative” about you, right?

Um-hm. I would define myself as an ultra-conservative.

A radical conservative?

“Radical” might be a little hard. “Ultra” would be … on social issues, I’m very conservative; on some other issues, I’m moderate.

On social issues, do you think our country is in peril?

Yeah. I’m not a pessimist, however, and I’m not one of those people who believe we’ve fallen from this wonderful Christian pedestal, where everybody who came first to America was a Christian and everything was just jim-dandy at the beginning, and now we’ve just fallen off the wagon; the spiritual country has become this terrible place. The truth is we were a mixed bag from the beginning. If you look at the settlement of the West, there were more bars and whorehouses than there were churches. The churches came in later. We were a mixed country. We were not a Christian nation; we were a nation founded [on] Judeo-Christian principles and the remnants of Christian civilization, with many Christians in it. I would even go so far to argue that from a conservative Christian perspective, there may be more conservative, Bible-believing, Bible-practicing, multi-times-a-week people in churches now than there were at the founding of the republic. It isn’t impressive to me that a third of the Founders went to a Bible college; that’s all there was. There are people now who go to Bible colleges out of choice, when most people are going to secular colleges. And they’re in Congress and they’re in key positions, such as our Speaker [of the House, Dennis Hastert]. Now, with that perspective, I still feel that we’ve gone in waves. We had the [George] Whitefield revival at the time of the American Revolution. We had revival periods in the United States. And now we’re in a trough. We need to have a revival in America or, if you continue to sink, we will go to the dustbin of history.

Would you look at gay marriage as “continuing to sink”?

I believe that the fundamental change in America was the legalization of abortion, because I think it demeaned, at the beginning of life, the creation of life. And from the demeaning process, we’re now struggling with the end of life, with how we should micro-manage that because we lost the definition at the very beginning. In Chuck Colson’s HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? book terms, you can’t save somebody if they don’t understand that they’re fallen. And you can’t be convinced you’re fallen unless there was a Designer. And when we lost the principle that there was a Designer, [got the idea] that we’re random amoeba, then all of a sudden the questions of abortion, of euthanasia, of stem cells — the creation of life changed. And then the question of homosexuality merely becomes a gene question — What’s your tendency? — and not a creation question. And that is a fundamental difference in perspective that’s very difficult to [bridge] in our society. I believe people can have a propensity to alcoholism. I believe they can have a propensity to look at pornography on [the] Internet. I believe they can have a propensity to be homosexual. But I believe that it’s wrong and it’s controllable. That is a fundamental, biblically based view that doesn’t leave a lot of room or comfortability in a society where they don’t want you to have absolutes.

The slide down the slippery slope began with ROE V. WADE?

That was the fundamental acknowledgment by the courts that there was a change. Some people would include other things that I don’t believe are necessarily there. Some people felt that BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION — certain religious groups held that up. Or feminism. I don’t think that’s true. The church has always been divided on civil rights. Evangelicals were marching in civil rights crusades. Women’s issues — it’s one thing in fundamentalist circles [whether] you should be a pastor, but women have always been leaders in the church. You go to any conservative church, you’re going to find more women in it than you’re going to find men. But these issues that started with ROE V. WADE started to come up with a new class of issues, which is really how the evangelical movement became seen as more Republican, because historically it wasn’t necessarily Republican. When issues of poverty, environment, and war were dominant, many evangelicals, if not most, were Democrats. But when the issues became pornography, prostitution, prayer in schools, whether God should be in the Pledge of Allegiance, whether homosexuals should be recognized for marriage, whether children should be aborted — you saw movement, because those things were pretty clear in Scripture. If you were a fundamentalist who was looking at a literal interpretation, it was really hard to reconcile a vote for someone who had a liberal view on those issues with what was staring you in the face — if you believed the Bible was literal. If you believe it’s allegorical, if it’s just stories and examples and parables to draw from, you have a different view than if you look at that as literal and fundamental.

Could you be an evangelical if you didn’t think the Bible was literal?

I’ve been kind of doing this liberal evangelical versus conservative evangelical. Fundamentalists clearly would [have] a fundamental interpretation of the Bible. Chuck Colson argues that what we call “conservative evangelicals” have chosen that term rather than “fundamental,” because fundamentalists were people who weren’t supposed to be educated. They weren’t supposed to be able to articulate their views. So we use the word[s] “conservative evangelicals.” Historically, an evangelical was not necessarily as committed to the fundamentals. But because of the false image that was created of fundamentalists, we’ve kind of gone into this liberal evangelicals [and] conservative evangelicals. But really what we’re talking about is: Do you believe that the books in the Bible are literal? Do you believe God created, or that’s just … a nice story? Do you believe the characters in the Bible, in many cases at the margins, were allegorical, or are they literal? Do you believe the Passion of the Christ, for example; that the examples in there are literal, or that those were just stories that enhanced the image? Did Christ walk on the water? I believe he walked on the water. I believe he turned the water into wine. I believe He healed and produced the miracles, just as the Bible says.

How has it been having a president who is in agreement with you on so many issues?

I am excited not only that we have a president who seems to share many of my values. I wouldn’t say he necessarily comes from exactly the same tradition I am by any means, but he shares many of my values. And he put many people in critical places who share my values that I believe are biblical values. Therefore, I have been more inclined to support some things that I wouldn’t have necessarily [been] inclined [to support], if I didn’t believe. …

Is this the most religious administration in a century?

I believe ever. … I know some conservatives don’t necessarily share that view, but I believe that, from a conservative Christian perspective, he is the closest as an administration in American history to that. Now, that doesn’t mean that we all agree with him on everything. Quite frankly, it’s not clear that somebody who is as conservative as I am in my religious views would ever be elected President of the United States. I have some concerns about some of his attempts to calm down the Muslim world, implying that we all worship the same God. Nevertheless, he has earned some slack from us for other things that he’s stood for and stood firm for. I believe that the only real rivals for as devout an administration were John Quincy Adams and Calvin Coolidge, who, in their personal writings, show that they had a strong faith. But there is no evidence that they put people in key positions. Of course, back in John Quincy Adams’s day, you didn’t have the big bureaucracy you have today, where you could tell that. And it’s not just that. We have a Speaker of the House who went to Wheaton College. We have a Majority Leader of the House, Tom DeLay, who is clearly an outspoken fundamentalist evangelical. We have Roy Blunt [R-Missouri, House Majority Whip]. We have Eric Cantor [R-Virginia, Chief Deputy House Majority Whip], who is more of an Orthodox Jew, a very conservative Jew at least, in another one of our leadership positions. So we have lots of people who have a very devout religious faith in key positions in the House, in key positions in the Senate, and in the administration. Attorney General Ashcroft — charismatic. That’s the first time we’ve ever had a charismatic Christian in a cabinet position.

I assume that you’re not exactly enthralled with the idea of John Kerry replacing George W. Bush?

I think it’s fairly safe to say that I am not enthralled; I am appalled.

And why is that?

My opposition to John Kerry isn’t just on what I would term evangelical or social issue grounds. I believe he would be a disaster in the international arena, in foreign policy. He’s been inconsistent in how he would handle terrorism. I disagree with his economic philosophies, which I don’t think are necessarily driven by my evangelical theology, although they might be shaped by it. But I also believe on the social issues — whether it’s abortion, whether it’s homosexuality, whether we would enforce pornography laws, whether he would aggressively pursue religious liberty around the world — I believe he would be a disaster on the social issues as well. Not as bad as Howard Dean and not even maybe as bad as Clinton, but the difference is that Kerry may be more an actual liberal, committed to be liberal, whereas Clinton was more left but willing to negotiate, because it wasn’t clear he was as philosophically committed to his position, which is ironic, because Clinton’s personal life was so morally bad. I don’t know there’s any evidence that Kerry’s is. Christians were blinded to the fact that Clinton at times would negotiate with you, whereas Kerry is actually probably more liberal in the sense of negotiating. But his personal life doesn’t appear to be as much of a mess.

Do you think politicians ought to be held to the standards or positions of their churches? I was mentioning to you the Catholic Church’s denying communion to some Catholic politicians who are pro-choice. How do you feel about that?

I believe they should. Part of the reason I left the Apostolic Christian Church, although I never gave up my membership or anything, but went to another church, is that I had some disagreements with some of the policies of the church. And I don’t believe that I should stay there to undermine those policies if I don’t agree. I have tremendous respect for that denomination. It was so critical in shaping me. And I probably still more identify with that than my current church in most places. But a minister once asked me, “Mark, there’s lots of other places you could go, if you want to have more moderate views. The people here deserve the right to have a church that has these views.” Now, if you’re going to say, as the Catholic Church, or as a fundamentalist church, or as a Lutheran church, that these are our beliefs, then you ought to have not joined that church if you don’t share them, if they’re fundamental. The question is: Are certain of these things fundamental to that faith? — which has to be decided by the faith. I believe certain things are, in fact, fundamental.

[The reasons I left the Apostolic Christian Church] were more lifestyle questions at the edges. One of the arguments we were having [was] my hair touched my ears, and could I hold a church office? Another thing is, I’m a Notre Dame football fanatic. Could I go to the football games? Should I become more involved in the political system? They weren’t really heavy theological questions, but more application questions that would change certain lifestyle practices inside that faith. The faith has actually adapted over the years, as many do, too. They just adapt more slowly than the rest of society. Those were the types of things. There was nothing major. That’s why I’m real comfortable going back to my home church, where my mom still goes. It’s just that there were subtle differences in whether to go to movies, watching TV shows. They would say I’m more worldly. Most of the world would say I’m still on the right flank.

And do you think that politicians who go against fundamental church positions ought to be punished?

We used to have, and still do, in the Apostolic Christian Church, a term called “a friend.” In other words, just because you aren’t a communion-taking member doesn’t mean you can’t go to that church. It doesn’t mean you’re not a Christian; it doesn’t mean you can’t be saved. The question is, when you belong to a membership, to a group, and that group has a particular position, should you be allowed to keep membership — or, in this case, take communion — as part of that group? If you’re on the board of Planned Parenthood and suddenly announce that you’re pro-life; if you’re going to be in a group that opposes capital punishment, and all of a sudden you’re for it — presumably you’re not going to be part of the board of that group or an active participant in the decisions of that group. Now, whether you should be allowed to retain your membership, if there are multiple things, that’s really what each denomination has to decide. What about if you agree with everything in the Catholic Church except abortion? Is abortion a defining issue in the membership or not? Each denomination has to determine that.

Can we expect to see evangelicals energized in this campaign on behalf of the reelection of President Bush?

Yes. My position is real simple. I’ve already said it: What are you going to tell your kids and your grandkids at this watershed year of which direction our nation’s going to go? How did you vote? Did you vote? Even in states like Indiana, which are probably going to go solidly for George Bush, you ought to be recorded, because you’re going to record your vote on which direction America should go.

Because this is such an important juncture?

My theory is a little bit different than others. A lot of conservative Christians would argue that we’re just declining steadily and falling apart. I believe we’re dividing. It’s the collapse of the middle. We’ve had a rise in conservative evangelicalism, conservative Catholicism, conservative mainline Protestant denominations, conservative Judaism, conservative Muslim faiths. We have a rise in conservatism and a simultaneous rise in liberalism and a collapse in the middle. Therefore, the battle has become more significant. And our challenge in our country, which is really important, if you are a fundamentalist, as I am, [is] that you respect the other side, because with the collapse of the middle, if the one side wins and tries to demolish the other side’s freedoms, we’re in trouble. That’s the tough thing in public policy to try to reconcile, because how do you reconcile abortion?

Is it becoming more important to evangelicals to get involved in politics, to become decision makers and have more of a role in government?

The most conservative group of fundamentalists in the evangelical movement would be the Amish. The Amish in my district — and I have very Old Order Amish, which means no tops on their buggies, and Old Order Amish, which have tops on their buggies, like around Lancaster and other places — in Indiana, in LaGrange County, and in Elkhart County. They are looking at registering to vote for the first time, because even a separatist community like the Amish sees things like health regulations — whether buggies have to have certain license plates or lights on them, how telephone service is going to be, do they get any kind of Medicaid or hospital funding; with these huge costs now, they can’t all just self-fund — what is going to be their interaction? So if the Amish are deciding it’s more important to vote, you would think everybody else would be, too.

Do you feel you have been used and abused by Washington, as you expected to be? Or has it been a little different?

In the first stretch, I was just amazed there were these different Bible studies, there were additional contacts. I was impressed with how many evangelicals and committed Christians there were here in Washington — devout Catholics. When we’re in a Bible study, we don’t even know who’s Catholic, who’s Lutheran, who’s evangelical, because there were so few of us that we were together. So I was astounded when I first got here. And then I realized I’d met most of them in the first couple of months. As that has expanded, it’s more comfortable than it was when I first came out to Washington as a staffer. I believe that there is a false impression around the rest of the country about how hard it is to be a Christian in Washington. There are strong support groups. The fact is members of Congress who deeply disagree with me are perfectly comfortable being friends and talking. It sometimes upsets people when we do the faith-based argument that I refer to Bobby Scott [D-Virginia] as my friend. He and I are friends, even though we go down there and you’d never guess from the debate that we’re friends. Barney Frank and I were both in Colombia together for the swearing-in of President Uribe. We sat with each other. We spent a couple of days with each other. It isn’t that I don’t treat him with decency and he isn’t a great guy and one of the funniest and brightest guys in Congress. I just don’t agree with him on many issues. If you realize that we’re all human beings, that we work together, we’ve tried to work through our differences but sometimes in this environment we can’t, then you can hold to your principles. But if you don’t have firm principles when you come to Washington, the place will grind you down. That’s really what a lot of people see. If you come out here as kind of wishy-washy, you’ll just sink into looking for power, seeking fun, looking for the best deal. Your marriage will break up. You’ll probably turn to alcohol or other things to try to calm yourself down and pump yourself up. It is a different environment if you don’t come in with principles.

I notice you have the Ten Commandments over there by your desk. Why is that?

The Ten Commandments are the closest thing we have to a foundational set of principles that are both in the Old Testament and reinforced in the New Testament. The specific reason I have them in my office is that, a number of years ago, after we introduced a bill that would allow the posting of the Ten Commandments, a group from my district came in and presented them to me. I said I would keep them in my office. We also have them posted in our district office as well. I believe they are foundational principles. The first four relate directly to honoring God. Sometimes, when people say, “Are you concerned about the language on television?” I’m more concerned about the blasphemy than the crudity. The crudity just shows people are crude and they’re wrong and it’s immoral. But the blasphemy is taking our Lord and Savior’s name in vain. Read the Ten Commandments and understand why some people don’t want them posted. It’s because they are a warning that the Lord is God, and do not take his name in vain, and honor him, and put no other gods before him. That is a rebuke to much of what happens in our society.

Evangelicals and Politics

Posted on April 23, 2004 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: This week, the second in our series on America’s evangelicals. Today, evangelicals and politics, an issue back in the news since President Bush’s recent press conference, in which he seemed to some hearers to equate his policies in Iraq with God’s will.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.

ABERNETHY: Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said Bush was mixing religion and policy, and called him a “messianic militant.” Bob Woodward, in his new book, PLAN OF ATTACK, about the decision to go to war in Iraq, quotes the president as saying he did not pray “to justify war based upon God,” but did pray that “I be as good a messenger of his will as possible.”

More coming up on Bush, God, and policy. First, more in our series on America’s evangelicals.

We asked the polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research to do a national survey. As expected, white evangelicals are overwhelmingly for President Bush, black evangelicals overwhelmingly for John Kerry.

But there were some surprises, too, as Lucky Severson reports in Part Two of our series on America’s evangelicals — “Evangelicals and Politics.”

LUCKY SEVERSON: This is Grabill, Indiana, Congressman Mark Souder’s hometown. He grew up here among the Amish, whose buggies continue to populate the streets and slow down people in a hurry to get somewhere.

Souder now owns what was once the central business district of Grabill, including the family grocery, now filled with curios and memories.

Rep. MARK SOUDER (R-IN): One of my jobs when I was still in elementary school was to take a black marker and black out “devil’s” on devil’s food cake, because my uncle said that nothing that tastes that good should be named after the devil.

SEVERSON: This is the Apostolic Christian church Souder attended as a kid, a very conservative evangelical church.

Rep. SOUDER: I’ve never danced in my life. I’ve only been to a few events where they even had dancing.

SEVERSON: When he first came to Washington as a congressman in 1994, he was concerned about hanging on to his evangelical Christian values.

Rep. SOUDER: I thought Washington, DC, if it wasn’t hell, it was a suburb of hell.

SEVERSON: But Congressman Souder is not a voice in the wilderness. There are dozens of evangelicals in Congress, a reflection of the growing strength of evangelical voters around the country.

According to our poll, an overwhelming number of all white evangelicals, 70 percent, are Republican or lean toward the party that now occupies the White House. The one reason more than any is abortion, which has been and still is a defining issue for most evangelicals.

evangelicals-politics-post07-souder-store

Rep. Mark Souder

Rep. SOUDER: I believe that the beginning of life is absolutely clear in the Bible.

SEVERSON: Many white evangelicals believe moral values, the issues our poll found concern them most, come from a literal reading of the Bible. Therefore they are non-negotiable.

Rep. SOUDER (On the House floor, holding his Ten Commandments plaque): We can put these in our offices, but apparently they are too dangerous for our children.

Really what we’re talking about is: Do you believe that the books in the Bible are literal? Did Christ walk on the water? I believe he walked on the water. I believe he turned the water into wine. I believe he healed and produced the miracles, just as the Bible says. The closer to the clearness of the Bible, the less ability I should have to compromise. So my view on abortion — there’s really not much room to compromise.

SEVERSON: But not all evangelicals share the same view on abortion or politics. Most African Americans, who make up 15 percent of all evangelicals, vote Democratic, as do most evangelical Hispanics. Our survey found the issues that matter most to African-American and Hispanic evangelicals are the economy and jobs.

Dr. TONY CAMPOLO (Professor of Sociology, Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania): Many of us have concerns about the Democratic Party, but we have even more concerns about the Republican Party.

SEVERSON: Tony Campolo is a professor of sociology at Eastern University. He is an author, a Baptist minister, an evangelical, and a Democrat.

Dr. CAMPOLO: We vote Democratic not because we are totally in agreement with our party allegiance, but because it seems to be more slanted in the direction we want to go.

SEVERSON: Many evangelicals have broader concerns than just abortion and gay marriage. Shaun Casey is a professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary.

Dr. SHAUN CASEY (Professor of Christian Ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary): The issues that concern evangelicals look a lot like the issues that the average American is concerned about — the economy, Social Security, the viability of Medicare, the war in Iraq. In that sense evangelicals are very mainstream America, I think.

SEVERSON: Evangelicals like Margaret Coats and Mike Kinzer, members of Congressman Souder’s United Brethren church, say it’s their faith that moves them to political action.

MARGARET COATS (Member, United Brethren Church): I think that it’s important to be involved in politics, because what I believe and what I value — I would like to share that with others.

MIKE KINZER (Member, United Brethren Church): Christ called to us to be the salt of the Earth and light to the world. And to be salt you need to be in the world, not necessarily of the world — so part of that is politics.

Dr. Leo Ribuffo

SEVERSON: Historian Leo Ribuffo says we may be hearing more about it now, but that political engagement is nothing new to evangelicals.

Dr. LEO RIBUFFO (Historian, George Washington University): The period of the 19th century is a very intense period of evangelical activism in politics — the move to be brought under God, under the Constitution; serious efforts in morals legislation, Prohibition being the most famous. So in that sense, there is nothing new about evangelicals being active in politics.

SEVERSON: Beginning in the 1930s, evangelicals largely withdrew from politics and stayed on the sidelines until the 1960s.

Dr. CASEY: For the first time, the Republican Party turned to evangelicals and said, “For religious reasons you need to vote for us and against John Kennedy, because if a Catholic becomes president, you’re going to lose religious freedom, which we hold so dear.”

SEVERSON: The raucous counterculture of the 1960s, from rock ‘n’ roll to sexual liberation, offended evangelicals, as did the Supreme Court decisions banning prayer in public school and legalizing abortion.

Rep. SOUDER: I believe that the fundamental change in America was the legalization of abortion.

SEVERSON: The 1976 campaign of Jimmy Carter, a fellow evangelical, encouraged evangelicals to get even more involved in politics. But it was the next president who galvanized evangelicals.

Dr. RIBUFFO: The person who deserves credit, without question, for forming the alliance between theological conservative Protestants, evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Republican conservatives, without question, is Ronald Reagan. And it starts in ’79 and ’80. In ’84, you already have evangelicals and fundamentalists as solidly Republican.

SEVERSON: Evangelicals supported the first President Bush, and even a third of them voted for fellow evangelical Bill Clinton, although many voted against him. But perhaps no president has reached out as convincingly as George W. Bush.

Dr. JACK GRAHAM (President, Southern Baptist Convention, Introducing President Bush):

George Bush is a Methodist, but he’s a thoroughgoing evangelical Christian. And I’m grateful for his life of prayer and his faith and his testimony for Christ.

Dr. CASEY: If you look at how President Bush reached out to evangelicals in the 2000 race, when he talked about values in mainstream media, he used a much softer kind of rhetoric. He talked not about abortion, not about being against gay marriage per se, but he spoke in a milder code to signal that he knew evangelicals. He walked their walk, he talked their talk.

SEVERSON: He pushed faith-based programs, appointments of evangelicals in high places, the ban on partial-birth abortions — and under pressure from evangelicals, funding to prevent and treat AIDS. The list goes on.

Ms. COATS: When George Bush became president, I felt that was a great change for integrity and the moral part of the country.

Mr. KINZER: I think President Bush is doing a good job and I like his consistency.

SEVERSON: Some observers have suggested that one reason President Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister Blair have gotten along so well is because both are evangelical Christians.

The war in Iraq had strong support from evangelicals, but Professor Shaun Casey says it is not unwavering support.

Dr. CASEY: A lot of evangelicals supported the war, thinking our troops were going to be welcomed as liberators when they came into Baghdad — and here we are a year later. The war is getting worse. So there is some ambivalence there.

SEVERSON: Even Congressman Souder, who still supports the decision to go to war, may be running out of patience.

Rep. SOUDER: If the Iraqi people don’t take over more of the law enforcement and make us do the fighting and dying, I won’t support them for more than another year.

SEVERSON: Some say it’s with the Bush administration’s foreign policy that evangelicals have been particularly influential — pushing for a harder line on human rights with China, North Korea, the Sudan, and especially to stand squarely behind Israel.

Rep. SOUDER: They’re God’s chosen people. And he gave, in the Old Testament, Israel to the Jews, more or less, right or wrong. And I’m going to stand with Israel.

Dr. CAMPOLO: There are some evangelicals who buy into these LEFT BEHIND books that are now the rage of the day, that suggest that Jesus can’t return to Earth unless all the Arab peoples are driven out and the temple is rebuilt, which has of course no biblical basis whatsoever. I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck.

SEVERSON: In the past, it’s been the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons who often motivated evangelicals to vote, but times are changing.

Dr. RIBUFFO: Many evangelicals are skeptical of polarizing figures like Falwell or Robertson. But there’s still a grassroots fundamentalist evangelical culture out there that has a strong conservative tilt.

SEVERSON: Evangelical Tony Campolo says the conservative tilt toward explosive moral issues has come at the expense of what should be evangelicals’ main concern — serving the poor.

Dr. Tony Campolo

Dr. CAMPOLO: I think that many evangelicals have re-created God in the image of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Republican. And they end up worshipping a God that is an incarnation of their own values. The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor. Note: 2,000 verses.

SEVERSON: Souder disagrees that evangelicals aren’t actively involved in helping the poor. This is a gathering of Ft. Wayne evangelical leaders who have contributed service and money to help the inner city’s needy. But Souder agrees that caring for the poor will likely not be the rallying cause that gets evangelicals out to vote in 2004.

Rep. SOUDER: I agree that at times conservative Republicans will find things that work to their purposes to activate the conservative religious voter.

SEVERSON: Historian Ribuffo says the Republicans have a lock on the evangelical vote this year.

Dr. RIBUFFO: I can’t see anything that would change that in the foreseeable future, short of some extraordinary disaster such as the Great Depression.

SEVERSON: But Shaun Casey says Democrats shouldn’t write off evangelical voters, because some may be losing faith in the current president.

Dr. CASEY: There has been no progress on abortion. Washington still remains as deeply divided on a partisan basis as anytime in memory, and the economy has not improved. They have felt the disappearance of jobs. They have felt the decline in manufacturing. There is a significant percentage of evangelicals who are now willing to take a look at the other guy in a way that three years ago was probably not conceivable.

SEVERSON: According to our survey, George W. Bush would draw more than two-thirds of the white evangelical vote if the election were held today.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson.

Mark Noll Extended Interview

Posted on April 16, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of Judy Valente’s interview about America’s evangelicals with Mark Noll, historian and professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College:

How would you define an evangelical?

Historians usually use two ways of defining evangelical Protestant Christians. One feature is the things that evangelicals historically and traditionally have believed and practiced. Evangelicals usually stress conversion to Jesus Christ. Evangelicals stress the authority of the Bible as their chief religious authority. Evangelicals are activist in some areas of life, principally in trying to share the good news about Jesus. And evangelicals usually stress the death of Christ and his resurrection as the key, central Christian teaching. Historians trace back to the eighteenth century and the revivals that are associated with the Wesleys, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and other figures a continuous genealogy of ecclesiastical and voluntary association development that also provides some perspective on evangelicals. So to have the genealogy and the characteristics gives us a triangulation that is a good definition, for most purposes, of evangelicalism.

What are some of the myths about evangelicals?

To evangelicals themselves, they’re wonderful people that make everything nice when people listen to them. Often, to those who don’t appreciate evangelicals, they’re seen as rednecks, as crypto-fundamentalists, as people without education, as people without a brain. Of course, the stereotypes are there because they are partly true. And yet they are both stereotypes.

The truth would be?

The truth is that evangelicals are an American brand of Protestant Christianity, strongly influenced by revival traditions but moving in many different directions. One of the great difficulties for historians and sociologists is actually just to define what “evangelical” means. There are a lot more people that look like evangelicals, that use the term for themselves. Sociologists and historians think they have a category that many different groups fit into. Not all the time do these different groups actually want to talk to each other and are aware of each other’s existence. So it’s a nominal category. It’s not like the category Roman Catholic, or Presbyterian, or even Pentecostal; but it’s a category of observers who say, “These different groups share such-and-such traits; therefore, we should treat them together.”

What are some of the nuances people might miss about evangelicals, some of the surprising things?

Evangelicals tend to be not as political as they have often been portrayed. There is a very strong pietist tradition in evangelical Christianity, which means that evangelicals often focus upon their spiritual lives and on the good they can do in a community, rather than in mobilization for political life. There is certainly a tremendous amount of diversity in evangelical Christianity. By some definitions, the largest component of evangelicalism in the United States would be African-American Protestants. Usually, however, African Americans are not lumped in with Caucasian and Asian and Hispanic evangelicals, when the general category is used. There are segments of evangelicalism that prize higher education. There are segments of evangelicalism that make a great deal about professional standing and professional attainment, education. And these facts, I think, would be a surprise to some people who thought of evangelicals monolithically, or as just one group.

The diversity of evangelical Christianity is extreme. Evangelicals would include people with no time for higher education and a full roster of Ph.D.s, M.D.s, L.L.D.s. Evangelical Christians would be at home in some urban areas. There would be many concentrations of evangelical Christians in small towns and rural America and main city America. The concentration geographically of evangelicals is in the South and the Midwest, but there remain very strong concentrations of evangelicals also on both coasts and, of course, evangelical Christianity in the United States is related to evangelical-type movements of many sorts that exist around the world.

Is there such a thing as an evangelical worldview, a different way of seeing history than many other Americans do?

With all other Christian believers, evangelicals would believe that God rules over history, and that God’s mandate for individual life has been communicated through the scriptures and through religious traditions. There probably is a distinctive evangelical worldview in respect to attitudes toward evil, toward good in society. I think evangelicals might be a little bit more prone than others to see forces of good and evil, God and evil, combating in public life. But I think it would be dangerous to think that evangelical conceptions of the world were radically different from other Christian believers’, and then even radically different from other American citizens’ who are of other kinds of religion, or of no religion at all.

And the difference between “evangelical” and “fundamentalist”?

Usually the terms “evangelical” and “fundamentalist” are used with distinctive meanings. Fundamentalist would be one variety of evangelical Christianity. Fundamentalists historically have been defined as those who are especially influenced by the revival traditions of the nineteenth century, especially influenced by the turn toward dispensational premillennialism as a theology in the late 19th century, and sometimes by their attitudes of separation and militancy toward the rest of the religious world and the rest of the world. Evangelical Christianity as a whole would include some fundamentalist tendencies, some fundamentalist groups, but probably most evangelicals would not want to be called fundamentalists themselves.

What about the emphasis on the Bible as the literal truth, as being literal rather than figurative? Do both groups share that? Or do fundamentalists have that alone?

On the question of the Bible, it’s probably the case that fundamentalists would tend toward a more literal belief in the scriptures, although that, too, is complicated, because the evangelical traditional position is that the Bible is true. There [are] not as tight evangelical parameters as to exactly how the Bible is true. There is immense debate within the Christian world as a whole, and certainly within evangelical Christianity as a whole, as to how to interpret the truthful scriptures.

Why do you think evangelicals have become so much more prominent in recent years than they were 50 years ago?

I think it’s possible to suggest that evangelical Christians have become more prominent in public space over the last 30 and 40 years because of signal events, turning points, as it were. Certainly, the presidency of Jimmy Carter was important. Here was a Southern Baptist who said that he was born again and tried to live by his faith. This was nothing new in the South and in many parts of the rest of the country, but it was new for a public speaker to talk like this. Certainly, the debates that have taken place over moral issues — the debate that has taken place over abortion on demand, for example — led to a certain kind of militancy in public life by a certain kind of Protestant that seemed new, although it actually went back long in American history with many traditions. And other issues that have been part of what are sometimes called “the culture wars” have drawn more attention to groups of Protestant Christians that were there all along, but now have surfaced in the public. It is also true that, since World War II, the proportions of churchgoing Americans have shifted. In very rough terms, one used to be able to speak of roughly about the same number of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelical Protestants taking part in church activities and being active religiously. Since the end of the Second World War, Catholics have grown somewhat, mainline Protestants have declined, and the number of evangelicals (however defined) has increased quite dramatically. So the demography of church participation has changed in the United States over the last 50 years, with various evangelical groups doing better in that demographic situation and the population as a whole.

What do you think has fueled that growth?

Evangelical Christianity is a tradition of religion that is adaptable. Evangelical Christianity began in the 18th century with people who were willing to preach out of doors at a time when that was a very radical step. In America, evangelical Christianity was promoted most dramatically in the early 19th century by Methodist circuit riders and by Baptist lay preachers. Both were innovative techniques for church organization. In the 20th century, evangelicals were pioneers in the use of radio for religious purposes. Since World War II, evangelical churches have adjusted, have adapted to current culture in ways that other groups have been slower to do. That adaptability is, I think, one of the reasons why [the] evangelical type of Protestants do better in the modern world than some other types of Protestants. We evangelicals would like to say that it is the faithfulness to the message of salvation and Jesus Christ, seen in the scriptures. As an evangelical Christian myself, I think that’s actually a very important matter to draw attention to. But as a historian, I know that sometimes in history groups that look like they’re right go down, and sometimes groups that look like they’re wrong go up. And so explaining exactly why it is that we have an increase in attention to evangelicals — and probably actually a true increase in evangelical Christians — would be a very hard thing to do in simple terms.

You mentioned that evangelicals were able to adapt to culture and to new technology. In what ways did they adapt that others did not?

Evangelical Protestants have been leaders in the use of modern musical forms in church. This is actually quite offensive to some traditional evangelicals and some traditional Protestants of other sorts, but it has been an adaptive strategy. It’s been a way of using the musical language of television and of the modern mass media, to bring it into church, to sanctify it, to baptize it, and it has been attractive. Evangelicals have pioneered in the outreach of Christianity in suburban areas. Some of the new megachurches around the country, most of which are evangelical in one way or another, look a little bit like shopping malls. They are able to put people at ease who are used to going into shopping malls and are not perhaps used to going into traditional churches. In attention to small groups, some of the newer evangelical churches realize that people need identification with a small group — auto mechanics or Alcoholics Anonymous or youth clubs. Evangelicals have innovated in all of these matters, and in many more in trying to provide a religious interface with people where they actually are living and hurting and feeling and taking their day-to-day existence.

You say evangelical adaptability has been a positive influence in some ways. But others these days are raising the question: Have evangelicals become too much a part of the culture around them?

Throughout evangelical history, the strength of evangelicals in adapting to cultural change has always been marked with a weakness in being able to adapt to cultural change. When a religious tradition adjusts to new conditions, there is always the chance of having a great appeal for that religious tradition, but there is also a chance that what had defined that religious tradition can be given away. An example would be that traditional evangelical preaching customarily accentuated the notion of human sinfulness. People were alienated from God. God was holy; humans were sinful. God judged sin. Because God judged sin and provided redemption through Jesus, it was possible for people to be reconciled with God. In the modern world, we are more diffident about sin. We are more reluctant to point the finger and say, “You are a sinner who needs to turn to God.” Some evangelical churches, traditions, denominations have adjusted an awful lot. Some critics say they have adjusted too much and have, in fact, lost the message of salvation, because they have lost the sense of human sinfulness. This would be an issue where adaptation has taken place, and it would be a judgment call as to whether that adaptation has truly undermined the religious tradition or whether it has been just an adjustment to be able to communicate, still, with modern people.

In this effort to adjust to modern culture and appeal to larger groups of people, particularly the unchurched, has the evangelical message been watered down? Is this a concern to you?

It is a concern. Perennially in the history of evangelical Christianity, there has been an effort to reach out, to draw new people in. The evangelistic motivation is very strong in the history of evangelicalism. It remains very strong to this day. The positive side of that motivation is that the Christian message is brought to newer groups of people. In our day, the negative danger is that a thin kind of Christian message will be brought that is adjusted more for popular cultural norms than by the norms of the Christian gospel. I think, however, as an outsider, from any one individual church or Christian activity, it’s very hard to judge whether or not the adaptation has gone too far. What is necessary is long-term observation about whether lives are actually changed, whether people are actually reconciled to each other, whether works of mercy are actually done. This is a hard set of questions to answer if a person does not remain an observer for a long period of time. It is a major concern, but it’s a concern, I think, more in general Christian terms than as a historian of evangelicalism. I think the Christian faith is always a faith that calls people away from themselves, toward God, but always attracts people because it offers something from God. It is the maintaining of that balance, of what God gives to Christian believers and then what God expects from Christian believers, that is the critical matter for all varieties of Christian faith.

How would you assess the influence, in politics and culture at large, of evangelicals?

Evangelicals are certainly more evident in politics and public life now than had been the case, say, in 1950. Actually, our situation now is much closer to what the United States had experienced from, say, 1800 to 1880 or 1890, when evangelical Christians were a large and vocal part of public life, including political life. Certainly, since the 1960s and 1970s, there has been an obvious move of people called evangelicals, identif[ying] as evangelicals, toward the Republican Party. This has taken place particularly in the South, but also in other parts of the country. And when you have a movement like that of religious allegiance and political allegiance, then it draws the attention of the media of various sorts. It has become, I think, a legitimate matter for journalists’ reporting.

What role do you think evangelicals will play in the upcoming presidential election?

I think it’s easy to overestimate the impact of any one religious group in a political election. Obviously, the popular wisdom, which I think is right, is that evangelicals certainly lean toward the Republicans, lean toward President George Bush. But the mistake, I think, is sometimes made to consider every part of the Republican platform as an evangelical issue, which is simply not the case. I think some of the good polling, which would include polling by John Green, would show that on issues like health care and the economy, evangelicals are far less polarized politically than they are on some of the moral issues, like the question of a constitutional amendment concerning gay marriage, or abortion on demand, and other issues that touch individual morality more than public morality.

Let’s talk a little about evangelicals and their faith. How do you and others share your faith with people you meet who are not Christian?

The way in which evangelicals evangelize, or share their faith, would be as varied and as different as there are evangelicals. There are vociferous, and even militant, street-corner preachers. There are diffident people who share with family and close friends the meaning of the gospel in their lives. There is an emphasis with some upon literature, sometimes very high-toned literature, sometimes very basic tracts and simple literature. There is certainly a use of artistic media by some, music by others. I don’t think it’s possible to talk about one predominant way in which evangelical Christians try to live out the Christian faith. I think the variety is as broad as the evangelical network is broad itself.

Is there any concern that the habits and practices of evangelicals are becoming too much a part of the secular world, particularly young people? It’s hard not to be swept up in the culture that you live in.

Certainly, leaders of Christian churches, including evangelical churches, worry that their ability to communicate in public also will compromise what they have to say in public. This certainly has been a perennial theme in religious history, and it’s a concern today. When young people think only of what religion brings to them by way of self-fulfillment, there is a danger of creating a religion that centers around “me.” All the traditional religions call that idolatry rather than true religion. By the same token, evangelical leaders would say, I think, that it’s necessary to communicate, to use the idiom of the day, in order to make the Christian message known. That is a fine line that evangelicals have always walked — attempting to be communicative, to be persuasive in public and, at the same time, always being threatened by losing the punch, the sting, the offense of the Christian gospel.

How much of a sense do you have, or do evangelicals still have, that they are outside the mainstream? Or are they not becoming more and more a part of the mainstream?

The question of whether evangelicals are becoming part of the mainstream, feel themselves still as outsiders, as marginalized people, I think, has a lot to do with geography. In many parts of the country, it probably is the case that evangelical Christians are, in fact, becoming part of the visible mainstream. In New York City, San Francisco, much of the West Coast, much of the Northeast, it would not be the case. Those parts of the country have a much more plural religious situation. It would not be new in the country for various religious groups to feel strength in one particular region. What probably has happened, over the last 30 and 40 years, is that more centers of the country have witnessed more visible and more vocal presentations of evangelical Christianity than was the case immediately after the Second World War.

Do you think they are losing somewhat that outsider status — that status as people standing apart from secular culture, almost in judgment of secular culture?

The question of whether evangelicals are feeling themselves as insiders or as those still who stand apart in judgment on the secular culture is one that takes some historical sophistication. In the years before the American Civil War, evangelical Protestants in general were very deeply involved, very strongly committed, to different aspects of American culture. From the 1920s to the 1950s, there was more of a standoffish atmosphere. What I think we’ve seen in recent decades is a return to earlier patterns in American history and a pullback from the self-understanding as marginalized people that probably did characterize many segments of the evangelical world from the 1920s into the 1950s.

So you have seen that change?

I think it is a change, but it is a change that is not a new thing in American history; it’s a return to some old patterns, but in a new environment, which is much more pluralistically religious than was antebellum America in the early 19th century.

Do you think that, as evangelicals get close to political power and influence in government, they have to compromise too much?

It is a really good question whether, as evangelicals gain political influence, they will be forced to compromise their principles. Politics, by its nature, is an arena of compromise. It’s an arena where you get something, you give something. Evangelicals do not talk as if they engage in that type of activity, but of course they always have as they’ve taken part in public life. I think skilled politicians of whatever ideological stripe know how to maintain their principles and to get along with those with whom they must work in politics. We have, I think, had some exemplary evangelical political leaders of that sort. I think of Mark Hatfield, a longtime senator from Oregon. I think perhaps of Dennis Hastert, the current Speaker of the House. These are people with firm convictions — firm religious convictions, firm political convictions — who yet have a pretty good reputation of working with colleagues, even colleagues with whom they differ on important issues. The difference, probably, in the evangelical community and other religious communities is that public influence, political clout, is a relatively new thing. I think it’s only to be expected that there would be some missteps and some overstatements and some zealotry run amok in the evangelical leadership that would not necessarily be there with groups that have been in the public eye longer. But skill is learned over time. I actually think evangelical public spokespeople do better today than they did 10 years ago. And I hope they’ll do better 10 years from now than they do today.

In some parts of the country, particularly the South, evangelicals are the mainstream. So then why, with their numbers and their influence, do many evangelicals still feel like a misunderstood minority in a hostile culture?

This is an important question, because it draws together the way in which local circumstances interact with national circumstances. I think evangelicals may still feel marginalized and as minority members in a hostile culture in large part because of the national media, because of the national systems of higher education, which do tend to reflect less of the ordinary religious perspective of the country than actually exists on the ground. Television is not a particularly religious medium in the United States, even by comparison with some of the European countries, where there are far fewer religious practitioners. The movies are not a particularly strong domain for religious expression. The movies and television, much of what is present in the popular national press, have a local effect as these media come into localities. So it’s entirely reasonable that a region where there is a strong evangelical presence may still feel put upon if the national media that they participate in, that they read or have some awareness of, do not reflect what they experience, day by day and week by week, on the ground.

Do you find any conflict between observing the conventional standards of critical and intellectual scholarship on the one hand and being an evangelical Christian on the other?

I myself do not feel conflicted by being an academic and an evangelical. In my view, good academics and good scholarship [are] rooted in the series of practices that share a great deal of general Christian traditions, as well as some traditions coming from the 18th-century and 19th-century Enlightenment. There are certain things that academics need to do as academics, certain things that Christians need to do as Christians. I think, for the most part, those requirements can exist pretty well together.

You wrote an entire book called THE SCANDAL OF THE EVANGELICAL MIND about being both an intellectual and an evangelical Christian. To what extent have the issues that you brought up in that book been overcome?

Evangelicals do still have difficulties with the intellectual life. I myself do not think these are intrinsic to the Christian faith. There are scores of examples over the last two and 300 years of very solid artists, writers, intellectuals who have had no difficulty at all internalizing the realities of the Christian faith. For reasons that I have tried to explain, in books and articles that are fairly complex, the American situation is sometimes different. I happen to think that varieties of evangelical anti-intellectualism are as much a difficulty with evangelical appropriation of the Christian faith [as] they are with the Christian faith itself.

Evangelicals do sometimes show anti-intellectual traits, or traits that use the intellect in an unsatisfactory way. I see this as a problem not with the intrinsic character of Christianity, but with the history and development of this one strand of Christianity as religion. In other words, I see problems in the use of the intellectual life not as Christian problems, but as local, American, haphazard problems that have developed out of a particular history.

The basic reason why it seems to me not a problem to think about evangelical intellectuals is because evangelicals worship the God who made the heavens and the earth and all things in them and also made a way for them to fit together. When Christians of all sorts aspire to be intellectuals, what they are aspiring to be [are] students of what God has done in the world. That seems to me to be an entirely fruitful and appropriate Christian vocation. Obviously, in the modern world, there have been clashes between certain ideas, certain intellectual movements, and historic Christianity. But I see these as the normal product of human development and not as any intrinsic commentary on the way in which God has made the world, or made it possible for people to understand the world.

Fifty years ago, the prevailing wisdom among many scholars was that Christianity would slowly die out as it has, to some degree, in Europe. Why didn’t this happen in the United States?

The main difference between religion in the United States and religion in Europe is that, since the late 18th century and early 19th century, religion in the United States was voluntary. It was a people’s movement; it was democratized in ways that were simply unknown in Europe. In the 19th century, European religion lost the allegiance of the lower classes, the working classes. That loss of allegiance never took place in the United States. In the 20th century, European religion lost the allegiance of much of the upper classes. That has taken place, to some extent, in the United States. But underneath, in the lives of middle-class, working-class, [and] some upper-middle-class Americans, there has been no reason to abandon religious traditions. The long-standing patterns — the more democratic, the more voluntaristic patterns — of American religion help to explain the contemporary differences between Europe and the United States.

What do you consider American evangelicalism’s greatest strengths for the years ahead?

For the years ahead, the greatest strengths of American evangelical Christianity have to be the bedrock qualities of Christian faith. The ways in which evangelicals adjust to society may be good, may be bad, may be indifferent, may be questionable in some ways, but to be a Christian of any sort, and certainly to be an evangelical Christian, is to remain confident in the work of God and Jesus Christ. So long as evangelicals are secure in that confidence, then whatever happens, they will be secure in the future. If evangelical Christians lose the confidence of their faith in Jesus Christ as the revelation of God’s full truth for humanity, then whatever their worldly success, evangelical Christianity will be in real trouble.

How is the tide running in this country between religion and secularism? Is one or the other winning, in your view? Are the extremes gaining ground and the middle declining? Or are both evangelicalism and secularism becoming stronger?

That’s a very difficult question to answer. The question as to whether the currents of religion or the secular currents run more strongly now is a very difficult question to answer. It’s difficult, in part, because at least some Christian people would have to say that some of the things that religious people do are wrong, [and] some of the things that secular people do are right. So that’s a complication from the beginning, as it were. My own sense is that the cause of the Christian gospel is always active where people are trying to practice their faith. Now, whether that cause advances or contracts, whether it seems to be doing better [or] seems to be doing worse is a very difficult matter to measure. The Christian gospel says that people are to take heed when they think they are succeeding, lest they fall. And the Christian gospel is full of injunctions — when things look worse, to trust in God. So I’m not going to commit myself to a judgment as to whether things are getting better or worse in Christian view, because the Christian gospel says that we don’t always see things the way they are, and that over the long term, for humanity as a whole — not necessarily the United States — the word and work of God will prevail.

What about whether the extremes are winning in religion and in the secular world and it’s the middle perhaps that’s declining?

It certainly is legitimate to ask whether the extremes are becoming more visible, more powerful, than the various middles — the moderates in the religious traditions who try to maintain the integrity of their religious traditions, but with some kind of communication to the broader world. It probably is the case, given especially the modern media and the focus upon short, pithy, vibrant statements, that it’s easier to be an extremist in a media-driven age than it is to be a person who says, “On the one hand, this; on the other hand, that.” It may well be the case that extreme positions — and we are talking about extreme religious positions, extreme secular positions — probably do receive more attention than maybe they’re worth; probably do receive more attention than would have been the case in an era before the widespread prevalence of television in American civilization.

What do you sense about this generation of young people? How do you compare their interests and the depths of the faith of their generation with, say, your generation?

Questions about the faith of the rising generation of evangelical Christians are quite legitimate. I see a lot more worldly experience with our students. Many more of them have traveled overseas. Many more of them have experience in other cultures. This, to me, is a positive sign, because of the strength of Christian faith as it grows in other parts of the world. I also see amongst our students more tangled family histories, less stability in local lives, less stability in their family lives. These, of course, are worrying trends, but they are also trends that are shared widely in the culture. The Christian faith, as many people have said, [is] one generation away from extinction. The means that God uses to keep the Christian faith alive vary from generation to generation. I think the generation that’s coming along now has tremendous potential, but also faces great difficulties as well.

What can you tell me about the Vineyard movement? Where does it fit in on the spectrum of evangelical churches?

The Vineyard churches are usually associated with the pioneering work of John Wimber, who was associated with a number of mainline evangelical groups, but who had a distinctive gift — certainly a distinctive emphasis upon [a] charismatic understanding of Christianity. John Wimber was a pioneer in the use of a new kind of music that was designed to appeal to contemporary tastes, as opposed to traditional tastes. The Vineyard churches, like many things in America, are weak on tradition, strong on personal experience. It may be that their success is keyed to these developments in American culture more generally.

The jury that will have to judge, in some future generation, about the integrity and the success of the Vineyard movement will have to ask: Did this stress on personal experience undercut some traditional Christian matters that were of necessity? It’s too early to say now. Certainly, the Vineyard churches have been a very interesting new phenomenon, a new way of adaptation by evangelical groups at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century.

In your view, is it a good or a bad thing — the emphasis on personal experience?

Emphasis on personal experience has been a main feature of evangelical history since the mid-18th century. Even though some of the early leaders of evangelicalism, like Jonathan Edwards or John Wesley, were first-rate intellectuals, they communicated a message that said that personal experience of God was a key matter. So to have new varieties of emphasis upon the personal experience of God in our time is only what one should expect in evangelical movements. Always, however, when you stress personal experience, the risk is run that you, rather than God, will become the center of religion. Does this risk exist now? Yes. Has it existed before? Yes. Has God brought people through this risk before? Yes. Can he do it again? Yes. Will he? We don’t know.

What are the important trends or issues that Max Lucado’s Oak Hills Church brings up about evangelicalism?

The Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas would be, I think, representative of several important trends in modern evangelicalism. Although this is a church that comes out of the Restoration movement — the Churches of Christ or Christian Church — [it] has chosen to call itself a community church or just Oak Hills Church. Its pastor, Max Lucado, is a very effective communicator in person, a very effective communicator through print. People come to the church not because it is part of the Restoration tradition, but because of its skillful presentation of the Christian message and its efficient organization of Christian worship and Christian practice. This would be a trend, I think — that denominational tradition means less than the ability of pastors, spokespeople, local churches to organize effectively to reach out to their communities. And this has obviously been one of the most effective churches in the country in doing that.

Is it a good trend? A worrisome trend? Or is it too early to know?

As a historian I am, of course, worried when traditions are given up without good reason. And yet, as a historian of evangelical Christianity, I know that evangelicals have made adjustments to their religious traditions throughout the centuries. So to give up traditional denomination loyalties in order to reach out more broadly to the public seems to me to be a trade-off that could be positive and could be negative. If the end product is to be wishy-washy and unsettled, without an anchor, tossed about on every wind of contemporary culture, then, of course, that would be a negative situation. If something genuine and filled with integrity from the Christian tradition is maintained, then this is probably a good thing — to reach out more broadly with that kind of message.

You’ve written a lot about the Protestant hymns. What is their significance for the evangelical tradition in America and for evangelical churches?

Music has always been important to evangelical Protestants, right from the days of Charles Wesley, the great hymn-writing brother of John Wesley. “Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing” has been the “Marseillaise” hymn of Methodism since the 1740s. Hymns for evangelicals, I think, fill several functions. They fulfill a teaching function. They express what is important at any one time and era for evangelical Christians. Evangelicals do not, generally speaking, emphasize the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And so singing — something bodily — becomes quasi-sacramental in evangelical churches. Music also reflects very profound changes. There was a new style of evangelical hymnody in the 18th century with Charles Wesley, with John Newton’s “Amazing Grace,” with many other hymns that are still sung in Protestant — and now today, Catholic — churches: Wesley’s “Jesus, Lover of my soul,” and hymns by the American Presbyterian Samuel Davies — “Who is a pardoning God like thee? Or who has grace so rich and free?” — and hymns like William Cooper’s “Sometimes a light surprises the Christian as he sings.” These are all great statements of Christian faith that, at least in some traditions, are still used today. But one of the constant features of evangelical history has been new music for new times. So at the end of the 19th century, there was a great quantity of what we call now gospel music that was written. Fanny Crosby’s hymnody was a very important addition to America and to worldwide Christian music in the second half of the 19th century. Her hymn “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying” was an appeal to reach out to the new urban masses in America who were not as well churched as had been the case in Protestant America. And now, in the last 40 and 50 years, we’ve had a great boom of song — praise song, worship song, Scripture songs — connected, I think, pretty strongly at first to the charismatic movement, but now broadening out to all sorts of churches. These would be the kind of tunes heard probably most broadly in American churches. I think some of them are fine. I think some of them are terrible. As a historian and a lover of hymnody, I worry that some of the older, very good hymns are simply being turned aside because they’re not now fashionable, don’t have a strong enough beat. But as a historian, it’s obvious that at different times the music expresses new things. And evangelicals are amongst the first to jump on the bandwagon and use the new kinds of music.

We have talked to evangelicals around the country about their faith and about beliefs, behavior, and belonging. How do you think evangelicals fall into those three categories? Why are those three things so important, particularly to evangelical Christians?

Some of the best surveys by political scientists and sociologists stress the three Bs in defining evangelicals: beliefs, belonging, and behavior. These three categories are really important for all religious groups, all political groups, all groups in society as a whole. But they are especially important for defining evangelicals and defining their practice. The beliefs of the evangelicals are, by and large, traditional Christian beliefs, probably simplified somewhat, adapted somewhat for American culture. Belonging is important. The churches, the church traditions of evangelicals are quite significant. And behavior is quite important: how people act individually, how they act in society. The new intellectual, academic interest in evangelicals and the new political awareness by the American public of evangelicals has to do, I think, with the linking of beliefs, behaviors, and belonging. It is a time of mobilization of people whose beliefs they think are expressed in behaviors, and who are linked to groups in which they belong, that has made evangelical Christianity in the last 20 and 30 years more visible in American public life.

What about global evangelicalism?

One of the interesting aspects of evangelical history today is the awareness that what takes place in the United States is really now only a small part of what could be considered a broader evangelical history for the world. Tens of millions of Africans, in West Africa, South Africa, East Africa; tens of millions of Chinese, tens of millions of Latin Americans, both Catholic and Protestant in Latin America, practice forms of the Christian faith that look pretty similar in many ways to what we define as evangelicalism for the United States. The way in which evangelicals in the United States interact with these evangelical-type groups around the world will, I think, be a very important factor in the future of world Christianity as well as just the future of evangelical Christianity.

Why?

The most rapidly growing Christian movements in the world are Catholic and Pentecostal movements in the two Third Worlds. The Philippines is the country with the most Roman Catholics in the world; Nigeria is the country with, far and away, the most Anglicans, Episcopalians, in the world. The largest Pentecostal church in the world is in Korea. The Pentecostals in Brazil are two and three times as numerous as the Pentecostals in the United States. These illustrations could go on and on to suggest that the strand of Christianity that begins with the German pietists, the British evangelicals, [and] the American colonial evangelicals in the 18th century has now broadened out to the world. What American evangelicals will do in responding to this new world situation will tell whether American evangelicals are increasingly isolated from Christians around the world or whether they take part in common witness, common sharing, common doing of good with these new groups of believers around the world.

Are you involved in any of the debates on the same-sex marriage question? Where do you come down?

I haven’t been myself. Actually, it’s a little more complicated than I thought it was. You get educated by your children. We have children who have lived all over the world, East Coast and West Coast. So they’ve told me, “You don’t know. Slow down. Make sure you know what you’re talking about.” I would be certainly toward traditional views of marriage. I think my question would be to what extent the state should enforce traditional views for anyone. I think that’s an issue I’d like to explore a little more myself.

So you make a distinction between what the civil law can do and what churches can or can’t, should or shouldn’t do?

Should we make that distinction? Yes, although I think it’s been the case in the West, particularly in Catholic tradition, people who have been very expert arguing a natural basis for what churches affirm from [the] base of revelation. I think that could be done here, but it needs to be done with a great deal of respect for everybody and understanding of just the way things are. Your question about extremes earlier is a good one, because I do think, by the nature of the case, extreme voices grab public attention. Folks who want to say, “Let’s work this out and see what is actually the case and what actually the case entails,” may get less attention than the ones with the very simple, straightforward, dogmatic position on one side or the other. I do think it would be better for legislatures to legislate than for courts to make the decision. I did approve and do approve of judicial intervention on race issues. But those interventions grow out of four centuries of problems and then 40 years of altered circumstance.

America’s Evangelicals — Survey Analysis

Posted on April 16, 2004 by Michael Bailey

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: It’s impossible to measure religious experience, but it is possible to ask people about their beliefs and practices, and we did that in our national survey conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

At a press conference this week, Anna Greenberg, who directed the poll, announced the results. She is a specialist on religion and politics, and the role of churches in public life.

Joining her was political scientist John Green, also an expert on religion and public life, and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Afterwards, I asked what survey findings surprised them.

ANNA GREENBERG (Vice President, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc.): I think what surprised me the most was how part of the mainstream evangelicals are. They watch the same amount of television, they live in the same places, they go to churches of the same size.

The biggest difference is their beliefs and their practices. They have very strong and conservative religious beliefs, and they put them into practice at a level of great intensity, compared to anybody else.

Professor JOHN GREEN (Director, Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics, University of Akron): The thing that surprised me the most was the stark evidence of the ambivalent feelings that evangelicals have toward American society, with three quarters saying that they feel they’re part of the American mainstream and an equal number, three quarters, believing that they have to fight hard to get their point of view across. But, they also feel that the news media is very hostile to them. And about half of them feel that other Americans look down on them. So this is a group that feels in some ways comfortable with American society, but in other respects still estranged and still apart.

ABERNETHY: I think the thing that surprised me the most was how not only evangelicals but everybody else felt the country is on the wrong track when it comes to moral values.

Ms. GREENBERG: That’s right. When you ask evangelicals, “What’s the most important thing that concerns you?” moral values is their number-one issue. Though I should say, other issues — economic issues — are important to them as well. When you ask them, “What’s your biggest worry?” the strongest thing, the thing that comes out, is children not learning the right values. And in fact, all Americans feel that way. The difference between all Americans and evangelicals is evangelicals act upon these concerns. In other words, they have these concerns about their kids’ values, and that influences what kind of television they expose them to. Other Americans aren’t as likely to say that their view of the kind of, moral sort of direction of the country has the same kind of impact on their behavior.

Prof. GREEN: Part of what may be going on in that question is that there is a great disagreement in the United States about moral values — some people wanting to emphasize family and children and sexual issues, other people wanting to talk about war and peace, social justice, the regulation of the marketplace. And Americans, I think, are revealing that those are very major conflicts today.

ABERNETHY: John, what does this new survey have to say about evangelicals and politics in 2004?

Prof. GREEN: Well, you know, the last couple of years white evangelicals have been seen as a strong Republican constituency. They voted very heavily for George Bush in 2000, and our survey suggests that that support for Bush is maintained. For instance, we found that 71 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Bush over Kerry if the election were held today. So these are clearly a conservative or Republican group. But you know, they are not monolithically so. About 23 percent said they would vote for Kerry, and it’s possible that, under [certain] circumstances, the Democrats might get even a few more votes.

ABERNETHY: What circumstances?

Prof. GREEN: If the social issues come up in the campaign in a way that allows the economic and foreign policy concerns of evangelicals to be relevant to their votes.

Ms. GREENBERG: They are very interested in being strong militarily, very strong on the war on terrorism, very strong on Iraq. And that is, I think, as set of positions that probably favors Bush.

ABERNETHY: Anna, are there signs that evangelicals are becoming what you might call more tolerant?

Ms. GREENBERG: I think there are. We would expect, given the intense religious and theological beliefs that evangelicals have, that they would have a pretty rigid, you know, view about who is saved and who is not saved. It turns out only about half, even less than half, say we have to be born again in order to be saved; [that] suggests, you know, openness to other Christians and openness to other people. If you look at issues, it also looks like they are becoming more tolerant. We asked this question about gay marriage. Overwhelmingly, 82 percent say they are against gay marriage. But when you ask them, “Do we need a constitutional amendment?” only about half of them say we need an amendment. The other half says state laws are sufficient.

I think there was some sense, probably on the right, that this would be sort of a home run with this base group for the Republican Party. But, in fact, you know, a majority think that, you know, the laws are okay.

When we asked them, “Would you vote for a candidate who held a different position than you on the question of gay marriage?” only about 47 percent said, “I would vote against that candidate if they had a different view than me.” The rest were okay. So it’s not even a litmus test for them. So I’m not sure if they’re becoming more open or tolerant, per se, but they certainly have nuanced views about these issues.

ABERNETHY: And what about evangelizing? Do evangelicals think they must try to convert others, or is it enough to talk about one’s faith, to share it?

Ms. GREENBERG: It doesn’t have to be a deliberate attempt to convert. It can just be spreading the “good news,” talking with friends, talking with family. About 75 percent say on a weekly basis they just talk about these issues.

Prof. GREEN: But there is a difference in the survey, though, between sharing one’s faith, talking about one’s faith, and actually trying to convert people. And significantly fewer evangelicals say that they actually try to convert people than say they simply share their faith with others.

Conversation with Anna Greenberg and John Green

Posted on April 16, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read more of Bob Abernethy’s conversation about the RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY national survey of America’s evangelicals with Anna Greenberg, who directed the survey, and political science professor John Green:

Anna, let’s begin with your finding that, in many ways, evangelicals are not so different from anybody else.

I think one of the most interesting parts about this research is how many characteristics evangelicals share with other Americans. They are slightly more likely to live in the South, but not extremely so. They are slightly more likely to live in rural areas or small towns, but not extremely so. They have pretty high levels of education. Almost as many have a college education as anybody else. They say they’re part of the mainstream, and in many ways, they are part of the mainstream.

But with big differences about what?

The biggest difference is their beliefs and practice. They have very strong and conservative religious beliefs, and they put them into practice at a level of great intensity, compared to anybody else.

But there’s a big tension, isn’t there, John, between this idea, on the one hand, that they feel part of the mainstream, and on the other hand, an uneasiness about their acceptance?

Absolutely. The survey shows that, I think, very clearly. On the one hand, about three quarters of evangelicals really think that they’re in the mainstream of American society, which fits with Anna’s findings about their demography. On the other hand, three quarters of them also think that they have to fight hard to get their point of view across to their fellow Americans. So this is a group that feels in some ways comfortable with American society, but in other respects still estranged and still apart.

They feel that they have to fight to get their point of view across, John, even though the president and the attorney general and leaders of the House and Senate are evangelicals?

Absolutely. You know, one of the interesting findings in the survey was that evangelicals recognize that they have influence with the president, with the White House. But they also feel that the news media is very hostile to them. And about half of them feel that other Americans look down upon them. This is a group that understands that it has a place, but they are not entirely comfortable with that place.

You mentioned, John, that they are not so happy with the mass media.

Not happy at all. Three quarters of white evangelicals also view the media as being hostile to their values and their community.

Anna, one of your impressive findings had to do with the importance of moral values — for evangelicals and for everybody else.

That’s right. I think that we make an assumption that the thing evangelicals care about most [is] the moral values of this country, and that’s true. If you ask them, “What do you care about most?” about a third say the most important issue is moral values. But in fact, there are a lot of other issues that bother them just as much — the economy, retirement, education. So it turns out, when they think about their economic concerns, they’re not all that different than other Americans. When you ask, “What’s your biggest worry?” the thing that comes out is children not learning the right values. In fact, all Americans feel that way. When you ask evangelicals, “How are the moral values of the country going?” the vast majority would say, “The wrong direction.” What’s interesting is that other Americans feel the same way. The difference between the two is that evangelicals act upon it. They vote on it. They make sure they control what kinds of popular culture their kids are exposed to. Americans all share the same concern about moral values, but there’s an impetus among evangelicals to actually do something about it. Other Americans aren’t as likely to say that their view on the moral direction of the country has the same impact on their behavior.

John?

It turns out that Americans overall have some real questions about whether the country is on the right track morally. It’s not just evangelicals. It’s interesting to put the findings that Anna talked about, about their priorities, versus this general sense that we’re on the wrong track morally. Part of what may be going on here is there are different definitions of morality. Evangelicals tend to look at family, children, sexual issues; whereas many other Americans may look at social justice, war and peace, and those types of issues.

And Anna?

Or corporate greed. That moral question actually has a different political implication for evangelicals than it does for other Americans.

John?

Absolutely.

What does this new survey have to say, John, about evangelicals and politics in 2004?

Well, you know, the last couple of years, white evangelicals have been seen as a strong Republican constituency. They voted very heavily for George Bush in 2000, and our survey suggests that that support for Bush is maintained; for instance, we found that 71 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Bush over Kerry if the election were held today. There is some question as to what the voter turnout will be, which is important. And at the moment, it looks like voter turnout will be about like other Americans. But of course, it’ll be very important to President Bush to have high turnout from this solid Republican constituency. White evangelicals are clearly a conservative, or Republican, group. But they’re not monolithically so. About 23 percent said they would vote for Kerry, and it’s possible that, under [certain] circumstances, the Democrats might get even a few more votes.

What circumstances?

If social issues come up in the campaign in a way that allows the economic and foreign policy concerns of evangelicals to be relevant to their votes. For some people, the economy is going to be very important. Many evangelicals believe that the country’s on the wrong track economically, very much like their fellow citizens. But for evangelicals, the moral issues seem to take precedence, and that seems to be what ties them to their Republican voting behavior. Many of the evangelical Democrats are pretty fierce Democrats, strongly supportive of their party. It is possible, if the social issues are somewhat on the back burner in this election, that Senator Kerry might even get a few more votes from the evangelical community, because issues like the economy and health care matter to them, as well.

But, Anna, not much chance that those social issues are going to remain anything but of very high importance for evangelicals?

That’s right. I think it’s hard to imagine a different outcome. Another thing that probably stands Bush well with evangelical voters is how they view the world and America in the world. They are very, very supportive of a strong defense. They’re supportive of the war on terrorism. They’re patriotic. They are less supportive of a more multilateral view or interventionist [view] around human rights issues. And to the extent that international issues play a role in this election, which they will, many evangelicals are very strongly supportive of the president. When it comes to their views about the world, white evangelicals are very interested in being strong militarily, very strong on Iraq. And that is, I think, a set of positions that probably favors Bush.

John?

Anna is probably right, although there was another finding that I think may help the Democrats: evangelicals are pretty evenly divided as to whether American society is on the right track or the wrong track.

Are there signs, Anna, that evangelicals are becoming more tolerant?

Well, moral issues shape their worldview in pretty profound ways. But on a series of questions that we might assume in a very simplistic way they will just be knee-jerk, we actually found that they have a nuanced view. If you look at something like the question of gay marriage, the vast majority, 82 percent, are opposed to gay marriage. But if you asked, “Do we need a constitutional amendment, or are state laws sufficient?” only 42 percent say we need to amend the Constitution. I think there was some sense, probably on the right, that this would be sort of a home run with this base group for the Republican Party; but in fact, a majority thinks that the laws are okay. When we asked them, “Would you vote for a candidate who held a different position than you on the question of gay marriage?” only about 47 percent said, “I would vote against that candidate if they had a different view than me.” The rest were okay. It’s not even a litmus test for them. So I’m not sure if they’re becoming more open or tolerant per se, but they certainly have nuanced views about these issues.

And, Anna, how about the religious idea, the theological idea, that only the born again can be saved?

One of the more interesting things we found was that less than a majority, only 48 percent, think that you have to be born again to be saved. There’s a sense of openness, at least to other Christians, and maybe even broader than that, that there isn’t just one way to be saved.

John?

And that’s quite interesting, because the sense is that’s a change — that in the past, evangelicals might have been much more likely to say that only a born-again person can reach heaven.

And how do evangelicals feel, John, about well-known evangelical leaders?

They are not all that supportive of people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, people many of us associate with white evangelicals. In fact, evangelicals don’t see them particularly as their leaders or in a favorable light. They were more likely to see Franklin Graham or James Dobson, who are more religious leaders than political leaders, in a favorable light. And they see the pope in a very favorable light — in fact, about as favorably as they see their most favorable leaders.

What do you make of that, Anna?

Evangelicals are able to differentiate among their own leadership. And I think it goes to the question about openness and tolerance. Historically there was an assumption that evangelicals are anti-Catholic. The survey results show that that’s not true anymore. There is a broader worldview about other Americans, about other Christians.

What did you find, Anna, about evangelicals in their own culture and evangelicals in relationship to the larger national culture?

Evangelicals are not cut off from popular culture. They watch TV at the same rates as other Americans. They watch broadcast news. But they also have their own set of media. They have their own books, their own radio, their own television, their own magazines; and they read them at high rates. They don’t view regular media as particularly favorable towards them. They think it’s quite hostile, and so it’s important to them to have their own set of spokespeople. But they consume both [cultures] at the same rates.

John?

On the sense of hostility evangelicals feel from the national news media, it’s not just that the media have different values. There is a real sense of hostility. I think that extends also to popular culture. We asked questions about whether evangelicals permitted their children to watch television or video games, and there was some strong evidence that they restricted the viewing habits of their children. So evangelicals, while they participate in the popular culture, have some very major issues with it.

John, what should the news media do that they’re not doing?

Part of it is, I think, that the news media have not always been sensitive to the evangelical community. At least evangelicals perceive that they’ve been misrepresented and not treated fairly. But also, part of it may be that the news media have a different set of goals, and oftentimes evangelicals disagree with those goals.

Anna?

I do think the lack of sensitivity is important, because it shapes how other Americans see evangelicals. The fact is they’re about 20 to 25 percent of the population. They buy Christian books at numbers that would blow the NEW YORK TIMES best-seller list out of the water. And most nonevangelical Americans don’t even know this about evangelical culture. The media have a big impact on how other people see evangelicals.

What are some of the goals, John, that people in the national news business have that evangelicals don’t like?

Well, evangelicals, of course, have these very strong, traditional moral values, particularly when it comes to families and children and sexual behavior. And of course, many of the people in the national news media perceive those issues very differently. Even if the media meet an objective standard to reporting these issues, many evangelicals will find that objectionable, because their particular values are not being held up.

Anna, what did you find about evangelicals and evangelizing, taking the “good news” of the New Testament into all the world?

Part of being an evangelical is the imperative to proselytize, to evangelize, to convert. We find very strong evidence in the poll that evangelicals do that. They talk to their friends. They talk to their family. They talk to co-workers. Even about a third say they talk to strangers. But even more of them just talk about it informally. I think that’s very important. It doesn’t have to be a deliberate attempt to convert. It can just be spreading the “good news,” talking with friends, talking with family. About 75 percent say on a weekly basis they just talk about these issues.

John?

There is a difference in the survey, though, between sharing one’s faith, talking about one’s faith, and actually trying to convert people. Significantly fewer evangelicals say they actually try to convert people than say they simply share their faith with others.

And evangelical missions, Anna?

Evangelicals support missions at very high levels when you look at what they contribute their money to. There’s a very high level of support for international mission work. Very few — only about 7 percent — say they’ve actually gone on international missions. They like to spread the gospel domestically.

Was there anything that surprised you in the results of the survey, Anna?

What surprised me the most was how part of the mainstream evangelicals are. They watch the same amount of television, they live in the same places, they go to churches of the same size. Everybody worries about moral values. They’re set apart by their religious beliefs and the intensity of their faith. But in many ways, they’re just like anybody else.

And John?

The thing that surprised me most was the stark evidence of the ambivalent feelings evangelicals have toward American society, with three quarters saying that they feel they’re part of the American mainstream and an equal number, three quarters, believing that they have to fight hard to get their point of view across.

The thing that surprised me the most was how not only evangelicals but everybody else felt the country is on the wrong track when it comes to moral values. Anna, any comment on that?

I think that’s right, and we see that in lots of different research that we do. It gets played out in very different ways, whether it’s politics or how people make decisions about their families. I think that’s the key difference between evangelicals and nonevangelicals — how it gets played out in their lives and their political views.

John?

Again, part of what may be going on in that question is a great disagreement in the United States about moral values — some people wanting to emphasize family and children and sexual issues, other people wanting to talk about war and peace, social justice, the regulation of the marketplace. Americans, I think, are revealing that those are very major conflicts today.

Anna?

If you look at African Americans and African-American evangelicals, they’re even more likely than white evangelicals and other people to say the country’s on the wrong track. They hold a very intense set of conservative views about moral issues. What’s interesting about them is that politically they are completely different. The vast majority is going to vote for Kerry. This is an area where moral issues among evangelicals play out very differently. Evangelicals are more concerned about moral values as a stand-alone issue, but it’s true everybody feels that way. The difference is how it ends up playing out in people’s lives and in politics. For evangelicals, these issues influence how they would talk to their children; what they’d let them watch on television, on the Internet; and how they vote.

John?

Moral issues are one of the great divides in the United States today, with different religious communities defining morality in different respects. So, for instance, for African Americans and African-American evangelicals, questions of civil rights and social justice appear to be in the forefront. They regard those as the central moral issues of our times. On the other hand, white evangelicals look at family, sexual issues, children. They see those as the central moral issues of our times. Each of these communities, which are very similar in religious terms, end up quite different politically — one supporting the Democratic Party and the other supporting the Republican Party.

Anna Greenberg on America’s Evangelicals Survey

Posted on April 13, 2004 by Michael Bailey

Read the comments of Anna Greenberg, vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. at the April 13, 2004 Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly press briefing in Washington, D.C. to announce the results of a new national survey on America’s evangelicals:

It’s almost hard to know where to start in talking about this study, because there’s so much in it. It is such an in-depth look at how evangelicals live. But we made a very deliberate decision to look at how evangelicals live in contrast or in comparison with everybody else because it’s impossible to say [that there is] something distinctive about evangelicals in America without knowing how they live compared to other Americans. And how do we challenge some of the stereotypes that people [have] about evangelicals without understanding where they actually are quite similar to other people? Where are the stereotypes or the assumptions that we make about Evangelicals confirmed? We did this quite deliberately and so the study is actually quite large. Overall, the sample is about 1,600. But we have an over-sample of African-Americans, an over-sample of Hispanics, and an over-sample of white evangelical Protestants so that we had a big enough sample size to really look at this in-depth and actually look at some of the differences among white evangelical Protestants as well. It’s a very rich study and, as I said, it’s almost hard to know where to start.

In no particular order, what is surprising? And, in no particular order, what kind of assumptions have we made [and] are they confirmed? Let me start by saying in some ways what is surprising. I think — and Bob [Abernethy] made this point at the very beginning of his comments — the question are Evangelicals “mainstream” (and that word itself is loaded and normative and I almost hate to say it) — but do they see themselves as mainstream and are they mainstream, and I was surprised actually at the percentage of evangelicals who said, “yes, actually I feel like I’m part of the mainstream.” And when you dig down into the numbers, you actually can see why they said that. Let’s take, for example, where they live. They are slightly more likely to be found in the South, but not that much more — about five percentage points more likely to be in the South. But otherwise, [they are] distributed across the country the way the rest of the American population is. They are slightly more likely to be found in rural areas and small towns, but not overwhelmingly so. And there are large numbers in the suburbs and large numbers in the cities. And of course that is especially if you look at African-American evangelicals. They are slightly less likely to have a college education, but not overwhelmingly so. About 40% have a college education. This is a group that is integrated professionally and educationally into mainstream America. It is not particularly different.

The one place where evangelicals are slightly different is they are slightly older. That was actually very interesting to me, and some of the more interesting differences among evangelicals are the age differences because, like everybody, younger evangelicals are less religious than older evangelicals, which I just thought was incredibly interesting. But they are slightly older, and I’m not exactly sure how to account for that, but it has an impact, particularly on the kinds of issues they’re worried about. Looking at demographics, evangelicals are just not that different from the rest of America.

Looking at what they worry about, what they care about, we asked people in a sort of open-ended context, what are the concerns that you have? What are you worried about? And we have a range of different issues, from the economy to terrorism to moral values to security to the situation in Iraq. And not surprisingly, the top issue for evangelicals is moral values. But what’s interesting to me is that this is not dominant. If you look at all evangelicals, 34% say their number one concern is moral values. 27% are worried about the economy and jobs, 23% are worried about fighting terrorism, 14% are worried about education. This issue is not dominant in the way we might assume that it is. And when you dig down deep into the evangelical population, you see all the kinds of differences that emerge among Americans in general here as well. If you look at age differences, you’ll find that among younger evangelicals, education as an issue is almost as important to them as the state of moral values, which is true of the population at large. If you look at older women, who are among the most religious if not the most religious in the evangelical population, retirement is as important an issue to them as moral values. I’m not suggesting that for this group moral values [don’t] play a special role. But to suggest that it’s the only thing they care about would be wrong. And, in fact, when we go through a list of things that you might worry about — and the list ranges from the values your kids are learning to the loss of jobs to China — we find that while evangelicals are more likely to worry about the values their kids are learning [and] they’re more worried about the state of marriage, they’re almost as likely as other Americans to worry about economic issues and worry about job outsourcing and the deficit and the long-term solvency of Social Security. They have the same kinds of economic concerns that other Americans have, and arguably, they are slightly more downscale than other Americans, and so in some sense, these concerns are more intense. And when you look at lower-income evangelicals and evangelicals with lower levels of education, a lot of these economic issues are as equally important to them as these kinds of moral issues. I think it is important to mention this because their concerns are multidimensional. They are not one-dimensional.

We spent some time looking at the gay marriage question because it would have been malpractice for us not to ask this question, though it only took up about three questions of a very extensive survey. And the results were interesting. I think we fully expected that evangelicals would be opposed to gay marriage, but there were a couple of things that were interesting. A majority of evangelicals opposed gay marriage. But when we asked people, do we need a Constitutional amendment or are state laws sufficient, only 42% said we need a Constitutional amendment. Now, that is higher than all Americans, but it is well short of a majority of evangelicals saying we need a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And what’s even more interesting is we asked people, is this a litmus test for you when you vote? In other words, would you vote for a candidate if that candidate had a different position than you on gay marriage? 47% said “I would not.” That’s less than a majority [who] said that had this litmus test. I’m not sure that Bush needs to worry about where they’re going on gay marriage, but the point is, again, like the question of the place of moral values in the larger bundle of issues they care about, gay marriage is not straightforward either. Less than a majority favors a Constitutional amendment, and less than a majority says it is a litmus test for them when they vote.

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the role of evangelical elites in raising concerns about the treatment of religious minorities internationally. And we were interested in thinking about the evangelical view of the world and how America should be in the world. We asked a series of really interesting questions about what America’s role should be in the world. And what we found was that, along with other people who are conservative, questions of strength, the military, fighting the war on terrorism, prosecuting the war on Iraq, were the most important sort of things that America needed to be doing. At the bottom of the list was worrying about the rights of religious minorities and the rights of people more broadly and human rights in the world. And so it was interesting, because I think that there’s a disconnect between the way this issue gets covered at the elite level, in the White House, or [the way] regular evangelicals think about it, very much like other Republicans and conservatives, about the role of America in the world, and certainly less likely than, say, more liberal or moderate Protestants to care about taking care of the disadvantaged internationally, dealing with AIDS and the spread of disease and those kinds of issues.

Looking at themselves as a community, what’s not surprising is that they have very intense levels of religious practice and religious belief. But what was interesting [was] they were discerning about their own leadership. We asked questions about favorability of James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell. From the outside there’s an assumption that any leader in the evangelical community is a potential spokesman for the community. But in fact, evangelicals have very mixed feelings about some of their leaders and in fact were fairly unfavorable toward Pat Robertson. Almost all of them know who Pat Robertson is; 79% know who he is. 34% feel favorably toward him, 23% unfavorable. That’s not an overwhelming number for Pat Robertson among evangelicals. If you look in contrast at someone like Franklin Graham, fewer people know him, only 50% could recognize who he is. But 37% feel warm toward him and only 7% [feel] unfavorable toward him. If you look at James Dobson, who’s slightly better known (58%), 44% feel warmly toward him, 6% cool. They are discerning about their own leadership, and we shouldn’t assume that anybody who’s an evangelical spokesman is well-liked by their own constituency.

There’s such a strong emphasis on proselytizing and evangelizing (and that was very clear in this survey — very, very intense numbers around the levels at which they proselytize and talk to people in their families and talk to friends and talk to co-workers), [but] not everybody in the evangelical community thinks that only evangelicals go to heaven. There’s actually a fair amount of — I don’t know if the right word is tolerance, again, that’s a very loaded word — but there’s a fair amount of openness to people who come from a different worldview in that sense. The question is, do you that only born-again Christians go to heaven? Only 48% of evangelicals say that’s true. Less than half [say] that’s true. If you look at African-American evangelicals, only 41% say that’s true. But overall, less than half say that only born-again Christians go to heaven.

We were looking to see is there any opening for Democrats with evangelical Christians. We’re in turbulent times with the war in Iraq, but also with the economy. This is a group that has pretty significant economic concerns. Is there a potential for economic populism to break through and sort of trump maybe the question of moral values when it comes to voting? In fact, we found that Bush has a very sizable majority, when it comes to evangelicals, which is pretty solid, and Kerry does not do very well at all among evangelicals. It seems that their status as a base group for Bush is solid and it’s hard to imagine it moving much. They think they have a fair amount of influence within the Bush administration and, by the way, so do non-evangelicals. Non-evangelicals also think that evangelicals have a fair amount of influence in the Bush administration. And I think they fairly accurately perceive they have a fair amount of influence within the Bush administration. The thing I looked for but couldn’t find was: Is there a crack? Is there an opening? For evangelicals who are Democrats (and there aren’t very many of them unless you look at African Americans), partisanship trumps religion. It’s interesting. They are very strongly for Kerry if they call themselves Democrats, as much as other people who are Democrats, and it trumps their religious beliefs. But they’re a pretty small group of people.

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