It’s official. Even though James Dobson explicitly denied it last month, we can now say with certainty: Conservative Christian America is “hopelessly fractured and internally antagonistic.”
The signs of discord can be detected on any newspaper page. Last week Pat Robertson’s decided to throw his weight behind Rudy Giuliani. This came on the heels of Paul Weyrich’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. And through it all, the surging Mike Huckabee was being feted by scores of other Evangelical and Fundamentalist pastors. (Fred Thompson, by contrast, has yet to receive the unambiguous benediction of any major Christian figure. This leads me to wonder: would his candidacy suffer in any tangible way if he were to proclaim himself an atheist?)
But disagreement over presidential aspirants is just one of many fault lines that have been exposed in recent months. To quote Antonio Gramsci “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” A younger generation of Evangelicals is growing frustrated with the narrow, two-pronged platform advocated by the graying leadership of the movement.
On the Right many want to expand the agenda beyond abortion and Gay marriage to foreground national security. In Center and Left precincts, many Evangelicals demand greater attention to the environment, poverty, AIDS, and so forth.
This disunity among the rank-and-file dispels the Blue-State stereotype that all Conservative Christians are happy Jesus Campers—automatons of their leaders’ decrees. It also calls attention to a crisis confronting the Republicans. For just a few years ago White Evangelicals saved the GOP’s bacon. Thanks to them (and John Kerry) an incumbent president mired in a difficult war and presiding over a listless economy was somehow re-elected.
But in the current election we are seeing some of the disadvantages of pandering to a religious constituency. The Republican Party--through every fault of its own--has been dragged into Evangelical America’s long night of the soul. It has gotten itself wrapped up in the doctrinal disputes, personal rivalries, generational antagonisms and theological quirks of Conservative Christianity. Whoever does emerge as the Party’s nominee will be forced to spend an inordinate amount of valuable campaign time reweaving a coalition that has completely unraveled. Not an impossible task, but labor-intensive in the extreme.
Faith-based politicking is also risky because it alienates other constituencies. Since 2004 a new category of electoral citizen has emerged. Let’s call them “devalued voters.” First noticed in the midterm elections of 2006, they are incensed by Falwell’s post 9/11 homilies, the Schiavo affair, Bush’s faith-based initiatives, the hypocrisies of Ted Haggard and Larry Craig, and so much else. Out of a mixture of civic duty and sheer spite they will come out in droves on Election Day and they will cast their ballot against any Republican on the ticket.
Whoever wins the GOP’s nomination will be hurt by the devalueds. Giuliani, with his new and unlikely chum Pat Robertson, stands to suffer the most.
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