The Decline of Evangelical Christian Politics

While most Republicans continue their self-prostitution to the Christofascists, some are arguing that the influence of the modern day Pharisee "godly folk" is waning and - by extension - the GOP is headed towards suicide if it doesn't uncouple itself from the forces of hate, the embrace of ignorance and religious extremism in general.  With 30% of the younger generations professing no religious affiliation and embracing LGBT equality and other positions that are anathema to the Christofascists, some argue that the handwriting is on the wall.  Meanwhile, the spittle flecked professional Christians are being forced into a defensive posture.  A piece in the Oxford University Press Blog makes this case which I for one hope is correct.  Here are highlights:

In many statehouses, evangelical influence is alive and well. Even in red-state America, though, we see a defensive posture that spells retreat, if not outright defeat.

In a proliferating number of legislative initiatives, gay civil rights is cast as a threat to religious liberty. Rather than protesting excessive church-state separation, these efforts embrace an expansive interpretation of religious free exercise.

The contention, while not novel, is telling: conscience trumps open access. Here, conscience applies to commercial property, as in the case of caterers that refuse to serve gay weddings (as opposed to not inviting a couple over for Sunday dinner). This radical view of property rights does Kentucky Senator Rand Paul proud, even though he is often touted as the libertarian antidote to evangelical hegemony in the GOP.

At first glance, the religious liberty angle looks like a savvy strategy. After all, active Christians (including many Catholics and other non-evangelicals) far outnumber avowed secularists. But it is something of a leap of faith to believe that millions of Christian voters will prioritize religious liberty over, say, health care or education. 

Such strategic flailing does not mean that the Christian Right is over—far from it. Yet, as these defensive messages indicate, it has abandoned the pretense of being a moral majority. This is no small shift in a winner-takes-all democracy.

Social conservatives (evangelical or otherwise) are no longer only battling liberal elites. They are contending with a growing real majority of Americans who either vigorously disagree with them or do not see what the fuss is all about. These Americans have long separated their workplaces from their places of worship. They likewise assume the separation of church and health care (notwithstanding the names of their neighborhood hospitals). Some of them support increased access to contraception precisely because they are uncomfortable with abortion.

Many evangelicals affirm these common-sense approaches, of course. The Christian Right does not represent them; in most cases, it never did. Now, though, evangelical conservatives are having a harder time getting away with claiming to speak for all evangelicals, never mind for Christians as a whole.

We are witnessing the public de-coupling of “evangelical” from “Christian” when it comes to politics. Born-again Christianity is no longer the standard against which religion’s role in public life is measured. This is a pivot from forty years of Carter, Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson, and it seems unlikely to be reversed anytime soon.