God and Red America

First of all, a bit of background: I am an ex-religious right footsoldier since the nascent days of the Reagan revolution and I know Christian conservatives from the inside out. I helped form two Metro Right to life organizations, have organized and led protests outside abortion clinics, given interviews to scores of media types (who usually found my views a combination of odd and unsettling, or infuriating). I attended seminary with Paul Hill, and have spoken on multiple occasions with Joe Scheidler.

The hysteria of the left about the fundies putting Bush into office is overblown. The fact is, Bush won not because of the surge of religious crazies who took a detour from a new round of witch burning to vote, but because the democrats had no message other than "I hate Bush" and a candidate who had nothing to say but "I am not Bush." The religious comprise some 40% of our population, and 80% of those voted Bush. There is nothing new about those numbers, and despite the herculean efforts to get out the vote among the Christians, only about another 2.1% showed up to vote.

So why so much titter about the "values" votes? I think there are a couple of reasons besides the poorly worded question at the exit polls:

1) There is a HUGE cultural divide in our country. The secular left does not understand the evangelical/orthodox/fundamentalist world, and politically motivated religious people scare the hell out of them. The two groups live in worlds not only vastly different, but threatening to each other. Neither side understands the other, or really cares much about doing so. Because the secular left views the religious right as bogeymen, they overplay their own fears about them "taking over." Some of the spokesmen for the right overplay their own influence due to power/financial/lobbying interests in advancing those fears.

2) The "old left" at the core of the democratic party simply cannot admit that people don't like them, don't want them, and have rejected their vision for society. It is easier to blame the crazies storming the gates than admit your agenda sucks.

So, on the off chance that someone might read this, I am going to give a piece of advice. Core Democrats should remember something REALLY simple: Many Republicans and many Democrats are religious. The faithful whites have already largely bailed on you, and the fissures have started among the many pious blacks. You need to ask yourselves a hard question: Do you hold very religious people in contempt? If you do, religious people will sense it—and will continue to vote against you. And there are more of them than there are of you. As superior as it makes many on the secular left feel, you cannot AFFORD to alienate them.

Finally, It is not good for Christians to be 80% Republican. There is something very WRONG when a large section of society senses that they must "buy into" a whole cultural package in order to be Christian. The problem is that there is increasingly nowhere else to go. We need a loyal, moral, opposition party. Otherwise Christians start thinking (and talking) like "God is on OUR side" rather than the better question (which goes back to the implied angeiic question to Joshua, "are we on GOD's side?" in the various societal issues. It would be nice to have an opposition party to global opportunism that does not define morality in terms of defying core moral principles in place for at least 3000 years.