[Vision2020] Faith-based politics

[Ralph Nielsen]

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR [to The New York Times]
Putting Faith Before Politics
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By DAVID KUO
Published: November 16, 2006
Alexandria, Va.


SINCE 1992, every national Republican electoral defeat has been  
accompanied by an obituary for the religious right. Every one of  
these obituaries has been premature ? after these losses, the  
religious right only grew stronger. After the defeat of President  
George H. W. Bush in 1992, the conventional wisdom held that  
Christian evangelicals would be chastened. As one major magazine put  
it, Mr. Bush?s defeat meant that ?time had run out on their crusade  
to create a Christian America.? Yet in the next two years, the  
Christian Coalition grew by leaps and bounds; in 1994, it helped  
usher in the Gingrich revolution.

In 1996, after Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, Margaret Tutwiler, a  
Republican strategist, declared that in order for Republicans to win,  
?We?re going to have to take on the religious nuts.? Two years later,  
after Republicans failed to gain any ground on Democrats ? despite  
Mr. Clinton?s impeachment ? John Zogby, the pollster, concluded that  
?Christian absolutism? scared voters. Wrong again. Those same  
Christian ?absolutists? helped sweep George W. Bush into office in 2000.

Jesus was resurrected only once. The religious right has been  
resurrected at least twice in just the past 15 years.

The conventional wisdom about the Democratic thumping of Republicans  
last week says something a little different about the religious right  
? that its members are beginning to migrate to the Democratic Party.  
The statistic that is exciting Democrats the most is that nearly 30  
percent of white evangelicals, the true Republican base, voted  
Democratic. In addition, the red-blue split of weekly churchgoers has  
narrowed. Commentators are atwitter about the shrinking ?God gap.?

Once again, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Yes, it is true that  
almost 30 percent of white evangelicals voted for the Democrats, up  
from the 22 percent Senator John Kerry received in the 2004  
presidential race. But that 2004 number was aberrantly low. More  
typical were exit polls from the 1996 Congressional election, where  
25 percent of white evangelicals voted for Democrats.

So before rearranging their public policy agenda in hopes of  
attracting evangelicals, the Democrats would be wise to think twice.  
There has been a radical change in the attitudes of evangelicals ?  
it?s just not one that will automatically be in the Democrats? favor.

You see, evangelicals aren?t re-examining their political priorities  
nearly as much as they are re-examining their spiritual priorities.  
That could be bad news for both political parties.

John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, the conservative  
Christian organization that gained notoriety during the 1990s when it  
represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against Bill  
Clinton, wrote this after the elections: ?Modern Christianity, having  
lost sight of Christ?s teachings, has been co-opted by legalism,  
materialism and politics. Simply put, it has lost its spirituality.?

He went on, ?Whereas Christianity was once synonymous with charity,  
compassion and love for one?s neighbor, today it is more often  
equated with partisan politics, anti-homosexual rhetoric and affluent  
mega-churches.?

Mr. Whitehead is hardly alone. Just before the elections, Gordon  
MacDonald, an evangelical leader, wrote that he was concerned that  
some evangelical personalities had been seduced and used by the White  
House. He worried that the movement might ?fragment because it is  
more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and  
less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom.?

Certainly, the White House showed the heartlessness of politics in  
Ted Haggard?s fall. Mr. Haggard had once been welcomed at the White  
House, relied on to rally other evangelicals and invited to pray with  
the president.

Yet his downfall provoked only this reaction from a low-level White  
House spokesman: ?He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a  
weekly participant in those calls. I believe he?s been to the White  
House one or two times.? To evangelicals who know that this statement  
was misleading, and know from the Bible what being kicked to the curb  
looks like, it was a revealing moment about the unchristian behavior  
politics inspires.

Perhaps that?s why a rift appears to be growing in what was once a  
strong alliance. Beliefnet.com?s post-election online survey of more  
than 2,000 people revealed that nearly 40 percent of evangelicals  
support the idea of a two-year Christian ?fast? from intense  
political activism. Instead of directing their energies toward  
campaigns, evangelicals would spend their time helping the poor.

Why might such an idea get traction among evangelicals? For practical  
reasons as well as spiritual ones. Evangelicals are beginning to see  
the effect of their political involvement on those with whom they  
hope to share Jesus? eternal message: non-evangelicals. Tellingly,  
Beliefnet?s poll showed that nearly 60 percent of non-evangelicals  
have a more negative view of Jesus because of Christian political  
involvement; almost 40 percent believe that George W. Bush?s faith  
has had a negative impact on his presidency.

There is also the matter of the record, which I saw being shaped  
during my time in the White House. Conservative Christians (like me)  
were promised that having an evangelical like Mr. Bush in office was  
a dream come true. Well, it wasn?t. Not by a long shot. The  
administration accomplished little that evangelicals really cared about.

Nowhere was this clearer than on the issue of abortion. Despite  
strong Republican majorities, and his own pro-life stands, Mr. Bush  
settled for the largely symbolic partial-birth abortion restriction  
rather than pursuing more substantial change. Then there were the  
forgotten commitments to give faith-based charities the resources  
they needed to care for the poor. Evangelicals are not likely to fall  
for such promises in the future.

Don?t expect conservative Christians in politics to start to  
disappear, of course. There are those who find the moral force of  
issues like abortion and gay marriage equal to that of the abolition  
of slavery ? worth pursuing no matter what the risks of politics are  
for the soul. But the advocates working these special interests may,  
I think, be far fewer in coming years than in years past. Gay  
marriage was a less mobilizing force in 2006 than it was in 2004. In  
Arizona the ballot measure to outlaw it was defeated. The South  
Dakota abortion ban failed.

We will have to wait until 2008 to see just how deep this evangelical  
spiritual re-examination goes, and how seductive politics will  
continue to be to committed Christians. Meanwhile, evangelicals  
aren?t flocking to the Democratic Party. If anything, they are  
becoming more truly conservative in their recognition of the negative  
spiritual consequences of political obsession and of the limitations  
of government power.

C. S. Lewis once warned that any Christian who uses his faith as a  
means to a political end would corrupt both his faith and the faith  
writ large. A lot of Christians are reading C. S. Lewis these days.


David Kuo, the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith- 
Based and Community Initiatives from 2001 to 2003, is the author of  
?Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.?