Here’s a piece linked to on the DFA site, by Jim Wallis. His point is a valid one – democratic voters weren’t asked about their ties to the evangelical community, republicans were, and the implication is that democrats are never evangelicals, so why bother to ask. It’s an incorrect assumption. Pollsters, pundits, and network news are not strong on “nuance.”
There are tons of democratic evangelicals in Lancaster County, and all of them know a thing or two about being marginalized.
Filed under: Christianity
Lately I’ve been going back to a couple of old books that help me make sense of election years. And by “old” I mean old relative to the political climate. The first is Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas (2004), which is as clear and biting an analysis of the Rove-approach as anyone has ever written. The second is Andrew Sullivan’s The Conservative Soul (2006), which offers an interesting conservative critique of the Bush years. A couple points that I think will remain relevant:
1. Frank’s main concern is that – particularly in 2000, but also, we saw, in 2004 – Republicans were able to sneak their economic policies in the backdoor while winning voters with social issues. Or, rather, harnassing “cultural anger.” This harnassing process, I think, is actually the generator of such anger. The irony, Frank says, is that Republican campaigners were able to drive “values voters” out by the millions, only so they could promptly vote against their best interests, doing so happily (or, actually, angrily), opposing imaginary “elites” by voting for the real ones. It’s a revolution: working class Joes rising up in anger to fight… themselves? From Frank:
This situation may be paradoxical, but it is also universal. For decades Americans have experienced a populist uprising that only benefits the people it is supposed to be targeting. In Kansas we only see an extreme version of this mysterious situation. The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistably against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege. They are laughing at the dainty affectations of the Leawood toffs. They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills, hoisting the black flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands. “We are here,” they scream, “to cut your taxes.”
The result of this phenomenon, inevitably, is that Christian voters send people to Washington, only to find that those people are more interested in cutting their own taxes than making good on their promises – just ask David Kuo. And the inevitable consequence of this is an eventual break between mainstream Republicanism and Christianity (particularly on the fundamentalist end). We’re seeing this already with the popularity of Mike Huckabee. It’s an important moment, and here’s why…
2. Sullivan’s book basically argues that true conservatism – which hasn’t existed in the White House since… Bill Clinton? – must exist apart from religious influence. This is a common sense argument, and it is shocking. Sullivan at one point refers to fundamentalist influence as a “tendancy” within modern conservatism, which grew and florished in the nineties/early 00s. I think this is an understatement. The union – or supposed union – between Republican politics and Christian fundamentalism was specifically engineered by politicians who saw a large voting bloc ready to be spoken to. They got some good mileage out of that group, but the partnership is on the wane.
Sullivan makes frequent reference to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as one of his favorite conservative texts. This interests me especially, because I would make similar reference to Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. When they were written, these two books were in direct conflict. A Burkean conservative and a Painite liberal could never have been on the same side of an issue. But the issues have changed so much, that I read Sullivan’s blog with some regularity, and agree with him much of the time. At this point, we are both backing the same candidate: Barak Obama.
The point that Sullivan makes, and that Frank would agree with, and that I think is essential, is that our national leadership needs to distance itself from religious politics. Though conservatives and progressives will continue to differ on many issues, let’s at least come together to remind ourselves that the United States, as stated in the first amendment and the texts of just about every important founding father, is a secular state, granting impartial freedom to people of all religious leanings.
Secular does not mean anti-religious, as folks like James Dobson and Pat Robertson will invariably claim. It means freedom to be religious anyway you choose, without governmental endrosement or denunciation. That’s something both right and left can support, and it’s a good place to start.
