Faith and Politics

Last month, Dean posted some interesting thoughts on the role that evangelical conservatives might play in the 2008 election. I'd encourage you to read those, and maybe some other things while you're there. Dean does a great job with his blog.

Fast forward to last week, when David Kirkpatrick wrote a 8,000 word tome for the NYT Magazine on the same topic, entitled "The Evangelical Crackup." It is a lengthy read, to be sure, but a worthwhile one if you can set aside 15 or 20 minutes.

I will avoid editorializing, because I'm more interested in what some of you might think about the article. If you're in a hurry, here are some of the more interesting snippets, in my opinion. They'll give you a good idea of what the article is about.

The founding generation of leaders like Falwell and Dobson, who first guided evangelicals into Republican politics 30 years ago, is passing from the scene... The engineers of the momentous 1980s takeover that expunged political and theological moderates from the Southern Baptist Convention are retiring or dying off, too... 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... (such as) 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."

Today the president’s support among evangelicals, still among his most loyal constituents, has crumbled. Once close to 90 percent, the president’s approval rating among white evangelicals has fallen to a recent low below 45 percent, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. White evangelicals under 30 — the future of the church — were once Bush’s biggest fans; now they are less supportive than their elders. And the dissatisfaction extends beyond Bush. For the first time in many years, white evangelical identification with the Republican Party has dipped below 50 percent, with the sharpest falloff again among the young, according to John C. Green, a senior fellow at Pew and an expert on religion and politics. (The defectors by and large say they’ve become independents, not Democrats, according to the polls.)

For the conservative Christian leadership, what is most worrisome about the evangelical disappointment with President Bush is that it coincides with a widening philosophical rift. Ever since they broke with the mainline Protestant churches nearly 100 years ago, the hallmark of evangelicals theology has been a vision of modern society as a sinking ship, sliding toward depravity and sin...

But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of “spiritual formation” that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. They do not see society as a moribund vessel. They talk more about a biblical imperative to fix up the ship by contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.

Secular sociologists say evangelicals’ changing view of society reflects their changing place in it. Once trailing in education and income, evangelicals have caught up over the last 40 years. “The social-issues arguments are the first manifestation of a rural outlook transposed into a more urban or suburban setting,” John Green, of the Pew Research Center, told me. “Now having been there for a while, that kind of hard-edged politics no longer appeals to them. They still care about abortion and gay marriage, but they are also interested in other, more middle-class arguments.”

In the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ” Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.”...

Paul Hill is one of the young associate pastors who left Central Christian after philosophical clashes with Wright. He took a band of young members with him when he started his own emergent-style church, the Wheatland Mission. “Even in Wichita, times have changed,” Hill said. “I think people will hear the Gospel better when it is expressed not just verbally but holistically, through acts of hospitality and by bringing people together.

“In the evangelical church in general there is kind of a push back against the Republican party and a feeling of being used by the Republican political machine,” he continued. “There are going to be a lot of evangelicals willing to vote for a Democrat because there are 40 million people without health insurance and a Democrat is going to do something about that.”

The article clearly posits an interesting question. Young evangelicals (the 30 and under crowd) see the teachings of Jesus in a broader framework than one that is simply about saving the unborn and condemning homosexuality. Much of that has to do not with the church, necessarily, but with society. It has to do with issues that have been discussed in the media and issues that have been discussed in our schools when we were kids. Today, kids talk in school about the health of the enivronment, the plight of AIDS, issues of poverty and race in America. Younger voters are more likely to consider issues of social justice when determining which candidate to support.

The GOP, however, seems terribly uncomfortable when addressing the broader issues of social justice that Jesus might also implore His followers to consider: issues of poverty, race, and public health. Grey-haired Republicans seem to freak out, for instance, that the notion of implementing an effective program to combat AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia requires the distribution of a whole hell of a lot of condoms. To many younger voters of faith, this would simply be a matter of common sense.

So in the GOP machine's efforts to squeeze votes out of conservative evangelicals, has the party in effect sacrificed the long-term stability of evangelicals as a part of the GOP base by alienating younger members of that group? After all, if the GOP blows it with evangelicals, they will likely be in the minority for not years, but generations.

This is a battle that, politically, the GOP simply cannot afford to lose. But can it win without broadening its appeal to faith communities beyond the old-school issues of abortion and gay marriage?