Obama's Evangelical Court -- But Will it Work?

The Reverend Rick Warren had to fight to get more than a few members of his mega Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California to accept having presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama grace the dais at his church. But Warren persisted, and the recalcitrant evangelicals came around, at least they' didn't publicly complain. Obama in great part helped the sell. He's made it plain that he'll pull out more stops than any other Democratic presidential candidate in recent times to court the evangelicals. He actually thinks his oft professed testament of faith and spout of traditional religious values might get a hearing from evangelicals. But he's also banking that more than a few evangelicals, especially the younger ones, have changed and more of them back Warren's social gospel preachments. That just might translate out to a few more evangelical votes for him. Maybe it will, maybe not.

There are a few vague signs that while there's no seismic shift among evangelicals, there's at least a slight chink in the GOP's iron lock on the evangelical vote. In the 2006 mid-term elections one third of white evangelicals broke ranks and voted for Democrats. That didn't mean that they had completely made peace with the Democrats. But it didn't stop the Democrats and some in the media from writing the epitaph for the power and ability of the Christian evangelicals to sway elections for GOP candidates.

The new line was that with the death of Jerry Falwell in May 2007 and with the evangelicals lacking a nationally known name leader of his stature to rally, inflame, implore, and energize them, and with the failure of the Bush and the GOP congress to get any thing done on their agenda opposing abortion and gay marriage, many would stay home in 2008, or worse, again vote for Democrats. The talk then and now is that many young evangelicals aren't totally consumed by these issues and are more worried about the economy, the war, poverty, HIV/AIDS and global warming.

The epitaph for the evangelicals political demise is in part wishful thinking and all very premature. The Iowa Republican caucus and Michigan primaries in January put a brake on that kind of talk.
Then GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee proved that the evangelical lion was far from dead. It just needed the right spark to revive it. The concerns that propelled Bush to victory in 2004 were still very much on the plate of millions of those that self-identify as evangelicals. They are strategically placed in many key swing states and their numbers haven't dropped, and in 2007, seven out of 10 Americans said they were Christian.

This doesn't mean they share the same politics, ideology, and or hardly uniform in their thinking on abortion, gay marriage, and family values issues. Many are liberal, moderate, and even solid Democrats. They do care about the economy, education, health care. Some are even supportive of abortion and gay rights, deeply opposed to the Iraq war, and are likely to back a Democrat in 2008.
Millions more won't and have no hesitation in describing and identifying as evangelicals and loyally backing GOP candidates with their votes and organizing for them. Christian evangelical leaders have long known that if they could galvanize the faithful they could not only elect local and state officials but presidents as well. They also knew that they could influence if not outright dictate public policy, namely passing legislation, initiatives, and amendments, and influencing public opinion.

The surge in mega churches such as Warren's Saddleback Church with membership at some that topped 30,000 and the proliferation of televangelist programs, and Christian broadcast networks nationally and in local areas has made it easier to spread the evangelical message and subtly influence political causes. The Association of Evangelicals has been on the frontline in fulfilling that mission. The NAE had nearly 50,000 member congregations with 30 million members in 2005.
In a survey by the Detroit News in 2005 following Bush's reelection the question was asked whether the church should have more influence in politics. Nearly sixty percent agreed. Though the majority of Christian evangelicals are Republican leaning, many of them are Democrats too (about thirty percent in some surveys), and that bodes well for Obama. They will vote for Democratic candidates as long as they are conservative and adhere to the moral values tenets, and that may not bode well for Obama who's still widely suspect among conservative evangelicals as a much too liberal Democrat. In any case, the veneer of independence even non-partisanship gives the Christian evangelicals maneuver room to apply even more pressure on the GOP to back their aims.

Obama has to take a shot at netting some of their votes. The sixty to eighty million Christian evangelicals are too big, too important, and to politically strategic to ignore. McCain will move earth and especially heaven to see that Obama doesn't get too many of them. He'll start at Warren's Saddleback Church.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is How the GOP Can Keep the White House, How the Democrats Can Take it Back (Middle Passage Press, August 2008).

Comments

[Jazz42]

Mr Hutchinson.
I rarely agree with you, when it comes to Senator Obama. I completely agree with your article.

[tammany]

Great comments, all. I wish the campaign rhetoric were this thoughtful and sharp, but alas, it's Panderfest '08. I'm a Buddhist, and the little hairs on the back of my neck go up every time I hear evangelicals and others yammer about the U.S. being a "Christian nation." The whole world is in the throes of a wave of fundamentalism, and I'm praying in my totally non-deistic way that it passes very soon. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep my head from exploding in frustration at the willful ignorance and arrogance of the American public (by which I mostly mean evangelicals.)
And by the way, what's with the Christian bumper stickers? Every other car in my 'hood has some corny/tacky profession of Jesusness plastered on their car. I don't object to Christianity or Christians per se - whatever floats yer boat - but please keep your so-called faith outta my face.

[Ides]

This is a farce. Obama's already got the Christian vote (along with the Jewish, Muslim, and probably Buddhist and Baha'i votes), he just doesn't have the white Christian conservative (WCC) vote.... And would anyone actually want him to cater to that vote? Does anyone actually think that WCC's are amenable to counter arguments this close to the election without significant schema change?

That forum last night was composed of people who either are already going to vote for Obama or who won't vote for Obama, it's as simple as that. The irony of Rick Warren's appeal is that the very act of broadening evangelical support removes evangelicals from the WCC lineup, therefore making it impossible to poll them.

[MrTessier]

I think the other aspect that may be missed in this conversation is that attendance by Obama gave this a much wider national opportunity. I've talked to a few middle of the road people, and they are torn between Obama and McCain. But many of them really aren't following all that closely the campaigns. They still think that this is the McCain of 2000 who snubbed the evangelicals and took a very independent policy route to the traditional Republican philosophy. I think the more time that Obama and McCain can be on the same stage together, and the more that McCain runs to the right, the more people will realize that he's not exactly what they thought he was.

There's a danger for McCain because he's still hanging on with the independents, but running hard to the right. Obama's still hanging on with the Progressives but running hard to the middle. If McCain starts losing the middle, he could be in real trouble.

I really think he's getting bad advice, he used to be a much more naturally moderate politician, much like Obama. I really don't think that Obama will pull off so many evangelicals that McCain needs to go through as much effort as he has been to try to fit so squarely into the traditional republican mold.

[RevKeithRWright]

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag, carrying the cross."
It Can't Happen Here
1935 Sinclair Lewis

Our constitution forbids a religious test for our leaders yet we have this event today (sad).

The relationship between a man and God (or the absense) is of no concern to any other man.

Piety is no guarantee of morality or is the country really that stupid.

Rick Warren preaches the prosperity gospel...quite the opposite of the simple life eschewed by the mythical Christ.

"Christians" as Warren calls his sect, didn't believe in the trinity for hundreds of years...until a committee decided what was holy and what wasn't.

What about the Catholics and the Apocryphia...does Warren negate their faith because they have an additional book to draw from?

What is more important in this discussion, is how our leader will respect the (dis)beliefs of ALL Americans and not just one sect.

“The population of my neighborhood is too slender, and is too much divided into other sects to maintain any one preacher well. I must therefore be contented with being a Unitarian by myself.” Thomas Jefferson

As far as denying the trinity, our most noble of the founding fathers from whom flowed the Declaration of Independence and the Virgina rules of religious freedom ...would fail as a candidate under the scrutiny of the money-hungry Warren and his narrow-minded view of presidential mettle.

Rev. Keith R. Wright
The United Deist Church

[arthuride]

Fundamentalists--or all religions--are the most fanatic of all people, and the most dangerous: as seen with the Taliban (an Arabic word that means Theological Student), the Southern Baptist (especially under Richard Land and Jerry Falwell), the megachurches (such as the Osteers), and of course the nut cases where conservatives carried guns into liberal churches and shot children and elderly in the name of stopping a mythical Sodom and Gomorrah (which were never sin cities even in the Judaeo-Christian bible).

Organized religion is another moniker for organized hate, and to cater to this group is to condone and congratulate it. I would never vote for a fundamentalist be it a Mormon, Moslem, Jew, Christian or other. To seek their votes degrades the candidate(s) and the Constitution.

[bipolar2]

** Super-size me Jesus! **

Junk-food faith for a fat-head nation!

Sen. Obama wants to reach out to fundies? Casting pearls before the swinish, he's already carried obligatory politico-religious hypocrisy too far.

A nation overwhelmingly god-fearing also overwhelmingly rejects science. My fellow country-persons lack the critical intelligence to evaluate the garbage they put in their brains.

The US is an aberration among developed nations in its affinity for xian enthusiasms and in its failure to accept now elementary basic truths like evolution via natural selection.

America the free? Nonsense. I am an atheist, an *anti-supernaturalist* to be precise. Therefore, I belong to the most despised minority in the US. Why according to GHW Bush, I'm not fit to be a citizen.

I'll tolerate fundies only when everyone's "freedom of conscience" under the US Constitution is restored and respected. The US is still (barely) a secular state which has the misfortune of selective amnesia towards the political ideology of christo-fascism, dominionism. The Handmaid's Tale

The US is a secular state from its inception. It is *not* one nation under a non-existent god. The people are sovereign. Not child molesting priests, not fanatical tax-dodging televangelists, nor cabals of delusional fundies seeking to overthrow the Republic. The "Rev" Rick should be seen for the lying fraud that he is.

bipolar2 © 2008

[pastor123]

AS far as obama and evangelcals go, he may end up winning them by default., there is a growing movement with the christian conservative base to break away from the republican party. There is sites popping up all over with this goal in mind. I will leave a link to one of those sites. The GOP and McCain will be in big trouble if their base breaks away. Here is a link where Huckabee supporters that are trying to get Huckabee to start a new party?
thats at http://www.mccanes.com/newparty.html

[BADEN]

Kneeling in front of the altar is a personal affair.

This is a three-ring circus of the worse sort since the Nicene Creed vote combining church and state.

Obama's faith is his own.
He's black.
They are Southern Baptist fundamentalist whites.

Sunni-Shia
Baptist-Episcopalian
Catholic-Protestant

There IS a pattern here.

Dominionism has NO place in this country or its politics.

These aren't "evangelicals" in the true sense
And their "ORGANIZED religion" splits people according to race and belief.

I am SICK of these people's influence on my personal and public life.

Their right ends at the end of their noses.
And at the property line mark of their church or home.

Anything else is a big 'buttinsky' in this very secular nation.