By Bob Allen & Robert Marus
Associated Baptist Press
Washington (ABP)—Barack Obama’s election as president could signal waning influence by the Christian Right in American politics, according to several experts—but his improvements over previous Democratic nominees’ appeal to religious voters also could simply be a variation on an old pattern.
Panels of religious and polling experts, in two separate Nov. 5 conference calls, noted that Obama had improved on both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s performances in most categories of religious voters.
“The religion gaps are alive and well, and in 2008, favoring the Democrats,” said John Green, a religion and politics expert with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Green noted that Obama improved slightly but significantly on John Kerry’s performance in every major religious category. The 2004 Democratic nominee lost white evangelicals by huge margins—and Catholics by a narrower margin—to President Bush.
But Obama did better among evangelicals and won a majority of Catholics. He also scored significant increases in support from Jews, Protestants in general and those not affiliated with any religion.
Among white voters who identified themselves to exit pollsters as evangelical or “born-again” Christians, 26 percent voted for Obama and 73 percent voted for McCain. That’s a five-point improvement over Kerry’s performance among white evangelicals.
A separate panel of moderate-to-progressive religious leaders, assembled by the advocacy group Faith in Public Life, said the trends indicate many religious voters are moving away from traditional religious-conservative political leanings.
David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, said the election revealed a “fracture” between the Christian Right and the general public. Whether that fracture is permanent, he said, depends a great deal on whether the Religious Right positions itself as “flat-out opposition” to Democrat control or tries to build coalitions aimed at achieving goals for the common good.
Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the Religious Right has treated politics as a “zero-sum game,” where in order for them to win, someone else had to lose.
But Cizik indicated “a spiritual renaissance” is underway, in which evangelicals are learning to achieve goals through cooperation instead of control. “We have learned as evangelicals how to collaborate with those with whom we disagree,” he noted.
Gushee said the Religious Right is losing ground particularly among younger evangelicals, who want to expand the “values voter” agenda beyond the traditional issues of religious conservatives—abortion and gay rights—to include broader concerns like poverty, human rights and climate change.
“I think there is perhaps a shift in the religious landscape and political landscape that may be a long-term shift,” he acknowledged.
Gushee said he believes that abortion “remains a primary obstacle” for many evangelicals who otherwise would have voted for Obama but just “couldn’t get over the hump” on the issue. He explained it is too early to predict whether an “abortion-reduction strategy” as an alternative to attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade will win over conservative evangelicals.
Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, called the five-point gain by Democrats a “very important shift” for a group that traditionally votes Republican indicating a “religious rebalancing” and “diversification of the evangelical vote.”
|
|
CHANGES Barack Obama rallies supporters in Jacksonville, Fla., on the eve of his election as the 44th president of the United States. Obama received more votes from religious voters than the previous two Democratic presidential nominees. (BP photo by Joni Hannigan/Florida Baptist Witness)
Evangelical groups pledge continued social stand
By Adelle Banks
Religion News Service
Nashville (RNS)—Faced with a Barack Obama presidency and Democratic gains in Congress, evangelicals are planning their next steps in a transformed political landscape, with hopes for some common ground and plans to continue fighting for social issues that had mixed results at the ballot box.
“Where we agree, such as standing against genocide in Darfur and protecting basic human rights around the world, we’re going to support” Obama, said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“On issues on which we disagree, we’ll do our best to persuade him.”
Wasting little time, conservative Christian groups already have drafted open letters to the president-elect stressing their opposition to abortion, and are taking steps to reassure supporters that they will fight any attempt to give the new administration a blank check—especially on social issues.
“Barack Obama can clearly claim a mandate from the American people on the economy, maybe even our standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, but he cannot claim a mandate to impose or to advance a liberal social agenda,” noted Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
Impact of values voting
While exit polls indicate Obama gained ground among Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Hispanic voters, he won only one in four evangelical votes, and less than half (43 percent) of weekly churchgoers.
Though conservative Christians will not have “the same type of relationship we had with the Bush administration,” Perkins said the passage of amendments in three states that banned same-sex marriage shows their values have staying power.
“This was, I think, more of a referendum on the Republican Party than conservative values,” he explained. “We focused upon the marriage amendments in the three states. ... They passed in two states (California and Florida), which Barack Obama carried handily.”
None of the state referenda on abortion—including one on parental consent in California and a “personhood” amendment in Colorado —passed on Election Day, but Land assured that conservative Christians will be undeterred by those losses at the polls.
“Pro-life Catholics and pro-life evangelicals aren’t going anywhere,” he said.
Charisma magazine publisher Steve Strang, who endorsed Republican presidential nominee John McCain in part because of his anti-abortion stance, voiced concern about the political future because of Obama’s win.
“The scary thing for those of us who believe the Bible and want conservative values is that the change may move the country too far to the left politically and morally,” he wrote in his Strang Report.
“You and I may not influence the halls of Congress, but we do influence people in our families, our workplaces and our churches.”
Land said younger evangelicals, who have indicated a broader interest in issues beyond abortion, will likely become the center of attention as new conservative political leaders begin the long preparations for the next presidential election.
“I do think ... in this long-term, extended beauty contest, they’re going to be pushing for expansion of the agenda,” he added. “But they’re not going to accept a pro-choice candidate.”
|
|