Yesterday, Kathleen Parker penned a column for WaPo entitled Giving Up on God that created quite a stir in the ‘Sphere. Her basic thesis is that a main problem facing the Republican Party is to be found within its evangelical base:
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
First, a minor digression: when making a serious argument deploying the term “oogedy-boogedy” about those one is criticizing will result in more focus on the term (amusing as it may be–just say it out loud if you doubt me) than on one’s argument. (See, for example, Jonah Goldberg and Daniel Larison.)
Second, and more importantly, she has a point, although it is more complex one than simply demographics, or even whether religion should be relegated to the private sphere:
It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.
The notion that religion can be moved solely to the private sphere is problematic. If anything, one’s political philosophy is directly informed by one’s religious views. I will say, however, that there is a line between the religious and the secular that is worth considering insofar as it is possible to make politics too religious and likewise make religion too political. Certainly there are those who think that the Republican Party is the Christian party, and that, indeed, only real Christians are Republicans. This is problematic for a variety of reasons.
If anything, she is dead-on correct on the “preaching to the choir” aspect of many aspects of the GOP base, and it extends beyond just evangelicals. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with listening to Rush Limbaugh and/or Sean Hannity and watching Fox News, if one likes that sort of thing. A serious problem accrues, however, when that is all one does, as it will warp one’s view of the world around you and make one think that more people agree with you than is that case (indeed, that reality itself works exactly the way one wants it to).1
Back to the religious issue specifically, I think that there is a serious discussion to be had on this topic, and it is one that isn’t just about the role of evangelicalism within the Republican Party, but also the role of Republican Politics within evangelicalism.2
Over the last several decades there has been a growing synergy between evangelicals and Republicans. This a fairly natural alliance as the Republican Party is the home of social conservatism in America and in terms of political outcome, social conservatism is the main goal of evangelicals.
Of course, it goes beyond that, as evangelicals are heavily represented within some key demographic groups: whites, southerners, and those living in rural settings. These, amongst some others3 have nothing to do with religion, but are groups that heavily identify with the GOP. As such, they reinforce the alliance of evangelicals with the Republicans, but not because of religion but because of self-reinforcing views and associations. This is important, however, because the presence of religious motivations for supporting the party (e.g., social issues) creates a situation in which evangelicals conflate those issue about which they believe that there is no room to compromise (e.g., abortion) with issues that about which there is no specific religious dictum to follow (e.g., taxation or immigration reform). Indeed, it may lead many to ignore potential religious significances of policy because they have already decided that since the party is right about X, it must be right about Y (or, more specifically: since the GOP supports the pro-life position, one has no other choice but to support it on other issues).
Let me spell this out in two ways. In simple terms one can see the following phenomenon: the evangelical voter is dedicated to the Republicans because they are opposed to abortion and gay marriage. Therefore, the party must be right about other things. It allows, for example, voters to ignore egregious sins (if I may deploy the term) of the government such as torture because, well, they have already convinced themselves that the party is the party of morality because it opposed abortion. I do oversimplify to some degree, and I don’t think that most people actually engage in that simplistic of a thought process, but I have been around evangelicals my entire life, and the dedication to the importance of the abortion issue within the broader political enterprise is huge. It becomes so strong a litmus test that everything else is secondary, if not tertiary.
Beyond the weakness of my anecdotal evidence, I give to you the very clear example of Sarah Palin. Is there any doubt that one of the major appeals of Palin, if not the major appeal of her candidacy to the GOP’s evangelical base was the fact that she as clear true believer of the evangelical position on abortion? Two of the most important early aspects of her bio that excited the base was that she did not abort her Downs Syndrome child and that her pregnant teenage daughter would not only carry the child to term, but marry the father. These both embody basic conservative values, and along with her overall presentation (i.e., a hard-working regular family for whom she still cooked daily after firing the chef) made her extremely appealing to evangelical voters. Indeed, the appeal was so strong that it overshadowed serious questions about her ability to actual do the job for which she was chosen.
And yes, I understand that if one believes that personhood begins at conception, then abortion is murder and is therefore a very big deal. However, the evangelical approach has been to convince themselves that they are always one election away from overturn Roe and that that will fix the abortion situation.4 Certainly many evangelicals heard sermons near the elections about the evils of abortion and were told, perhaps obliquely, perhaps not, that a vote for the GOP was a vote for life.
I am reminded of the following (taken near my home in suburban Montgomery, AL):
I little doubt that the message was clearly that Christians could not be tempted to vote for Obama, because of the life issue.
It is worth noting that Bush identified himself, like no other president (even Carter) as an evangelical Christian. He was perceived by the evangelical base as “one of us” and it blinded them to real failings by the administration. Further, the conflation of issues noted above have lead evangelicals to imbue righteousness into issues like taxes, immigration policy, anti-terrorism and war as pursued by the GOP because, it was their party, the pro-life, pro-religious, indeed, pro-God party.
At a minimum, I think that evangelicals need to be a bit more realistic about what they can and cannot achieve in regards to abortion and gay marriage and to also recognize that the government does a lot more than just address those type of issues. Likewise, if the GOP is going to try and build its future on the foundation of evangelicals and specific social issues, it is going to have a hard time of it. John Cole makes a good list of issues that fit this situation. One may not agree with the exact list, but I think it underscores some improper attention on the part of evangelicals within the GOP. They tend to be myopic and are not even focuses on the major issues of economics and security that continually face the country. While it is perfectly legitimate to fight about a variety of issues in regard to social policy. However, evangelicals have to understand that they are not going to be able to impose their exact vision for human behavior on the country. Indeed, the notion of such an imposition is an odds with the small-government, individualistic elements of the Republican coalition, and indeed, that tension is a major problem for the Republican Party at the moment is at the core of Parker’s correct assessment that the role of religion within the party requires re-assessment.
If anything, this a topic that requires more thought. And it isn’t, as I have alluded to above, simply one of of the effect of religion on politics. As I have discussed several times with a friend of mine who is a pastor, there is a problem in terms of how politics effects religion as well.
I have been quite long-winded here, and fear that I have not fully developed my basic points, but they have at least been introduced and perhaps I have better development them over time.
Sphere: Related Content- BTW, there are ways for left-leaning citizens to cocoon themselves as well, although the ubiquity of rightward radio makes it a tad easier for the conservative. [↩]
- I am going to focus here on the influence of religion on party politics, but there is a serious problem in the modern evangelical church, which is the assumption that there is a direct correlation between Christians and Republicans. [↩]
- My instinct is that there are some economic class variables of significance as well, but I am not sure if that impression is correct, and I did not look it up. [↩]
- And I realize, btw, that many in the leadership of the pro-life movement understand that it is more complex than this, but I am not so convinced it is the case that most voters understand the complexities of the way abortion policy is regulated in the US, such as the fact that reducing the issue to just Roe is a serious error. [↩]
November 20th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Interesting post–as a non-religious person, it is good to hear this perspective.
Have you read any of Jim Wallis’ books? “The Soul of Politics” offers an interesting take on evangelicals and faith from a more communitarian perspective.
It is also interesting to see more sophistication within the evangelical movement. Was it Huckabee or the former (?) governor of Alabama argue for tax increases from a “compassionate” faith perspective?
Also you are seeing some evangelicals get out front on global poverty and climate change issues.
It seems that this diversity within evangelical protestantism is something Republicans might want to acknowledge.
One other interesting religion tidbit–I think Obama won the Catholic vote–a rarity for Democrats of late.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Dr. Taylor,
Another great read on this same topic - ‘An Evangelical Manifesto’
November 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
[...] The link. [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Just to add a little comparative dimension to a very thought-provoking and interesting post…
Off the top of my head, two other countries spring to mind where religion is really central to politics: India and Israel.
A former colleague of mine who works on Indian politics (as I have, but less than the former colleague) once remarked to me that the BJP is similar to the Republican Party: it combines a religious nationalism with an allegedly “small government” approach to economic policy. Interestingly, it learned the lesson over time that it had to downplay the religious nationalism (and attendant social conservatism) if it was to attract the allies it needed to form a majority in favor of its economic-policy preferences.
In Israel, the Likud likewise is the party that favors a lesser role for the government in economics, while also accepting a much larger role for religious authority, relative to the secular and left-leaning Labor Party. However, it is also worth noting that the party that is most socially and religiously authoritarian is also one of Israel’s most leftwing in economics: Shas, a proponent of major welfare expansion (which benefits the large families of the same Charedi communities whose rabbis are the real decision makers in the party). Naturally, Israel’s extremely proportional electoral system makes an ‘off-axis’ party like Shas viable (though it has become so big that it would surely survive in some form under any conceivable electoral system).
I think these are interesting comparative cases, inasmuch as they refer to countries where the majority is of non-Christian religions.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
As Steven reminded me in off-blog communication, we can add at least one Muslim-majority country to my above list: Turkey.
I am not sure how I forgot about it, given that I wrote previously about the issue coalition that makes up the AKP. It is also religious and pro-market.