So much for the “new evangelicals.”
For the past two years, hundreds of articles have appeared in newspapers across America making the claim that the old religious right was moving left and that Barack Obama, with his religiously infused rhetoric and various “outreach efforts,” was leading the charge. A year ago, David Kirkpatrick predicted the “evangelical crackup” on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. “Jesus Rode a Donkey: Why Republicans Don’t Have the Corner on Christ,” “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America” and “Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right” are just three of the dozens of books released since 2004 that suggested that evangelicals were rethinking their loyalty to the Republican Party and conservatism in general. The new evangelicals, just in case anyone missed the storyline, were not so backward as to vote on issues like abortion and gay marriage. They were enlightened about the environment and favored government aid to the poor.
Well, whoever these new evangelicals were, they didn’t show up at the polls on Tuesday.
John McCain won 74% of white born-again Protestants’ votes. And while this was four percentage points lower than George Bush’s share in 2004, President Bush’s re-election was “the highpoint” for evangelical support of Republicans at least since 1980, according to John Green, a pollster at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It’s become something of a cliché that Mr. Bush has a “special relationship” with his fellow evangelicals — but it’s true. And it’s a little unrealistic to expect that Sen. McCain would enjoy the same relationship with them, given that he is not one of their own. But he did just as well as, if not better than, every other GOP candidate in the past 30 years. The large victory that Mr. Obama scored with most of the electorate makes it remarkable that his gains with white evangelicals were so small.
Read it all.
Naomi Schafer Riley: Loyal to the End: Evangelicals Stay the Course
So much for the “new evangelicals.”
For the past two years, hundreds of articles have appeared in newspapers across America making the claim that the old religious right was moving left and that Barack Obama, with his religiously infused rhetoric and various “outreach efforts,” was leading the charge. A year ago, David Kirkpatrick predicted the “evangelical crackup” on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. “Jesus Rode a Donkey: Why Republicans Don’t Have the Corner on Christ,” “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America” and “Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right” are just three of the dozens of books released since 2004 that suggested that evangelicals were rethinking their loyalty to the Republican Party and conservatism in general. The new evangelicals, just in case anyone missed the storyline, were not so backward as to vote on issues like abortion and gay marriage. They were enlightened about the environment and favored government aid to the poor.
Well, whoever these new evangelicals were, they didn’t show up at the polls on Tuesday.
John McCain won 74% of white born-again Protestants’ votes. And while this was four percentage points lower than George Bush’s share in 2004, President Bush’s re-election was “the highpoint” for evangelical support of Republicans at least since 1980, according to John Green, a pollster at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It’s become something of a cliché that Mr. Bush has a “special relationship” with his fellow evangelicals — but it’s true. And it’s a little unrealistic to expect that Sen. McCain would enjoy the same relationship with them, given that he is not one of their own. But he did just as well as, if not better than, every other GOP candidate in the past 30 years. The large victory that Mr. Obama scored with most of the electorate makes it remarkable that his gains with white evangelicals were so small.
Read it all.