The Rev. Jerry Falwell pulled no punches when he told an election training group of the Christian Coalition in 2004 who controls the Republican Party.
"The Republican Party does not have the head count to elect a president without the support of religious conservatives," he said, as quoted by the San Diego Union Tribune.
"I tell my Republican friends who are always talking about the 'big tent;' I say make it as big as you want to, but if the candidate running for president is not pro-life, pro-family ... you're not going to win."
Falwell is unapologetic in deciding who are good Christians and how they should vote: "You cannot be a sincere, committed born-again believer who takes the Bible seriously and vote for a pro-choice, anti-family candidate."
Evangelical Christianity's involvement in American politics has waxed and waned over the years, but the last 30 years have been unique both for the intensity of evangelical engagement and for the fact that evangelicals have flocked en masse to the political party most hostile to progressive reform—the Republicans.
A Country Built on Progressivism
Until recently, progressive reform in the U.S. was as religious as it could get. In the 1960s, legions of African American civil-rights workers employed a church as base of operations, leading to the habit of so-called Christians to firebomb houses of God.
"Whereas the white community had many more options for communication, civic clubs, fraternal organizations and so forth, black folks used the only method for communication left to them," said JSU professor and Councilman Leslie McLemore. Furthermore, appeals to faith helped a diverse group of civil rights workers of various faiths eventually turn back legalized segregation in states such as Mississippi.
Even before the Civil War, abolitionists stirred the cauldron of sectionalism during the final days of legal slavery precisely because they were very Christian, and many were evangelical. The rousing speeches of Nathaniel Taylor in New England and other rabble-rousers like Lyman Beecher and Charles G. Finney set the North on fire with talk of social reform, slave emancipation and women's rights.
After World War II, evangelicals' involvement with politics, though, shifted emphasis to fears of a "godless Communist" takeover. In 1951, Yale graduate William F. Buckley Jr. wrote a book called "God and Man at Yale," slamming elitist Yale faculty members for their "lefty" views on the military and secularism. Buckley felt he was watching a country tumble down into the godless mire that had already claimed Russia, and he proposed that religious leaders plunge headfirst into the dirty waters of politics in order to preserve the country's religious character.
The new conservatism took time to catch on, but in the 1960s, as the nation's emerging hippie population unashamedly attacked a culture that was sending them to die in Vietnam, the under-30 masses burned their bras and fried their brains—and proclaimed religion part of the problem. Only the most radical leftists adopted the slogan "God is dead," but nevertheless, this was a movement epitomized by John Lennon's lyrics in the song "Imagine," which asks listeners to imagine there's no religion.
Then, after the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, Catholics and protestant evangelicals—two groups hardly on speaking terms—finally had a common cause around which they could unite.
The coalition grew stronger as the decade drew to a close. President Jimmy Carter did not exactly qualify as a secular enemy of Christianity. The former peanut farmer from Georgia was evangelical and deeply religious. His family read the Bible, and he was happily married and attended church most Sundays. He also came out about his decidedly God-fearing ways and told Americans he would "never lie" to them. But Carter made the mistake of taking the South for granted during his re-election campaign.
The solid Democratic South had begun to change with Barry Goldwater's primary run in 1964, when he showed that the GOP could win the South and the West by appealing to Libertarians, religious conservatives and racists. Nixon despised Goldwater, but he rode Goldwater's new "southern strategy" to two presidential victories.
Even before Nixon's victories, President Lyndon B. Johnson had already anticipated the southern strategy that would be employed by Republicans. When Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he said, "I just signed away the Democratic South." That came true in 1980.
Enter the Moral Majority
Hinds County Democratic Committee President Claude McInnis says he was always puzzled that Republican Ronald Reagan was able to get a foothold among white southern Christians in 1980.
"We all know Carter's background. He was a Sunday school teacher, an old Baptist, the whole bit, but for some reason it was Reagan who got elected by the Christian right. I went to the Christian Conservatives of Mississippi that year—I was working with them that year, back in 1980—and I got them in a room and asked them, 'Please explain it to me why you voted for Reagan,' Because I just didn't understand it at the time.
"I told them, 'You've got a man who is a southern Baptist, a Sunday school teacher, a military officer, a man from the South, a farmer, and I don't understand how you guys elected a glittering playboy, who was the first ever president elected who was divorced. ... And what was their answer? They didn't have one," McInnis said.
Carter had not anticipated the rise of the Moral Majority, directed by evangelist Jerry Falwell, which flooded the South with radio commercials demonizing him with accusations questioning his Christianity and warning voters that the White House was full of homosexuals.
Falwell's agenda was pro-traditional marriage, pro-creationism, pro-military, rabidly anti-gay and militantly anti-abortion rights—political wedge issues we know well today, though they were novel then. McInnis thinks the Falwell message resonated with white Southern Baptists for reasons far beyond abortion. The Southern Baptist Convention had approved Roe v. Wade for years. In fact, it wasn't until the 2003 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting that members formally repudiated previous resolutions on abortion from three decades before.
"If you go back at the history of the rise of the southern Republican Party, it has nothing to do with Roe v. Wade. It has everything to do with race," McInnis said. "Black folks know what the words 'Christian conservative' mean. There are very few black folks who are tripped up by Christian conservatives."
McInnis, and Stennis Institute of Government Executive Director Marty Wiseman, explain that Reagan was popular with southerners because he pandered to racists using code words such as "states' rights." States' rights was the clarion call for southern whites determined to hold onto the last vestiges of segregation, which was reborn in legal form through accelerating suburbanization of mixed-race cities.
"From the opinion of someone who sat here and watched it, Nixon's southern strategy and his veiled playing of the race card was the modern playing of the wedge game. You always hear folks saying, 'I didn't leave the (Democratic) Party; the party left me.' They're really saying that the (John F.) Kennedy and (Lyndon B.) Johnson civil-rights initiative took hold, and they fled the party," Wiseman said.
In 1980, Reagan continued along the trail stomped out by Nixon, announcing at the Neshoba County Fair during his 1980 campaign that he favored "states' rights," long after southerners had already lost the legal battles of the civil rights Era. He styled himself an heir to Goldwater, a demagogic opponent of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and announced that he was against the newly enacted busing rules forcing integration of public schools. Reagan would also perfect the myth of the black "welfare mother"—even as most welfare recipients were, and are, rural white women
Reaganomics and You
President Reagan stayed true to at least some of his campaign promises, condemning busing for school integration, opposing affirmative action and threatening to veto a proposed extension of the Voting Rights Act.
Reagan believed in small government, deregulation and reduced taxes, especially for the wealthy. It is a theory to which modern Republicans like Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Jim Herring still cleave.
"We believe government is best that governs least," he said. "I believe that the free enterprise system is what made the country great and that small businesses create the wealth that drives the engines of this country. ... You need to keep taxes low to promote job creation."
However, Reagan's economic policy—and the policies of White House Republicans following him—have marked years of obscene deficit growth. Reagan presided over an average budget deficit of more than $200 billion, Bush Sr. had a $290 billion deficit, and George W's deficits have been on the order of $445 billion. Bill Clinton, by contrast, reduced the deficit and left office with a $236 billion budget surplus.
The Reagan/Bush/Bush years are also notable for widening the gap between the rich and the poor. Some critics, like the government watchdog group Citizens for Reasonable and Fair Taxes, say it also had a lot to do with renewed burdens on the middle class. Conservatives who backed the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and every cut thereafter were doing no favors for the middle class, according to Robert McIntyre, director of the group.
"Regarding the Bush tax cuts, the cut-off point these days for people who benefited from it is people making $420,000 or more. We're talking about the top 1 percent of Americans being net winners," McIntyre said.
Mississippi's Republican congressional representatives march lock-step to the tune of tax cuts for the wealthy. Lott even told the JFP in January that tax cuts should be targeted to those who have enough expendable income to invest back into the economy. "Tax cuts just for the sake of tax cuts, no, that's not a good idea. Tax cuts that are targeted in a certain way that will encourage growth, savings and investment, that's good for the economy," Lott said.
Mississippi is one of the states that has benefited least from such tax cuts. The median income of a Mississippi four-person family, according to a 2003 census report, is $46,570—nowhere near the bracket targeted by the Bush tax cuts. Yet every senator and representative who supported the cuts got re-elected in this year's elections.
Furthermore, Democratic popularity seems to be at a nadir in the South, where the poor are most numerous. The 10 states with the lowest median income, the least likelihood of having health care, and the greatest levels of poverty—Mississippi included—all voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election.
Siding With the Enemy?
The questions remain: Why do so many impoverished white southerners continue to vote against their economic interests? And what is religious—Christian—about supporting policies that hurt the poor?
Amy Sullivan, a Washington Monthly contributing editor who writes about faith issues, says many voters remain seduced by their convictions into voting against their economic interests due to the efforts of tax-exempt evangelical pastors carrying GOP water.
"Conservatives, many of whom have confused their faith with their politics, have hijacked evangelicals. I say that as an evangelical who often doesn't recognize my faith anymore," Sullivan says. "I attend an Episcopal church instead of the Baptist faith I grew up in because I don't want to have my faith called into question because of my political belief in the middle of Sunday service." Sullivan says she still recalls her pastor telling her, "You can't be a good Christian and be a Democrat."
"That's a message that's everywhere. It's sad. There are people who have liberal politics but who are still very much orthodox Christians when it comes to theology. They now have to choose. They can end up in a 'wishy-washy' church where they feel comfortable politically, or they can go to a church more in line with their theology where their faith is called into question because of their political view."
But alienating a party from a philosophical school of thought is easy if a minority of individuals manage to narrowly define the entry requirements. Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications of the conservative advocacy group The Catholic League, admits that the definition of a good politician these days is narrow indeed, at least by League standards.
"People can make the argument that there are many different positions that Christians identify with in both parties, but there is a moral hierarchy among these issues," McCaffrey says, arguing that the Democrat umbrella is too big, containing a chorus of voices all bickering with one another.
Unfortunately for moderate Democrats looking to attract religious votes, it remains largely pro-abortion rights, and McCaffrey argues that Democrats will never be able to garner widespread Christian support as long as they defend Roe v. Wade.
"All the free-lunch programs in the world pushed by the Democratic Party aren't going to help children if they're not allowed to be born and are killed in the womb. Sure we want more outreach to the poor and community services, but they aren't going to do any good if the children aren't allowed to live," she says.
Not all Baptist pastors agree, especially African Americans.
Rev. John Cameron, pastor of Greater Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, says even though he is against abortion, he also stands behind social programs for the needy—a doctrine that modern Democrats champion.
Broadmeadow United Methodist Church Pastor Robert Hill rejects wedge issues: "What matters to me for candidates is how they care for all of the people. That means how they care about public education, if they're willing to fully fund education and other issues. ... I don't care for abortion, but there are more issues to life than just Roe v. Wade."
The Democratic Umbrella
Many white evangelicals don't share this sense of balance, and spurn Democratic entreaties because most Democrats support a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion. It's for this reason that many national Democratic leaders count religious voters as already lost.
Democracy For America Chairman Jim Dean said that Democratic candidates just have to be honest: "What I've told people is to go out, say who they are, and not be ashamed of it. … I've seen some people out there who really shouldn't be talking about faith because they're really not that into it. I've seen other people talk too much on faith when they should be talking about balancing the budget, getting health care for their citizens and doing something about the war in Iraq. If you're honest, that's something that voters respect more than your stance on certain issues."
Honesty was a big issue in the November elections, with voters weary of corruption, scandals, lies, the Terry Schiavo farce and the disastrous Iraq War. Democrats managed to capitalize on the bitterness and swept the House with congressional victories that dumped Republicans into the backrooms and broom closets relegated to Democrats for the last 12 years.
Ohio Gov.-elect Ted Strickland is a Democrat who reclaimed a state that went to Bush in the 2004 elections. He did it, he says, by sidestepping the abortion wedge issue and staying true to his beliefs. "I tried to talk about what our obligations are in trying to be true to our faith, such as being concerned for the common good, recognizing that we're obligated to care for the sick, hungry and homeless. I tried to point out that those are religious values that are more deeply emphasized in the Christian religion than most of what I hear coming from the so-called religious right," Strickland said.
Strickland, a devout Christian who studied three years in a theological seminary, took his argument straight to talk radio, dominated by uplifting choir music, level-headed Christian advice sessions and the occasional hellfire rant. Though pro-abortion rights, Strickland has no fear of the church and viciously challenges any Republican looking to question his faith during the recent election.
"I tried to emphasize that the community of faith is larger than a handful of television evangelists who are frequently setting themselves up as spokespeople for the church," Strickland said. He also advises other Democrats to "emphasize the real breadth and the depth of religious faith."
"I don't think there's anything more powerful than the teachings of Jesus in the attempt to reach out to the community of faith. This is a subject that most political parties need to start thinking about. The faith community is so much deeper and broader than is sometimes presented through the media, and I think there are people in both political parties who are concerned that a very right-wing element within the Republican Party has chosen, in a very calculated, manipulative way, to divide people rather than unite them," the governor-elect said in an interview.
Whose Morality?
The Democratic National Committee is just now getting to the prayer meeting. In some cases, they're still sitting in the parking lot, shivering and gathering up the nerve to come inside.
"It's still a relationship-building effort at this point," says Leslie Brown of the DNC's Faith in Action Initiative.
"Part of the problem is not having a relationship with churches. As we sit down and talk about the issues, we find that we have much more in common with one another than we'd all originally thought."
Brown says the national party is resisting Republicans' caricature of Democrats by addressing issues beyond abortion. "We have to broaden the dialogue beyond just abortion," Brown said. "We're talking about health care and addressing poverty and the underlying situation that leads a woman to make that (abortion) choice in the first place."
McCaffrey insists that the abortion issue is too contentious to be skirted. "Nobody said during the civil rights era that we should work to change people's hearts and minds before striking down racist laws. ... As long as the Democratic Party is espousing pro-choice views, it's not going to win a lot of Christians to give them the Democratic vote."
"Well, the conversation can't end there," said former Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Ricky Cole. "Pro-choice is not the only issue here, and it shouldn't be a conversation ender. Human beings have lives before birth and after birth as well, and we must honor and respect life after delivery as well. You need to understand also that certain Republicans are right with the Catholics on abortion, but dead wrong with the same people on capital punishment. Neither political party has a corner on the market for morality, but there is much to the Democratic method that should welcome people of faith."
Kate Jacobson, vice president of Mississippi Young Democrats, says anti-abortion arguments should be attacked as a means to deprive an American of her rights.
"This is a women's rights issue. Whether you believe in abortion or not, to say 'this decision needs to be made by a bunch of men in D.C.' is just wrong. It's not their decision to make, and it's not their right to legislate morality either," she said.
Know the Life
Cole is a volunteer in an outreach group looking to build relationships with religious communities to "reverse the demonization of the Democratic Party" in the state. He says he intends to expand the membership of the group so it can act as a direct line to the churches in time for a major initiative during the 2007 state-wide elections.
Cole says the social gospel of Jesus Christ—compassion and caring for your fellow man—matches exactly with the Democratic message. "We operate on idiom, and the idiom of faith is ubiquitous in Mississippi, but it isn't like that everywhere. People like John Kerry and Mike Dukakis grew up in a different milieu, and they had difficulty connecting in the way that Presidents Carter and Clinton instinctively know how to connect."
Conceding even a single voter over a wedge issue is defeatism, Sullivan says. "A really destructive line sight in the Democratic Party for the last six years or more is this very strong belief that evangelicals only care about abortion and gay marriage, and they won't vote with you unless you change your positions. It's not like that. I had a very smart pollster say to me months before this last election that white evangelicals will all be Republican voters, and there's no reason to go after them. But if that's what you believe, then you're not going to be convincing anybody of anything anyway."
Jacobson comes from the new power bloc of young southern Democratic leaders who believe that progressives must take their social-reform message straight to the people—without fear of wedge issues.
"The issues of abortion and gay rights affect such a tiny percentage of the population. Education, Social Security, health insurance—these are the things that affect all of us,, and that's what Christianity is all about.
"Cutting taxes for the rich is not taking care of your neighbor."
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