Evangelicals For McCain
Now Obama is also a Christianist, rendering that dubious term to be even more meaningless (if that’s possible). For my part, I look forward to seeing an extensive essay warning of the dangers of incipient Social Gospel theocracy in the event of an Obama Presidency and the argument that the Democrats have become an essentially religious party dominated by liberation theologians. I think I may end up being disappointed.
The difference in tone and attitude towards left-liberal ”Christianism” compared to Sullivan’s dire warnings of fundamentalist takeover is remarkable, but not surprising. It is consistent with the sort of criticism of religious conservatism that Sullivan has been making for years, which is centered around rejection of any politics that would put religious imperatives into action in public life. That rejection does not include political action inspired by religious imperatives that are broadly in line with a socially liberal and activist politics. The rule seems to be something like this: the less orthodox or traditional the religion or church, the more acceptable its “interference” in political life.
The electoral angle is interesting, but I would consider the source of that figure of Obama being able to get 40% of the evangelical vote. As veteran Romney foes remember, Mark DeMoss was one of Romney’s evangelical “outreach” advisors and was not especially successful in that role, so I might not rely on him for insights into how evangelicals will vote or how they are thinking about this election. For Obama to receive 40% of the evangelical vote, he would need to improve on his current standing by more than 90% or eighteen points up from the abysmal 22% support he currently has. For all of the talk about the enthusiasm gap, Obama’s religious rhetoric, McCain’s problems with religious conservatives, evangelical disillusionment with the GOP, and the rising generation of evangelicals interested in a broader political agenda, which are all real, almost 70% of white evangelicals say they will back McCain in the fall.
That is a significant decline from Bush’s peak of support among these voters at 78%, but as the Post explains Bush was only polling at 65% at this time four years ago. Think about that: the average evangelical voter is more likely at this point in the cycle to be supporting McCain than he was likely to be supporting Bush four years earlier. Such stability in levels of support for the Republican nominee should put to rest speculation about Obama’s potential to steal evangelical votes away from the GOP. Obama is actually polling lower than Kerry was (and Kerry’s numbers declined over the course of the campaign). What Obama’s numbers show is that there has been zero movement of evangelicals towards him relative to Kerry’s share of the vote in ’04. McCain may not excite them, but except for the minority that will stay home or cast third party votes (Chuck Baldwin is the logical alternative for many of these voters) they have not given up on the GOP when it comes to presidential voting.
In theory, that could change, but even if every voter that McCain is losing goes to Obama (not likely) that would still get him to just under one-third of the demographic. Increasing Democratic vote share among evangelicals at the presidential level is the perpetual will o’ the wisp for the left that increasing black support for the GOP is on the right. There are so many structural and policy reasons for these patterns that no single politician talking about the Joshua Generation and exhibiting some fluency with Scripture will change things very much.
I think the point about Obama’s electoral prospects is not whether he can get more evangelical support that Kerry or Gore, but whether he can get more than he currently has, which may not require much effort, in that his current support is very low. This is important because Obama is already ahead in the polls overall, so poaching even a few more evangelicals can make a difference, both as a defensive maneuver to offset any losses elsewhere, and as a cushion for a larger margin of victory in key states. The notion that Obama is going to get 40% is fanciful. However, since he is currently polling only 22%, a rise to 30% would be very significant in a close race.
As for Sullivan’s “Christianism”, this has always been geared towards a particular strain of righteousness that is used to justify policies which he thinks suck and hurt people. I don’t think he’s against the idea of being motivated by religious ideals. Certainly his campaign against torture and the Iraq war in general is strongly motivated by Christian values. So I don’t think the charge of “Christianism” applies to Obama even within Sullivan’s broad definition. He’s just trying to make a show of being “fair” to both sides, when in fact it isn’t really fairness that Sullivan has been after, it’s certain policies that he wants defeated. That Obama is appealing to religious sensibilities is hardly new to Democratic politics. One can look at Bill Clinton for one, and the whole Bobby Kennedy wing of social justice, Martin Luther King, and all the way back to William Jennings Bryan. Democrats use religion to justify a collectivist response to social injustice, citing the obvious precedent of Jesus telling us to care for the poor. There’s nothing inherently wrong about this. In my view it’s only “Christianism” when it becomes demagoguery, but Sullivans’ definition of the term is so vague it only means “religious people who support policies I disagree with”. Of course he will now accuse Obama of Christianism for supporting liberal policies, if he so much as mentions his religious sensibilities in the process of advocating them. Who’d have guessed?
BTW, I’m wondering if there is really any issue other than abortion which actually separates Obama from most evangelicals?
I am not sure that secularist’s aversion to religious traditionalism is based on how orthodox a religion is. Rather Sullivan, and his ilk, have an aversion to anti-modernist and Luddite sentiments.
They find religion threatening when it is antagonistic to Western modernity and cosmopolitan tolerance. I imagine that Sullivan would object just as strongly if Wiccans obtained political power and tried to protect Mother Gaia at the expense of the American ecomony and individual’s property rights.
@conradg -
Taking “Obama” here to mean positions he has staked on reasonably clearly without much waffling, at least so far, and “most evangelicals” to mean a position taken by at least 60% of evangelicals in relevant polling:
Affirmative action, energy policy, maybe school vouchers (different polls of evangelicals produce different results on that).
bayesian,
Thanks. I’m not clear what the differences on affirmative action or energy policy would be. It doesn’t sound like a ltimus test in any sense, however. I mean, I understand that most evangelicals are more conservative to begin with, and hence more likely to oppose liberal positions, but I’m not sure where their actual religious views would conflict with Obama’s positions other than on abortion. Even on school vouchers, Obama has shown a willingness to be flexible. And that’s not really a federal issue anyway.
Conradg -
I agree that AA is not a non-neogtiable issue aka litmus test in the way abortion is. The only other real litmus test issue I can really see is SSM (I . Your original question was:
but looking back at your previous post, I understand now that you meant issues where the evangelicals feel that their position is mandated by their faith, rather than being an issue where their prudential judgement/policy position differs from Obama’s position.
by the way, for some relevant (IMHO) polling see “The American Religious Landscape and Political Attitudes:A Baseline for 2004″ (2004 data, most recent I could easily find that specifically tabulates not just evangelicals generally but subgroupings; there’s a fair amount of polling to support a few points net leftward motion of the evangelical center since then):
http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/green-full.pdf
race-based AA page 31 31% support, 50% oppose
re energy policy, I couldn’t find any useful polling (hardly surprising).
Re school vouchers, while you’re right that in theory it ought not to be a federal issue, don’t think for a moment that a determined president couldn’t torpedo them. And that was an example I was thinking of where Obama so far has said “unconditionally no” but in a very polite way – see Daniel’s post not long ago on the topic.
For the record, I personally am conflicted but overall opposed to race-conscious AA, strongly in favor of Obama’s energy policy compared to McCain’s (I actually favor a much more aggressive one than Obama’s), conflicted but overall in favor of school vouchers, plan to vote for Obama, and am far away from the median evangelical position on most controversial topics. I see no value in understating the difference between their positions and Obama’s likely positions/policies.