Can This Marriage Last? (c)2004
Can This Marriage Last? ©2004
By Dwight A. Moody, Dean of the Chapel
Georgetown College, KY
Half of all marriages end in divorce, we are told, and that bodes ill for one particular union: namely, that between Republicans and Evangelicals.
Evangelicals comprise roughly one-third of the American population: mainly Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and a motley mixture of believers whose brand of Christianity does not fall into these large denominational categories. Evangelicals study the Bible, testify to a born-again experience, and embrace a mission to convert other people to their way of thinking and living.
By a three to one majority these evangelicals identify with the Republican Party. They support George Bush, the war, and the effort to interject religion into public policy.
The roots of this romance go back to Ronald Reagan. He once spoke to a gathering of evangelical ministers. "America is in the midst of a spiritual awakening and a moral renewal," he said, and called upon them to "use the mighty voice of your pulpits and the powerful standing of your churches" to advance this cause.
In that same speech Reagan referred to the Soviet empire as the "evil empire," but many in his audience then and now preferred to see the empire of evil as none other than the shadow side of the American society. Christians, they thought and said, are engaged in a great culture war which setting traditional religious values against an emerging secular order.
Thus the Republican search for political power met with the evangelical call for cultural influence. And there came to be this (apparently) happy union of two powerful players in American life.
But will it last?
Each brings to the union certain intractable characteristics that make a long and happy marriage very unlikely.
Republicans, for instance, have a preference for the rich rather than the poor, for business rather than labor, for white rather than color. Not all the religious rhetoric in the language, however carefully construed by campaigning politicians, can compensate for this tendency.
Can evangelicals live with such preferences, given their historic tendencies in the other direction, toward the lower classes, the less affluent, those on the margins of power and privilege?
Some say evangelicals have moved up the social ladder; have abandoned their humble roots; have become so prosperous, so important that they feel more at home with the upper-class values of the Republican Party.
Perhaps so; but there is the distinct possibility that the aforementioned spiritual awakening will enable evangelicals to rediscover their vocation as advocates for the less fortunate and in so doing become disenchanted with a political party that sees things in another way.
One thing Republicans like at this time is the rather narrow vision of Christian morality espoused by evangelicals, which can be summed up in one word: sex. I am not the first to point out how all of the issues near and dear to the newly-married evangelical mainstream have some connection to sex: pornography, abortion, homosexuality, gender roles, and certainly sex education in schools.
With its indifference to war, poverty, race, and environment, this is a truncated approach to Christian morality. It may fit well with current political agendas but can it sustain an ecumenical vision capable of gathering to the Republican Party a wider religious constituency? Will Republican leaders awake to discover that their marriage to this particular member of the clan has strained their friendships with the larger Christian family?
In other words: is the particular Christian vision of American evangelicals in the long-term best interests of the Republican Party? And equally important, is the political agenda of the Republican Party in the best interests of the evangelical movement?
Perhaps their current romance is simply a marriage of convenience, soon to dissolve when either fails to meet the political needs of the other?
Time will tell; but I for one shall not be surprised if the preacher and the politician, so enamored of one another, do not soon come to realize that the mission of each has been severely compromised by their confusing, if consensual arrangement.
© 2004 Dwight A. Moody
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