Republicans Lose Evangelical Christianity

For a long, long time, the christian "right" has been associated with the Republican Party -- an assertion that I have long had a problem with. For one, politics and religion are separate, and more than a few patriots died so that we would not become a theocracy but a democracy. It irked me to have my church try to push politics on me; I moved from a conservative church to a liberal one, only to have the same thing done. Same deal, different candidates.

The marriage of politics to a religious group is just one more way to try to assert control. My in-laws got me the magazine "World" and I was abhorred to read that campaign finance reform was ungodly. I mean, campaign finance reform? It was just a way to convince people to vote against it, like having skinny people eat a candy bar on a commercial to show how yummy it is (oh, and it doesn't make you fat. No, really). This was nothing more than brainwash.

My worry is this: that Democrats will step in and take over the job of government morality police. Not that the Republicans ever actually did anything -- ten years in power, six with a Republican president, and they can't do anything about abortion? Prayer in schools? Flag burning? Sounds like the Republican Party was a failure for the Christian right. I could hope for a time of separation between religion and politics, but this America, and making everything political is just one of those "things that cannot be changed," after all.

You can read the entire (10 pages!) of the article here.

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.”

The generational and theological shifts in the evangelical world are turning the next election into a credibility test for the conservative Christian establishment. The current Republican front-runner in national polls, Rudolph W. Giuliani, could hardly be less like their kind of guy: twice divorced, thrice married, estranged from his children and church and a supporter of legalized abortion and gay rights. Alarmed at the continued strength of his candidacy, Dobson and a group of about 50 evangelical Christians leaders agreed last month to back a third party if Giuliani becomes the Republican nominee. But polls show that Giuliani is the most popular candidate among white evangelical voters. He has the support, so far, of a plurality if not a majority of conservative Christians. If Giuliani captures the nomination despite the threat of an evangelical revolt, it will be a long time before Republican strategists pay attention to the demands of conservative Christian leaders again. And if the Democrats capitalize on the current demoralization to capture a larger share of evangelical votes, the credibility damage could be just as severe.

“There was a time when evangelical churches were becoming largely and almost exclusively the Republican Party at prayer,” said Marvin Olasky, the editor of the evangelical magazine World and an informal adviser to George W. Bush when he was governor. “To some extent — we have to see how much — the Republicans have blown it. That opportunity to lock up that constituency has vanished. The ball now really is in the Democrats’ court.”