Many conservative Christian leaders say they can count on the specter of a second Clinton presidency to fire up their constituents. But the prospect of an Obama-Giuliani race is another matter. “You would have a bunch of people who traditionally vote Republican going over to Obama,” said the Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder of the Christian conservative American Family Association of Tupelo, Miss., known for its consumer boycotts over obscenity or gay issues.
In the Wichita churches this summer, Obama was the Democrat who drew the most interest. Several mentioned that he had spoken at Warren’s Saddleback church and said they were intrigued. But just as many people ruled out Obama because they suspected that he was not Christian at all but in fact a crypto-Muslim ”” a rumor that spread around the Internet earlier this year. “There is just that ill feeling, and part of it is his faith,” Welsh said. “Is his faith anti-Christian? Is he a Muslim? And what about the school where he was raised?”
“Obama sounds too much like Osama,” said Kayla Nickel of Westlink. “When he says his name, I am like, ”˜I am not voting for a Muslim!’ ”
Fox, meanwhile, is already preparing to do his part to get Wichita’s conservative faithful to the polls next November. Standing before a few hundred worshipers at the Johnny Western Theater last summer, Fox warned his new congregation not to let go of that old-time religion. “Hell is just as hot as it ever was,” he reminded them. “It just has more people in it.”
Fox told me: “I think the religious community is probably reflective of the rest of the nation ”” it is very divided right now. This election process is going to reveal a lot about where the religious right and the religious community is. It will show unity or the lack of it.”
it is always telling to me the choices people make in terms of excepts
this portion struck me much more significantly that what is above:
Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. They turned out for President George W. Bush in record numbers, supporting him for re-election by a ratio of four to one. Republican strategists predicted that religious traditionalists would help bring about an era of dominance for their party. Spokesmen for the Christian conservative movement warned of the wrath of “values voters.†James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, was poised to play kingmaker in 2008, at least in the Republican primary. And thanks to President Bush, the Supreme Court appeared just one vote away from answering the prayers of evangelical activists by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful, although it would be hard to find a cast of characters more ill fit for those shoes: a lapsed-Catholic big-city mayor; a Massachusetts Mormon; a church-skipping Hollywood character actor; and a political renegade known for crossing swords with the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Nor is the problem simply that the Democratic presidential front-runners — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards — sound like a bunch of tent-revival Bible thumpers compared with the Republicans.
The 2008 election is just the latest stress on a system of fault lines that go much deeper. The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.
The founding generation of leaders like Falwell and Dobson, who first guided evangelicals into Republican politics 30 years ago, is passing from the scene. Falwell died in the spring. Paul Weyrich, 65, the indefatigable organizer who helped build Falwell’s Moral Majority and much of the rest of the movement, is confined to a wheelchair after losing his legs because of complications from a fall. Dobson, who is 71 and still vigorous, is already planning for a succession at Focus on the Family; it is expected to tack toward the less political family advice that is its bread and butter.
The engineers of the momentous 1980s takeover that expunged political and theological moderates from the Southern Baptist Convention are retiring or dying off, too. And in September, when I called a spokesman for the ailing Presbyterian televangelist D. James Kennedy, another pillar of the Christian conservative movement, I learned that Kennedy had “gone home to the Lord†at 2 a.m. that morning.
Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.
The backlash on the right against Bush and the war has emboldened some previously circumspect evangelical leaders to criticize the leadership of the Christian conservative political movement. “The quickness to arms, the quickness to invade, I think that caused a kind of desertion of what has been known as the Christian right,†Hybels, whose Willow Creek Association now includes 12,000 churches, told me over the summer. “People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening.â€
Mr. Dobson, Mr. Falwell & Mr. Robertson spent much of the last 30 years as pawns (either consciously or inadvertedly) of the Southern strategy that George Wallace, then Nixon, then Lee Atwater and ultimately Grover Norquist/Karl Rove used to assemlbed power for what they saw as an American Empire. I find great hope of what the authors (and so many poeple) see as “disappointment, in turn, that has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.”
That seems much more insightful than:
“Obama sounds too much like Osama,†said Kayla Nickel of Westlink. “When he says his name, I am like, ‘I am not voting for a Muslim!’ â€
I suspect the mainstream of the evangelical movement – even of the conservative movement, certainly of this blog – are much more reasoned & grounded than Kayla Nickel of Westlink.
The real problem is that on both sides of the aisle, we are being led by … mice.
I spent six years in elected political office, and never in my nearly 50 years of interest in politics have I felt so discouraged by what’s thrown up for us to choose from.
Thrown up, I suppose, as in vomit.
Dobson is a member the Church of the Nazarene; Ann Coulter, a devout Christian, law review graduate of the Univ. of Michigan, is an astute, in my opinion, conservative political observer. Both are pretty much in agreement in principal with what Dobson is saying on who should/shouldn’t be the next president – none of the above – [ she does like Duncan Hunter and Romney ]. The aforementioned NYT article is naive about who evangelical Christians are. Going to Wichita doesn’t address that question, nor does talking about Rick Warren or ‘Christianity Today’. The kinds of Christians who feel the war was wrong and who feel Bush ‘let them down’ are entitled to that opinion, but to me, really thinking ‘sanctified’ [ spiritually mature ] Christians are a little beyond that kind of thinking. To suggest, as this piece does, that Abu Ghraib and Jack Abramoff [ ie that both were ‘Bush’s fault ‘] have something to do with a “split’ in evangelical Christianity is more a reflection on the kinds of people interviewed [ note that Dopbson refused to be interviewed ] and the purpose of the piece than on what it really means to be a mature evangelical Christian. This piece assumes that evangelicals, at their base, are primarily redneck blue collar people [ from Wichita ] which is naive. Dobson is saying it is more important to stand on Christian aqnd allow the consequences to occur than to do otherwise – Coulter is saying the same thing. After all, God is supposed to be in charge and, if we do as He suggests, he will take chareg of the final result.
Juandeveras,
Clearly your definition of devout Christian & mine are QUITE different – Coulter has spsent the last 3 years vacillating between spewing hatred and doing performance art to pimp her books.
I am trully stunned with only 3 comments for this post – must be more fun to flame homosexuals or talk inside baseball in declining sects.
“…pimp her books” ? ” …spewing hatred and doing performance art..” ? How gracious, Rev. Carlton. And your “definition” of “devout Christian” was ?
Evangelical Christians – one of the last acceptable prejudices.
This NYT template-writer has no clue about ” what Christians [ evangelical or otherwise ] want”. The leaders he cites are a couple of locals in the two thousand year history of our faith. My earlier cites of Coulter and Dobson are the real deal in their individual way – they grasp the need to follow Jesus first and He then says He will cover your tush as well as all the other issues in life. The social gospel has no proven track record. It’s always a liberal wish list. We are to follow Jesus first. Hydel is a pacifist who seems to like the attention. Apparently so is Warren. To each his own. We as Christians are to armor ourselves with the breastplate of righteousness. We are to pick up our cross daily and follow Him – not the hyphenated PB-ette in NYC [ led by the nose by D.B. Beers ] or any of these NYT-designated “leaders”. Don’t tell me that the war we are fighting is not supportable or sustainable or for a just cause. When I read elsewhere on this blog that the Maine diocese has voted to renounce the 500-year-old-charter from the Crown to establish its presence in North America, I thank the Lord knowing that He is really the one in charge [ the same yesterday, today and forever ] , not the “leaders”.