Do the Republicans have sole ownership of Religious America?
For aficionados of end-of-empire history, Kevin’s lively, readable and data-packed new book is a three-fer. He follows in the tradition of the English historian Edward Gibbon in eschewing a single-variable approach to a possible end of American empire. In Phillip’s view of our potential for decline and fall, Americans may spend their way into oblivion, we may drive to an energy-starved oblivion in our gas-guzzling SUVs, or we may drift into oblivion on a cloud of earnest-but-rigid religious rapture.
Kevin (along with his editors at Viking) were wise to highlight the religious dimension in titling this book. Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers was certainly not the last word on the dangers of financial and military over-reach, but it successfully shaped the rhetorical battlefield on this subject. Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy may well do the same for the serious debate about the threat that radical/political evangelical Christianity poses for the American enterprise.
Kevin paints a richly textured portrait of the combination of Southern-ist and Fundamentalist Christian institutional and demographic forces at work in American politics. His own role in helping to devise the Republican “Southern Strategy” helped to shape the forces he presents so clearly in the section of the book he calls “The United States in a Dixie Cup”.
I rather imagine that a plurality of the readership for American Theocracy will be Blue State pluralists with some degree of attachment to the traditional liturgical churches (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Catholic, etc) that decry exclusionary evangelical Christian politics.
If I am right, then I hope that the warnings that Kevin sounds about the dangers of radical fundamentalist Christianity will encourage them to consider the ways that progressives and liberals can reclaim some of the “Christian space” in the American political arena.
One of my favorite thinkers on this topic is a passionately progressive political writer with personal roots in the evangelical south. Amy Sullivan (an editor at the Washington Monthly) combines a Princeton PhD, a textured appreciation for southern politics and an analytic eye for electoral strategies almost as sharp as Kevin’s. Amy Sullivan reminds us that the most religious presidents of the modern era were both Democrats: Carter and Clinton.
She perceives strategic opportunities for the Democrats to capitalize on the weaknesses in the Republican’s hold on Southern Christians. Sullivan argues that “Democrats stand to gain the most support among two particular religious constituencies--"freestyle evangelicals" and "convertible Catholics." Although some commentators often refer to the "evangelical vote" or the "Catholic vote," more astute political observers understand that both of these religious communities are actually a collection of sub-groups characterized by regional, socio-economic, ethnic, and sometimes theological differences. And their political attitudes and behaviors are far from monolithic.”
The Republican’s hold on the Christian south is not unbreakable. "There are sub-constituencies among the religious of America who are more persuadable," says Shaun Casey, professor of Christian ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary. What Karl Rove has seen is that if the Bush campaign can go into traditional Democratic constituencies and peel off 5 percent of the vote that is a huge victory. Democrats could do the same thing if they understood the territory better.
As I noted at the beginning of this post, Kevin’s book is a three-fer (religion, energy and debt), but I am starting my comments this the week in the area where I believe he is the most provocative.
There are several problems, and I think you might gain a good eye for them if you read the responses to Amy Sullivan's posts at Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog. Though I would say that the only problem I have with lefty criticism of Christianity is when I run into people who equate belief in God with stupidity.
Anyhow, the problem is many of these voters have been convinced that Democrats ARE in league with the devil. When I was in first grade, we held a mock election where I was the only vote for the Dukakis. Afterwards, a girl in my class came up to me and asked "How can you be a Christian and vote Democrat?" How can you get through to people who train their children like this even at 6 years old?
Another problem here is illustrated by my parents. They are southern baptists and hard core democrats. But they refuse to turn the church into a political battleground because they believe in seperation of church and state. Yet while I agree with such a belief the rightists in their church go merily on their way continuing to pervert the message. It's a major reason why I no longer attend that particular chuch, I couldn't not confront such a thing any longer.
What will work better for Dems I think, is not to pander to these voters because that is what they already do, and when they do it they sound incredibly fake. Just be honest and forthright with as little equivication as you can possibly get. If you're not especially religious don't try to be, but explain your moral code. If you are religious, explain your moral code in terms of your religion but tie it into your positions and policies in a way that strengthens them without them being overly dependant on the religiou aspect.
March 20, 2006 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have a tendency to think that an example like this should not be given too much weight. I think party line association like this, with family, culture, or class used to be much stronger than it is now. In my boomer youth, it wasn't just children, was much more common for husbands to tell wives how to vote and they obeyed. That's changed.
I too remember kids on the playground, but they proudly saying they were Democrat as if it were their religion. They didn't know what the hell it meant. To their working class parents, it was a cultural or class identity. Children may not be directly taught this, it's just that they are heavily impressed when they see someone of main adult persons of trust get all hepped up in political debate or talk, because most other emotional stuff is kept from them. They want to be like Dad and take it to the schoolyard. If things go as usual, by their teen years, they want the opposite. The liberal hippie's child joins the Young Republicans just to spite what they know is their family heritage.
Actually, mass media/TV/entertainment has done much to break the spell and bindings of "family values." That's why it freaks conservatives out, that's what they mean when they rant about "liberal Hollywood." It astounds sometimes as a boomer when I compare how protected I and others of my kind were from the world, knew only what our parents allowed us to know, how "worldwise" young children of today are in comparison.
The most dangerous counter-movement to these prevailing winds is "home schooling" with no unscreened broadcast matter allowed. But some of those kids, they are being deprived of learning to live and operate in their own culture...hence, they will be pretty clueless in any attempts to affect change in it. Still, mass culture permeates, and even Amish or Hasid types have a hard time keeping a smart one "down on the farm."
March 20, 2006 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Small point of correction:
Amy Sullivan grew up in an evangelical Baptist church, but it was a Baptist church in the suburbs of Detroit, not one in the South.
March 20, 2006 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's try to be optimists rather than pessimists. The United States as a world superpower is not going anywhere for a matter of centuries. Our biggest challenge as a nation will be in recognizing the rise of China as our possible equal, or at any rate, the world's "second" superpower. Just as empires do not fall overnight, nor does one president in eight years have the ability to do that kind of damage...and I'm not talking George W. Bush, I'm talking presidents in general.
March 20, 2006 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re:Amy Sullivan grew up in an evangelical Baptist church, but it was a Baptist church in the suburbs of Detroit, not one in the South.
I grew up in those suburbs too. In some areas they might as well have been down south. The suffix "-tucky" was tacked onto town names ("Taylortucky", "Ypsitucky") where Appalachian and Southern accents were more common than in Nashville.
March 20, 2006 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am delighted that Amy Sullivan's writing is so well known in TPM circles
I "discovered" Amy when I was at Princeton giving a lecture about the Taliban in Afghanistan (which dealt in part with themes of religious intolerance and their possible resonance amongst Christian fundamentalists in America) and one of her PhD professors had coffee with me afterwards and suggested I take note of her work.
Two weeks later I received an invitation to a small gathering where she was speaking in Washington & I was won over in a trice.
As a traditional Anglican (for us everything Biblical is methaphor and nothing is literal) the world of American evangelical Christianity has always seemed quite impenetrable.
Amy, with roots in both sides of the American religious divide and a very keen mind, is --for me- - an excellent guide to this mysterious world of literal faith.
I note that some of the commenters here dismiss the relevance of her suggestions about electoral strategy. I will refrain from jumping in on that theme since I truly don't have a comfortable command of what Southern evangelicals really do think about the intercept between faith and politics.
But, for want of a better alternative, I will continue to hope that Amy Sullivan's insights are correct - or at least pointing in the right direction.
Kevin's book outlines the problem in considerable depth, but does not really point to a way out.
Amy sees a way out & perhaps her approach needs sharpening and refinement.
Professor John Stuart Blackton
March 21, 2006 4:59 AM | Reply | Permalink