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Garnet SpyAre Evangelicals a united whole, or a scattered group of religious folk who may or may not share some common values? Everyone knows Evangelicals have flexed their muscles politically for some time now, but did the Bush Presidency change that at all? Also, with the passing away of Jerry Falwell, and the degressing popularity of Pat Robertson, it may appear that the Religious Right is slowly loosing leadership. Another factor is the younger evangelicals: will they follow the footsteps of their parents, react against their parents, or land in some happy medium?
The editorial team for Christianity Today magazine (”What We Really Want“, January, 2008) are announcing that evangelicals “will not be on the sidelines this election” further stating “One President’s policies, one difficult war, one season of foreclosures–or whatever is supposed to discourage us–is not going to make us throw up our hands in despair.” And as Iowa showed, evangelicals are not defeated in the political arena just yet.
But what does this actually mean? What are “Evangelicals” post George W. Bush? It can be kind of confusing as the internal paradox of this article shows when it gives the following qualifications, which basically sum up the article:
1. Evangelicals are not a “block” of voters that can be swooped up as a whole by saying this or that key phrase.
2. Evangelicals may have assisted President George W. Bush’s election, but it should not be assumed that this means a given presidential candidate can be a lock just because he/she tickles the ears of Evangelicals. Evangelicals didn’t put Pat Robertson in office, hence, it takes more than religious talk.
3. On the other hand, Evangelicals do represent core values: namely, “freedom of religion and conscience; protection for families and children; protection of all human life; compassion and justice for poor people; global human rights; the pursuit of peace and restraint of violence; and biblically based creation care.”
Those three primary points makes one wonder whether or not Evangelicals should or should not be seen as a voting block. An important but under-appreciated question going into this election is whether or not Evangelicals will present a united political front as was done the last two elections or whether the values listed above will be interpreted differently (if agreed upon at all) by different Evangelicals making Evangelicals more or less a loosely connected group of religious individuals. One thing is for sure, Evangelicals are sticking around.
Filed under: Election 2008, Religion | Tagged: Evangelicals
Good post.
I especially appreciate point number 2. On my blog I recently covered a readers poll done by CT in which they asked their readers if they agreed with Huckabee’s proposal to amend the Const. under “God’s standards.” Collectively taking in from the different sub categories of positive and negative answers, the NO votes outnumber the YES votes 55-45%.
I think that says a lot of how keenly aware evangelicals can be of true political wisdom
Since when do Evangelicals support “freedom of religion and conscience”? All I’ve observed, in personal interaction and in the media, indiates the opposite.
Protective of all human life? Not from what I’ve seen. They have been among those cheering the hardest and high-fiving each other over our video-game wars in the Middle East.
“Evangelical” (as a stand-alone) is a good term for them, as their politics and behavior can rarely be legitimately described as “christian” or “conservative”. (Unless you ascribe to the new defintion of conservatism - “Fear of loose women, gay men and brown people with accents”.)
Evangelicals demonstrate to me that anyone who insists on a literal interpretation of an allegorical text is a danger to civilization, not just Islamic Fundamentalists.
Lamont,
Sadly it is true that Evangelicals have seemed to fail in supporting the freedom of religion and conscience. I wouldn’t say this is because Evangelicals seek to bring people their message, but rather the sometimes terrible response that Evangelicals have when people don’t agree with them. If a person believes that the person of Jesus can somehow change the lives of other, then sharing is a good thing. It is when Mohammad is called the kind of things that Franklin Graham called him in the direction of Muslims, or when people like James Dobson speak for Evangelicals making them seem overly puritanical and narrow in focus.
But we must be fair when we attack someone who holds a high view of a given religious text. Evangelicals have had large parts to play in many of societies great achievements in places like Britain and the United States. For example, it was this type of religious people who first united together to over-turn slavery in both countries. And we also should not forget that Muslims in the United States who follow the Quran don’t act like the extremist counterparts making one wonder if it is a literal interpretation of a text that causes problems or if we must also consider socio-political elements to be of equal or greater importance. Before the Christian Crusades and the imperial colonialization of much of the East the Islamic religion was part of one of the most progressive cultures in world history helping advance studies in language, science, mathmatics and translating and preserving text of the likes of Plato and Aristotle. And this is basically motivated by people who saw the Quran as the word of God.
I disagree with Lamont, you’re really knee-jerking there. Evangelical Christians are largely not bent on your destruction, but rather, they do not understand how to achieve the goals they wish for society.
Basically the problem is the Christian church has been deceived into believing that government is the tool through which Christianity will be told to the world.
That is a false notion, and was not the goal of Christians in politics until the late ’70s with the rise of neoconservatism, who used the Christian base as a way to get elected.
I think your points are very well made, Lance. In respect to the topic of ‘values’, in order to sustain any kind of unity among Evangelicals, political issues have been confined to opposing homosexuality and abortions. While this keeps things simple, Cheney’s personal efforts in wooing the Christian vote helped secure George W.’s office, nonetheless. In the aftermath, you have individual’s like Ralph Reed (Christian Coalition Founder) who was implicated in the Jack Abramhoff ‘gaming tribes’ scam, and Pat Robertson who had 150 of his graduates from Regent University working in the Bush administration. Of course the most notable of these was Monica Goodling who assisted Alberto Gonzalez in the firing of ’several U.S. attorneys’. Who knows, we may be approaching a time when the only way you’ll be able to identify a REAL Chrisitian is if they’re hanging from a cross.
[...] this year’s election was recently published on the site I write for, The Political Inquirer. Brian LePort brings some observations on the Christian right’s current condition and effect on the general [...]
I’ve been dealing politically with Evangelicals since they were know as ‘the Moral Majority’, including having my own county-level candidacy preached against from the pulpit. A few things I’ve observed”
1) They are not the majority anywhere, not even in state-wide GOP primaries. South Carolina pointed that out clearly enough.
2) They lack sufficient cohehesiveness to follow through on anything that requires a long-term commitment.
3) For the localized, short-term efforts they do muster as a group, they have a ‘win or go home’ mentality. Unwilling to compromise on anything, they merely walk out rather than work toward a concensus.
Now I don’t want to appear to be an evangelical apologist here, because I am not. But I will note from experience that the above observations made by Mike, while true, as usually only true of the more politically conservative evangelicals and the leaders that use what influence they have to sway the vote.
The reason that I say this is because there are still a lot of Evangelical pastors who, while encouraging their congregations to vote and be good citizens, emphasize that Jesus, and therefore Christians, are not tied to any given political party.
When this happens Evangelicals are still active in politics, often for the good of the country, but do not do so with the Evangelical banner waving over their heads. The louder “Moral Majority” types get more spotlight, but they don’t represent all Evangelicals. I’d especially note that they do not represent the younger generation of Evangelicals.
Here’s excerpted (edited) text from an email I forwarded earlier today in response to a young man’s question concerning a ’so-called Christian’ viewpoint espoused on the internet.
“Over the last two years I’ve focused a considerable degree of attention on the psychological underpinnings of just such mentalities. Their beliefs place them in a category I call the ‘religious right’ because they share certain commonalities with both radical Zionists and Muslims.
I began examining this entire issue more than two years ago after recognizing just how many individuals within even my own church ascribed to similar menacing beliefs. Like radical Islamists, these so-called ‘Christians’ often attempt to win others to their ‘faith’ by expounding an apocalyptic ‘end times’ scenario in which they welcome the Almighty’s wrath against a hopelessly defiled world as vindication of their own status as His ‘chosen people’.
Consequently, the historical parallels between Zionism, Christian dispensationalists, and radical Islam are fascinating. The ‘dispensational’ beliefs of John Nelson Darby appear to have originated in close parallel with many of the Zionist sentiments dating back to the Napoleonic crusades (see, “A Crisis in American Leadership - Part One”). One of the better articles I’ve seen published to the internet examining apocalyptic beliefs by certain Muslims is entitled, America, the “Second ‘Ad: Prophesies About the Downfall of the United States”.
I hope this helps . . .”