Evangelicals: Will they vote Democratic

It was a spirited meeting of Southern Baptists committed to doing God’s work, said Neela Banerjee in The New York Times. But at the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant last week in Atlanta, 15,000 politically active evangelicals weren’t concerned with banning abortion and gay marriage, supporting a hawkish foreign policy, or other traditional touchstones of the Religious Right. Instead, the faithful gathered for three days “to commit themselves to Jesus’ call to help the poor.” Dismayed by the Republican Party’s strident stands on issues such as war and illegal immigration, many evangelicals—especially those under 30—have broken with older and more conservative Christian leaders, such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson, for whom conservative politics and Christianity are inseparable. In Atlanta, the focus was on poverty, peacemaking, universal health coverage, and global warming. “There is a veritable earthquake in American evangelism,” said Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals. “The evangelicals I talk to really think they have to be more reflective of Jesus’ work on Earth.”

Which presidential candidate will benefit from that new emphasis? asked Electra Draper in The Denver Post. In the primaries, it was Mike Huckabee, “the only avowed evangelical candidate in the race.” He’s very much in the mold of the new evangelicals with his populist positions on the environment, poverty, and health care. But because so many evangelicals have “soured” on the GOP, said Brett Grainger in The Christian Science Monitor, many might vote for Democrat Barack Obama if he wins the nomination. He’s dramatically “narrowed the ‘God gap’ with Republicans by making personal faith a driving force in his campaign.” One recent Beliefnet poll found that 40 percent of “Bible-believing” Christians would consider voting for a Democratic candidate this year—more than in any election since Jimmy Carter ran in 1976.

Clearly, evangelicals are in the midst of an identity crisis, said Philip Jenkins in the Los Angeles Times. But it’s important to remember that evangelicals are prone to seeing world events in apocalyptic terms. They moved sharply to the right after the Carter years left the U.S. with soaring oil prices, skyrocketing crime rates, strong challenges to traditional gender roles, and a severely weakened international standing. If a Democrat wins in November, it could set the stage for a new evangelical backlash, especially if the next four years bring liberal social policies and growing foreign threats to U.S. influence. “In 2008, the Religious Right may appear to be dying, but it could just be going into hibernation.”

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