March 15, 2006
Republicans, evangelicals and dysfunction ::
politics — No Tags
9:02 am
Over at Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan has written a great piece on how evangelicals becoming disaffected with their relationship with the Republican party. The story begins with the story of Alabama’s Bible literacy bill, which the I remember reading about when Jessamyn and I visited the state back in January (I recall that legislators were debating it when we were down there). When I read about the bill, I was somewhat surprised by the fact that the bill was sponsored by Democrats. But after reading the details, Democratic support made a certain amount of sense: it was an elective course (not compelled), and it dealt with the cultural and historical aspects of the Bible, rather than any particular religious ideology. On the surface, it seemed both constitutional and, well, reasonable.
In any event, what I didn’t realize at the time was that Alabama Republicans were fighting the bill. The Washington Monthly article suggests that the opposition stemmed from the Republican desire to not allow the Democrats to even try to help out the cause of Christian evangelicals. This, the Sullivan suggests, is a part of the evangelical’s strange relationship with the Republican party, which of late is becoming progressively more dysfunctional. Note this:
For 30 years, the Republican advantage among religious voters has come from being able to successfully control the definition of “religious,” conflating it with “conservative” and encouraging the media to do the same. Measured against that yardstick, most Democrats come up short. But when the standard is more complex, when being religious also means caring about the environment and poverty and human rights and education, the plane levels. Soon enough, Republicans start to miss the mark, and Democrats get a little closer.
In any event, besides casting the political environment of Alabama in relatively moderate terms (which I observed when I was there, but would never have known if I only paid attention to what the news media has to say), the article also suggests that there is not the political and cultural rift in the United States that some would like to think is there. In the not-to-distant future (I’m thinking this November), maybe the reality of political moderation will be reflected in the people elected to public office.
