Christian right on the ropes
The Jewish Weekly - November 10, 2006
Christian Right Agenda In Shambles After GOP Defeat
Moderate Evangelicals seen chafing against narrow priorities like
abortion, gay rights. Will some work with Dems?
Larry Cohler-Esses - Editor At Large
For a man witnessing a debacle in real time, Rev. Louis Sheldon, a
leader of the Christian Right political movement, sounded amazingly
sanguine Tuesday night – even as an early AP exit poll indicated that
almost one-third of white Evangelicals chose a Democrat for Congress.
“We know that in America the people are with us,” insisted the
founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, one of the
largest groups in the Christian right. “They’re just confused.”
Now, taking a break from monitoring discouraging election returns on
television, Sheldon stressed that the defeat of the Republican Party
in the House of Representatives signaled no decline for the movement
that has been so central to GOP tenure there.
The issues that brought defeat, he said, had nothing to do with his
movement.
“The issue is Iraq and the culture of corruption among a few
Republican elected officials,” said Sheldon. “It’s very clear, we’re
here to stay. We’re in it for the long haul. The assault on marriage,
sexual predators and abortion are not going away. So, we’ll go on.”
No one doubts this. But whether they will go on in the same way and
with the same sway over the Republican Party is already a matter of
intense debate among political observers and activists.
Everyone agrees that the Evangelical right’s legislative agenda for
the next session of Congress appears dead as a result of Tuesday’s
Democratic House victory. That is a source of great satisfaction for
mainstream Jewish groups; they strongly opposed several measures
passed by the House last session that had the movement’s backing.
These include the Public Expression of Religion Act, which would stop
judges from awarding lawyers’ fees to plaintiffs who win suits
against the government for violating the separation of religion and
state. Another bill passed last session would empower faith-based
groups to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring staff for
government-funded social service programs such as Head Start.
Both bills are stalled in the Senate. With the change in control of
the House, “passage of these bills now becomes much less likely,”
said Richard Foltin, head of the American Jewish Committee’s
Washington office.
Furthermore, he observed, with unsympathetic Democratic members
taking over House committee chairmanships, the movement’s prospects
for moving new legislation forward are dim.
Even in the Senate, where the victorious party remained uncertain,
many noted the defeat of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as a devastating
setback for the Christian right.
“He was the de facto leader of the social conservatives on the Hill,”
said Marshal Wittman, a former official with the Christian Coalition
now affiliated with the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist
Democratic think tank. “He carried their water on key issues. He was
their most prominent advocate. And he was in the Senate Republican
leadership.”
Like most of the Christian right, Santorum was a fervent supporter of
Israel. But his successor, Bob Casey Jr., pledged during his campaign
that “no senator will be as vigilant or supportive as me” in
maintaining the U.S.-Israel relationship. Virtually all of the new
Democratic members have taken similar stands.
Seeking Other Issues
With its domestic legislative agenda on hold, its support for Israel
seen as replaceable, and a significant portion of its grassroots
voting for the Democrats, what is the future of the movement whose
influence within the Republican Party has made them kingmakers?
Even before last Tuesday, emerging voices within the Evangelical
movement —sotto voce — were calling on the activist faithful to
expand their agenda to encompass other issues. What about the
environment and global warming? they asked. Genocide in the Darfur
region of Sudan and increasing economic inequality here at home?
Some now say acting on these concerns will mean working with the
newly empowered Democrats. The victorious party’s own numbers also
now include a coterie of socially conservative victors from Tuesday
night. And hoping to peel off even a few layers from what has been a
pro-GOP monolith, Democratic Party activists are plotting new ways to
welcome Evangelicals to their fold.
“It isn’t like the door is closed because Democrats are in control,”
said one high-ranking Democratic House staffer. “There may be certain
issues on which they agree with us. They’ll certainly have access.”
The staffer, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because
she was unauthorized to make statements to the press, was one of
several who saw an opportunity. Conservative Christian political
activism on sexual and church-state issues remained unstinting, she
conceded, “But in the last year, I’ve seen a huge change with this
movement. It’s fracturing.”
In Newsweek this week, President Bush’s former speechwriter Michael
Gerson, an Evangelical, spoke of a “head snapping generational change
among Evangelicals.”
Many, he wrote, “have begun elbowing against the narrowness of the
religious right, becoming more globally focused and more likely to
consider themselves ‘pro-life and pro-poor.’ Depending on your
perspective, this may be creeping liberalism or political maturity.”
Sheldon scoffed at this notion, and the idea that Christian right
activists might cultivate relationships with the newly empowered
Democrats. Some new Democratic members may be more in tune with their
views on sexual or church-state issues, he said, “But the leadership
won’t let us work with them. We can’t reorient because our issues are
issues the Democratic Party national platform repudiates.”
Drawing on his experience from years working with the Christian
right, Wittman said, “The bottom line is that the social
conservatives will remain a powerful force within the Republican
Party. … It’s unlikely they’ll have any significant relationship
with Democratic leaders. Essentially we have one conservative and one
liberal party. And the Evangelicals are part of the conservative party.”
A Tough Year
But that may be true only because Evangelicals have been content,
until now, to let Christian right leaders speak for them, said John
Green, a senior fellow with the non-partisan Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life.
“We must make an important distinction between the Christian right
per se and Evangelical Protestants,” he explained. “Moderate
Evangelicals have tended to follow the Christian right when it was
about social issues. Many voted with Bush, but they are increasingly
uncomfortable having their movement so exclusively identified with
him. Long-term, that’s quite important.”
With the rise of a Democratic House able to bring Democratic issues
to the floor for votes, Green predicted support and involvement from
this sector of Evangelicals in an expected drive to raise the minimum
wage, a key Democratic concern. “There actually is interest in
poverty,” he said.
Sheldon’s Anaheim, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition claims
some 43,000-member churches as part of its lobby. It is well known,
well-funded and widely feared for the grassroots roar it can summon
up to oppose abortion rights, gay rights, stem cell research,
pornography and sex education other than abstinence education. But it
has been a tough year:
The scandals have come one after another for the political party he
and others in the Christian right consider theirs: Reps. Randy
Cunningham (R-Calif.), who pleaded guilty to bribery last November;
Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who pleaded guilty to corruption and
conspiracy charges last month after accepting lavish gifts for
favors; Jack Abramoff, the convicted fundraiser and briber who
provided many of those gifts — and to whom Sheldon himself was linked
through payments he received from an Abramoff client, an Internet
gambling firm; and, perhaps most upsettingly for the author of “The
Homosexual Agenda to Change America,” Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who
was forced to resign his seat after the disclosure of his uninvited
sexual communications with male congressional interns.
Then, as if things could not get worse, there was the disgrace of
Sheldon’s own friend and colleague, Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado
mega-church leader and president of the National Association of
Evangelicals, an even bigger pillar of Republican support on the
Christian right. Sheldon disclosed that he and “a lot” of others knew
about Haggard’s homosexuality “for awhile … but we weren’t sure
just how to deal with it.”
Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard’s secret
relationship with him, and the reverend’s drug use as well, “Ted and
I had a discussion,” explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a
telltale signal then: “He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no
it isn’t. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that.”
Sheldon insisted that being in opposition in the House “will be a
huge energizing factor for us” as politics shifts toward the
selection of a presidential nominee for 2008.
But even he seemed to acknowledge that the tidal wave of scandal and
electoral loss would not be without some effect.
“The Evangelical community is not monolithic,” he acknowledged. “Some
of us hate politics because it’s so partisan. It doesn’t have a
comforting element. It can be very divisive.
“A lot of Evangelicals just don’t want to get involved,” he lamented. >