Obama and evangelicals: Summer of love

June 29th, 2008 | Comments (9) |

I’ve had this post sitting in “draft” status for a while, but when I saw Shane Claiborne on the front page of CNN.com (pictured above) with the headline Young Evangelicals not a lock for Republicans, I was pushed over the edge (HT: Aaron Alexander via Twitter).

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called Are evangelicals abandoning their political agenda? (which was featured on Reuters) in which I said “Perhaps it’s getting harder to hear the rally cries [of the Right] because John McCain is a stupendously weak GOP candidate who doesn’t really push the traditional evangelical agenda. Or perhaps it’s because Barack Obama is really the uniter who he has promised to be, erasing generations-old lines in the sand.” Since publishing that post, it seems like that argument is all that I read about. Below you’ll find several articles that present a similar proposition.

Mr. Right?: The Rise of the Obamacons (The New Republic)

But you probably have not have heard of many of the Obamacons–and neither has the Obama campaign. When I checked with it to ask for a list of prominent conservative supporters, the campaign seemed genuinely unaware that such supporters even existed. But those of us on the right who pay attention to think tanks, blogs, and little magazines have watched Obama compile a coterie drawn from the movement’s most stalwart and impressive thinkers. It’s a group that will no doubt grow even larger in the coming months.

Evangelical flock strays from the Republican fold (The Observer)

Yet McCain’s problems have led to speculation about a narrowing ‘God gap’ between Republicans and Democrats. Some of Barack Obama’s aides believe they can move into the evangelical bloc and win over many of the voters that elected Bush. In Chicago last week Obama met 30 religious leaders, including the Rev TD Jakes, pastor of a Dallas mega-church. His staff also held the first fundraiser for Obama by a new group of evangelicals called the Matthew 25 Network.

Obama’s Evangelical Biographer (The New Republic)

“For Obama, faith is not simply political garb, something a focus group told him he ought to try. Instead, religion to him is transforming, lifelong, and real,” Mansfield writes.”

Obama’s Faithful (The American Conservative)

For years progressives have dreamed of getting Evangelicals to connect with anti-poverty and environmental programs. Obama may be the one to do it. As Ross says, he is just better than McCain at framing his progressive policies as part of a moral mission.

Evangelicals Are Crucial to Winning the 2008 Election (Newsweek)

Young evangelicals reflect their pastors’ diffidence. As conservative as their parents in most respects—and more conservative in opposing abortion—many young evangelicals are fatigued by the culture war (and have greater worries about $4 gas). They say they don’t want to be Republican just because that’s what’s expected.

Young Evangelicals Aim to Broaden Agenda (Washington Post)

With his tousled hair, sideburns and a scruffy “soul patch” beard, the 26-year-old New Yorker belongs to a growing minority of young evangelicals who want to broaden their political agenda beyond the traditional opposition to abortion and gay marriage. Evangelicals like Dunbar are eager to move on and tackle such hot topics as global warming and social justice.

You get the point.

A couple of observations: First, as more and more of the Obama/evangelical articles pop up, it’s beginning to all sound the same. No one is breaking any new ground. The original “Obama is attracting some evangelicals, and that’s ‘new’ in (recent) politics” is the hot election topic, so the story is being written and rewritten for myriad publications. Unfortunately, this probably means it’s all we’ll hear about for a while, and it’s all the analysts will talk about on November 4 — either way (”Are you surprised that Obama was able to pull in x% of the evangelical vote?” or “Why do you think Obama failed to bring in the evangelical vote tonight?”).

Second, although this is the hot topic, not everyone agrees with the argument. For example:

In the end, important changes surely have been afoot throughout wider evangelicalism, but neither are the most significant of these developments “recent” nor do they spell a collapse of traditional evangelical commitments in the social-political arena that equate to an exodus to the Democratic party.

What are your thought on the Obama/evangelical “summer of love”? Leave a comment and let me know. Did I miss any major stories anywhere?

| Categories Faith/Theology, Politics/Current Events | Comments 9 comments »

Are evangelicals abandoning their political agenda?

June 8th, 2008 | Comments (6) |

It’s a hard time to be a conservative evangelical, I imagine. Up until now, the objective has always been clear: as a Christian, the battles in politics are to be waged against abortion and gay rights/marriage. Yet it’s becoming difficult to hear the cries of “It’s a child, not a choice!” and “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”1 amidst all of current tumult in the United States — an unpopular, drawn-out war in Iraq, the spiraling economy, skyrocketing gas prices and unemployment rates,2 global climate change, and so on.3

In other words, the non-abortion and non-gay-rights issues have now become the elephant in the room for evangelicals. So what to do? One choice is to rally the troops and become even more vocal and politically active in pushing the agenda. More lobbying, more outspoken leaders, whatever. Another choice is to step back, to understand the complexity of things, and to embrace the other issues.

And that’s exactly what’s happening.

A recent article in the Seattle Times called Young, evangelical… for Obama? discusses this trend within the context of the current presidential campaign.

“Polls have shown,” the article notes, “that young Christians aren’t any less concerned about the ‘family values’ issues that have traditionally driven [evangelical] Christians to the Republican camp… It’s just that they’re also concerned about issues such as social justice and immigration, issues traditionally associated with Democrats.”

Perhaps it’s getting harder to hear the rally cries because John McCain is a stupendously weak GOP candidate who doesn’t really push the traditional evangelical agenda. Or perhaps it’s because Barack Obama is really the uniter who he has promised to be, erasing generations-old lines in the sand.

Either way, the evangelical agenda of old doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to. The reign of the Religious Right is coming to an end, and young evangelicals are thinking for themselves. And when that happens, politics begin to look a little more messy than the easy-solution, tried-and-true dichotomies would have you believe.

From the same article in the Seattle Times, Andy Crouch, editor of Christianity Today, says,

“This could turn out to be the election where both parties realize that the evangelical vote is so hopelessly split down the middle that it’s not worth courting them at all because what parties need are blocs that can be appealed to en masse. Paradoxically, evangelicals would become less relevant than ever before.”

Beliefnet’s God-o-Meter recently interviewed Mark DeMoss, the former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and former chief liaison to evangelical leaders for Mitt Romney. In response to a question about Obama, DeMoss says,

“You’re seeing some movement among evangelicals as the term [evangelical] has become more pejorative. There’s a reaction among some evangelicals to swing out to the left in an effort to prove that evangelicals are really not that right wing. There’s some concern that maybe Republicans haven’t done that well. And there’s this fascination with Barack Obama. So I will not be surprised if he gets one third of the evangelical vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 40-percent.”

While I agree that Obama will get a large amount of votes from evangelicals in November — I can’t wait for the media to beat it to death — I disagree with DeMoss about why some evangelicals are shedding their right-wing skin; I don’t think it’s reactionary. What is the rationale for “swing[ing] out to the left in an effort to prove that evangelicals are really not that right-wing?” Evangelicals have never had a problem being right-wing, why change now? Because it’s not as popular to be conservative as it used to be? Not likely.

What’s more likely is that a new generation of evangelicals are confronting the reality of the situation we find ourselves in, and realizing that we’re not getting out of this mess by magically ending abortion or forestalling gay rights. It’s just not that simple.

  1. Simple moral dichotomies make life so easy, don’t they? ↩
  2. Job Losses and Oil Surge Spread Economic Gloom. New York Times, 06/07/08. ↩
  3. Image: Jesus Army Rally – Clapham Common, London courtesy of cromacom. ↩
| Categories Faith/Theology, Politics/Current Events | Comments 7 comments »
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