Conservative Christians losing faith in GOP 09:08 PM CST on Saturday, April 1, 2006 By WAYNE SLATER / The Dallas Morning News WASHINGTON – There was no clearer sense of the despair among conservative Christians who gathered recently than the row upon row of books with urgent, alarmist titles. Pagan America. Judicial Tyranny. Liberalism Kills Kids. The Criminalization of Christianity. In the political culture wars, religious conservatives say they've been electing candidates but not getting the results they want. And leaders worry that they might be about to lose Christian conservatives as a potent political force because of unmet expectations on a host of issues and stumbles by a Republican administration they helped elect. Conservative "values voters" have been crucial to Republican success, with religious leaders driving huge voter turnout in recent elections. If they lack enthusiasm this fall, experts say, the GOP could lose control of Congress. "The nation isn't focused today in a way it was on such issues as abortion, marriage, the nature of the family," said the Rev. Laurence White of Houston. "For us, it's not the economy, stupid. It's the morality, stupid." The Rev. Rick Scarborough, an East Texas evangelist whose group Vision America sponsored a two-day conference aimed at getting Christian activists involved in the 2006 elections, says he hopes to mobilize groups representing 20 million people. To motivate them, he offers a list of 10 grievances and a program to register voters and press candidates to pass specific legislation. "We're tired of talk. We want action," he said. "It occurs to us that no matter who is in the White House or who says what we want to hear, nothing ever changes." High on the list are a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and a judiciary more sympathetic to religious expression, like permitting the Ten Commandments in government buildings and allowing pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit. "If these issues are not addressed, you'll see values voters stay home by the millions. And then the Republicans and others who have been the beneficiary of the values vote are going to lose," Mr. Scarborough said. Those who work to counter the influence of religious conservatives scoff at the notion that their opponents should feel aggrieved. The White House is occupied by the most openly religious president in memory, two new Supreme Court justices hold an expansive view of religious rights, and social conservatives control Congress. "This language of persecution would be more credible if the very people using it weren't sitting at the seat of power in government today," said Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit group that monitors church-state issues. Still, the dissatisfaction in the social conservative base threatens to divide a GOP already struggling to balance the interests of social conservatives with those of economic and traditional conservatives, who care primarily about Iraq, immigration, and taxes and government spending. Turnout Professor John Green of the University of Akron, an expert on religion and politics, said evangelicals accounted for 35 percent to 40 percent of President Bush's re-election vote in 2004 and are instrumental to GOP success. "These voters are quite important to Republican control of the House and Senate," Mr. Green said. "In Ohio, probably Florida, Pennsylvania and maybe Missouri in 2006, these voters could be absolutely crucial to Republicans." A group called Reformation Ohio has enlisted more than 1,000 "patriot pastors" to help register voters who could benefit the GOP, particularly gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell. The group's leader, evangelist Rod Parsley, has lent his support to a similar group, the Texas Restoration Project, whose voter-registration efforts are being used by Gov. Rick Perry's re-election campaign. The "War on Christians and Values Voters in 2006" conference last week offered a clear view of how social conservatives are approaching this election year. They aren't dwelling on their recent successes; instead, a siege mentality seems prevalent. On the dais and in the hallways of a hotel at the gathering of about 400 conservative Christians, the talk was about moral values under attack and what one participant called "this alien idea of an absolute wall of separation between church and state." A succession of panels featured vivid stories about religious liberty in jeopardy. A Navy chaplain said he was disciplined for delivering an evangelical Christian prayer during a memorial service. A Florida artist recounted how his paintings were banned from a city hall exhibit because they depicted religious themes. And a Massachusetts radio talk show host said he was physically threatened for hosting a "Mr. Heterosexual Contest" after hearing about a gay beauty pageant in California. Panelists warned that whatever the electoral gains of recent years, American culture is still besieged by Hollywood, the news media, gays, liberals, "secular humanists" and the ACLU. There were some acknowledgments of victory. One panelist declared that cable TV and bloggers have "broken the media monopoly," and another sparked applause by announcing he was appearing that night on Bill O'Reilly's show on the Fox News Channel. When a conference delegate asked whether Christians should buy control of newspapers that are for sale, longtime conservative activist Paul Weyrich said there was no need. "Newspapers are a dying industry," he said. "There won't be any newspapers 20 years from now. Buy television." As for Hollywood, panelists were uniformly critical of what they see as its denigration of Christian values but reluctance to critique Islam and risk what conservative activist Janet Folger called "folks in turbans dancing around the ashes of the building." A declaration by Don Feder of Vision America – "Hollywood likes Islam almost as much as it loathes Christianity" – prompted a delegate to ask why Jewish movie executives would support a religion whose extremists wanted to destroy Israel. Mr. Feder explained that Hollywood executives are political liberals who do not reflect Judeo-Christian ethics. "The people in this audience," he said of the largely white, Protestant crowd, "are more Jewish than people like Barbra Streisand, because you embrace Jewish values. She doesn't." One delegate came as George Washington, dressed in three-pointed hat and full revolutionary regalia. During a question-and-answer session, he offered brisk assurance that the Founding Fathers favored a close church-state alliance, even quoting "my friend Thomas Jefferson." Alarm for sale Attendees were eager to spread the gospel of danger beyond the conference, too, making it a marketplace for books, DVDs, CDs and Web sites. "I've been traveling the country since my book came out" last April, said Rebecca Hagelin of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. "Here, let me hold it up for you." The title – Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad. Conservative luminary Phyllis Schlafly directed delegates to a table that held order forms for her newly updated paperback on "the tyranny of the judiciary." "It's a handbook for action," she said. The history of political activism by religious conservatives has been marked by periods of engagement and withdrawal. President Bush's appeal to evangelicals and gay-marriage initiatives in 2004 were a high-water mark, experts say, and the withdrawal may be beginning. "A lot of Republicans use this group of people in a kind of euphoria that they've found this untapped political base," said Robin Lovin, a professor of ethics at Southern Methodist University. "But the lesson is that this is a group of people who are, by tradition, more skeptical, less likely to participate and hard to hold together for the long run." ON THEIR LIST Conservative Christian voters say that Republican leaders they helped put in office haven't moved quickly enough on their policy agenda. Here are some of the issues they feel haven't been addressed: Gay-marriage ban. Although 19 states, including Texas, have amended their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage, Congress has not authorized a federal constitutional amendment. Conservatives say such a step is necessary to protect traditional marriage against court decisions requiring recognition of gay unions. Religious expression. Conservative evangelicals want churches to be able to support political candidates without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status, teacher-led prayer to be allowed in schools, and religious symbols such as the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public places. The judiciary. President Bush gets high marks for the two Supreme Court justices confirmed this year. But courts should be prohibited from taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance or otherwise ruling against acknowledgements of God in public declarations, conservative evangelical leaders say. Abortion. Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, has not been overturned. Property rights. Conservatives want restrictions on eminent domain, the government power to take private property for public use. School vouchers. Parents should be permitted to send children to private schools, including those run by religious institutions, with public money, these voters argue. Wayne Slater http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcon...s/stories/040206dntexculturewars.28e2181.html
wow...i'm not sure how to label myself. am I a conservative Christian or a liberal Christian? look at those issues they listed at the end of the article: 1. gay marriage -- i don't care 2. religious expression -- i see it falling into the traps of idolatry...i don't want the cross or any other Christian symbol to ever represent something oppressive or scary to anyone 3. judiciary - eh 4. abortion -- i fall in line with the conservatives on this one 5. property rights -- i'm with the conservatives on the eminent domain issue..which means i'm also with the liberals, according to every poll i've read 6. school voucers - i'm open to the possibility, but don't believe strongly one way or the other On the other hand...I can't stand nationalism mixed in with Jesus Christ. Can't stand the equation of the cross and the flag. I'm disappointed in money being the god most worshipped in our culture. I'm disappointed in the buildup to a pre-emptive war. I'm disappointed in the turnover of bankruptcy law entirely to the banks. I'm very disappointed in the Republican party...but not for the reasons these folks are.
They have a right to voice their opinion and use their influence in government just like anyone else. However, what I don't understand is this: why doesn't the Christian right start their own party and become the official third party in America to challenge both Repubs and Dems? So far, they've been pushing their agenda through the Republican party as much as they can, but clearly they're still not satisfied with the results. How about just create a Christian party and pull all those religious Dems and Repubs into it, leaving the other two parties to be more of their traditional selves instead of trying to work through them to no avail? I certainly think that they have the requisite backing of a large sector of society who strongly believe in what they preach. May be this would shake up the political arena somewhat and bring new ideas and people into politics.
But Max, wouldn't it somewhat make it more clear-cut to the public as to what/whom they're voting for? Why should they not have that choice in a democracy? It would also leave the Republican party to do what it traditionally stood up for, which is fiscal conservatism, a conservative foreign policy (as opposed to the neo-liberal one Bush currently pursues), and a small federal government? I personally think it would be good for everyone involved, and would certainly serve to re-ignite the public's interest in politics once more.
i just don't want that associated with who Jesus Christ is. my concern isn't a political concern, understand. there's so much misinformation about Christ, I don't need more stuff to battle through. i know incredible Christ followers who are liberal...i know incredible Christ followers who are conservative.
High on the list are a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and a judiciary more sympathetic to religious expression, like permitting the Ten Commandments in government buildings and allowing pastors to endorse candidates from the pulpit. What they want is to rewrite the Constitution, making the US a Christian Theocracy. A Navy chaplain said he was disciplined for delivering an evangelical Christian prayer during a memorial service. A Florida artist recounted how his paintings were banned from a city hall exhibit because they depicted religious themes. And a Massachusetts radio talk show host said he was physically threatened for hosting a "Mr. Heterosexual Contest" after hearing about a gay beauty pageant in California. Let these a-holes be Muslims in America for a day, or even have an Arabic name for a day. Both of these groups what "war on their religion" is really all about. Also these a-holes have not been part of the solution to religious tolerance in America. One can only guess if they are thinking that the Muslims/Arabs are getting what they got coming.
Very interesting article in the WaPo yesterday -- How the GOP Became God's Own Party By Kevin Phillips Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B03 Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history. We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews. Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast. The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate. The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street. President Bush has promoted these alignments, interest groups and their underpinning values. His family, over multiple generations, has been linked to a politics that conjoined finance, national security and oil. In recent decades, the Bushes have added close ties to evangelical and fundamentalist power brokers of many persuasions. Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. I have a personal concern over what has become of the Republican coalition. Forty years ago, I began a book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which I finished in 1967 and took to the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, for which I became the chief political and voting-patterns analyst. Published in 1969, while I was still in the fledgling Nixon administration, the volume was identified by Newsweek as the "political bible of the Nixon Era." In that book I coined the term "Sun Belt" to describe the oil, military, aerospace and retirement country stretching from Florida to California, but debate concentrated on the argument -- since fulfilled and then some -- that the South was on its way into the national Republican Party. Four decades later, this framework has produced the alliance of oil, fundamentalism and debt. Some of that evolution was always implicit. If any region of the United States had the potential to produce a high-powered, crusading fundamentalism, it was Dixie. If any new alignment had the potential to nurture a fusion of oil interests and the military-industrial complex, it was the Sun Belt, which helped draw them into commercial and political proximity and collaboration. Wall Street, of course, has long been part of the GOP coalition. But members of the Downtown Association and the Links Club were never enthusiastic about "Joe Sixpack" and middle America, to say nothing of preachers such as Oral Roberts or the Tupelo, Miss., Assemblies of God. The new cohabitation is an unnatural one. While studying economic geography and history in Britain, I had been intrigued by the Eurasian "heartland" theory of Sir Halford Mackinder, a prominent geographer of the early 20th century. Control of that heartland, Mackinder argued, would determine control of the world. In North America, I thought, the coming together of a heartland -- across fading Civil War lines -- would determine control of Washington. This was the prelude to today's "red states." The American heartland, from Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to Ohio and the Appalachian coal states, has become (along with the onetime Confederacy) an electoral hydrocarbon coalition. It cherishes sport-utility vehicles and easy carbon dioxide emissions policy, and applauds preemptive U.S. airstrikes on uncooperative, terrorist-coddling Persian Gulf countries fortuitously blessed with huge reserves of oil. Because the United States is beginning to run out of its own oil sources, a military solution to an energy crisis is hardly lunacy. Neither Caesar nor Napoleon would have flinched. What Caesar and Napoleon did not face, but less able American presidents do, is that bungled overseas military embroilments could also boomerang economically. The United States, some $4 trillion in hock internationally, has become the world's leading debtor, increasingly nagged by worry that some nations will sell dollars in their reserves and switch their holdings to rival currencies. Washington prints bonds and dollar-green IOUs, which European and Asian bankers accumulate until for some reason they lose patience. This is the debt Achilles' heel, which stands alongside the oil Achilles' heel. Unfortunately, more danger lurks in the responsiveness of the new GOP coalition to Christian evangelicals, fundamentalists and Pentecostals, who muster some 40 percent of the party electorate. Many millions believe that the Armageddon described in the Bible is coming soon. Chaos in the explosive Middle East, far from being a threat, actually heralds the second coming of Jesus Christ. Oil price spikes, murderous hurricanes, deadly tsunamis and melting polar ice caps lend further credence. The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots. Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity. Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership. Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured. These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system. Conservative true believers will scoff at such concerns. The United States is a unique and chosen nation, they say; what did or did not happen to Rome, imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic and Britain is irrelevant. The catch here, alas, is that these nations also thought they were unique and that God was on their side. The revelation that He apparently was not added a further debilitating note to the late stages of each national decline. Over the last 25 years, I have warned frequently of these political, economic and historical (but not religious) precedents. The concentration of wealth that developed in the United States in the bull market of 1982 to 2000 was also typical of the zeniths of previous world economic powers as their elites pursued surfeit in Mediterranean villas or in the country-house splendor of Edwardian England. In a nation's early years, debt is a vital and creative collaborator in economic expansion; in late stages, it becomes what Mr. Hyde was to Dr. Jekyll: an increasingly dominant mood and facial distortion. The United States of the early 21st century is well into this debt-driven climax, with some analysts arguing -- all too plausibly -- that an unsustainable credit bubble has replaced the stock bubble that burst in 2000. Unfortunately, three of the preeminent weaknesses displayed in these past declines have been religious excess, a declining energy and industrial base, and debt often linked to foreign and military overstretch. Politics in the United States -- and especially the evolution of the governing Republican coalition -- deserves much of the blame for the fatal convergence of these forces in America today. Kevin Phillips is the author of "American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century" (Viking). http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html
can you run for office? especially given that culberson's new district has at least 40% democrats now.
Is it the Great Commission Or the next political party? I don't care if people in my church are republicans or democrats (I don't even know) but I am concerned about their love for Jesus Christ and faith in Him. Read the Bible every day and do what it says (especially if some of the words are in red) Christianity only works by the power of God's Spirit. No where did Jesus say to go into the world and vote these things into law. I would rather pray than vote, but I do both. I don't mind Christians in politics as long as they act Christian. (off of soapbox)
Some free election advice: Change it from MadMax to Max Power. You'll easily beat whatever numbnuts the two parties throw up there with a name like that.
Unfortunatly for me, only the "religious right" supports the one issue that I feel I must vote on. Most of their policies are crap, but such is the way America works. Politics makes for strange bedfellows.
Well, there will apparently be an Evangelical Christian lobby whose sole purpose is to support Israel: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/701583.html New Christian pro-Israel lobby aims to be stronger than AIPAC NEW YORK - Televangelist John Hagee told Jewish community leaders over the weekend that the 40 million evangelical Christians in the United States support Israel and that he plans to utilize this power to help Israel by launching a Christian pro-Israel lobby. The lobby is slated to launch in July, during a Washington conference in which hundreds of American evangelicals are slated to participate, Hagee said at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which represents 52 national Jewish groups. He also discussed the lobby with Israel's consul general in New York, Aryeh Mekel. Hagee said his group would be a Christian - and more powerful - version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a large pro-Israel lobby, and would target senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill. A quarter of congressmen are evangelicals, and many American legislators represent regions that include a large evangelical population, he said. Hagee - the founder and senior pastor of the evangelical Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, that claims an active membership of more than 18,000 - said the lobby's activities would be a "political earthquake." In his meeting with Mekel, Hagee said he planned to establish an effective network of key activists across the United States who can be reached within 24 hours if necessary for emergency lobbying efforts. He said he has already appointed 12 regional directors who are to be responsible for lobby activities in their areas and that he plans to appoint representatives in every state and major city. Hagee also said he would head a delegation of 500 evangelicals slated to visit Israel this summer. "The evangelical population's support of Israel is very important," said Mekel yesterday. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Danny Ayalon, responded in a similar fashion while discussing the new lobby in February. "We see Christians in the United States as true friends and important supporters on the basis of shared values, and we welcome their efforts to strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S.," Ayalon said at the time. Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman was a bit more cautious. He said Hagee's project should be welcomed, but added that Jews and Israelis should be both respectful and wary. Foxman noted that Hagee told the Conference of Presidents that evangelicals support Israel from a biblical perspective, but did not explain exactly what he meant. Rabbi James Rudin, author of "The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us," said Sunday that Hagee - one of 20 evangelical leaders who met with Ariel Sharon during his last trip to Washington - has been known for many years as an enthusiastic advocate of Israel, and is a typical right-wing Christian supporter of the country. Some 400 Christian community leaders met in San Antonio in February to establish the lobby. Other than Hagee, its leaders include evangelist George Morrison; fundamentalist Baptist minister Jerry Falwell; and Gary Bauer, president of the American Values organization aimed at protecting marriage, family and faith. All are well-known supporters of Israel, and considered hawkish.
