The Republican Capture of the Evangelical Vote

--By Gideon Hart

Poverty in the Bible

The world described in the Gospels is one in which there is a clear division between rich and poor, with Romans, priests, urban aristocrats, and landowners possessing most available wealth. The rural masses were left horribly destitute through a combination of Roman and religious taxes, and widespread land seizures. The terrible poverty of the many played a major part in the message of Jesus. Jesus was at his most scathing and critical when considering the disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Further, Jesus elevated the poor, oppressed, and suffering – he freely offered them salvation and placed their plight at the center of his teachings. Jesus squarely stood against the self-serving rhetoric of the wealthy elites and their manipulations of the poor. It follows that an individual today attempting to follow the teachings of Jesus would be very concerned with the fate of the poor and the growing inequality of wealth and power in America.

• It "follows" only in an extremely bogus sense of "follow," meaning "ignoring history and what we know about human beings, concentrating solely on propositional logic relying on my interpretation of documents subject to multiple interpretations, it could be said that ...." This is a poor basis for the construction of a thesis that will suffer from extreme vulnerability and tendentiousness on account of its parentage. You could say with more basis that "it follows that some individuals will be very concerned, and that some individuals will be not only unconcerned, but fully engaged in grinding the faces of the poor." Christians "attempting to follow the teachings of Jesus" have included Franciscans of great holiness as well as Franciscans of immense greed, slaveowners, slumlords, Bavarian and Rwandan practitioners of genocide, socialists, anarchists, George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Day, Angelo Roncalli, Rodrigo Borgia, Teresa de Avila, and Benito Mussolini. We have no reason in history or psychology to suppose that a sincere attachment to the teachings of Yehoshua of Nazareth, whatever they were, or to the teachings of the Gospels, whatever they are and whatever relation they bear to those of "Jesus," is incompatible with any social attitude expressed today, however repugnant.

Political Conservatism in Modern America and the Republican Party

In modern America, the politically conservative, whose policies have often been centered on preserving the wealth and power of the few against the needs of the many, have acted as a major stumbling block for the advancement of many individuals.

• What does this sentence mean?

This conservatism has been shaped by the concerns of social and fiscal conservatives, among others.

• What could this sentence mean, if anything?

In the 20th and 21st centuries political conservatives have opposed equal rights for minorities and women, affordable healthcare, expansion of welfare benefits, increases in the minimum wage, expansion of education and desegregation of schools, and tax cuts benefiting the poor.

• Tax cuts benefiting the poor? Surely you mean tax increases benefiting the poor? Surely no one is insane enough to believe that the political program of the poor is tax cuts?

Within the past thirty years, many of these conservative positions, and others in the same vein, have been strongly supported by the Republican Party and have been used to their benefit in elections.

• Is this the same as saying that the Republican Party is the more conservative of our two conservative parties?

Tension Between Christianity and the Republican Party

In recent elections Evangelical Christians have voted in large numbers for Republican candidates whose records are very conservative. It is undoubted that Evangelical voters propelled Bush into office in 2000 and 2004. Bush, and many of his advisors, are among the most explicitly Christian politicians in American history. Bush has very closely aligned himself with the Christian right, and like many Republican politicians, is dependent on its support.

• I don't know whether people's records are conservative: that sort of talk is usually bullshit. You mean that evangelicals have voted heavily for candidates of both parties who have said they opposed abortion and non-heterosexual marriages, and were in favor of permitting state-sanctioned Christian prayers in public schools. This made sense, because those people were voting for candidates (by no means only Republicans) who promised them changes in public policy that they considered desirable and godly.

The Republican Party's lack of concern for the plight of the poor and their desire to solidify the hold of large companies and elites on America is hard to square with the statements of Jesus in the Gospels.

• But not impossible. Every government's program is both hard and not hard to square with the Gospels, the Gitas, the Qu'ran, and the United States Constitution. Why say something so outstandingly, thumpingly, preposterously naive?

The policies advocated by Bush and the Republican party have largely been politically conservative. Bush's tax cut plan primarily benefits the wealthy (by 2010 fully 53% of the Bush tax cuts will have benefited only the top 1% of the population, while the lowest 20% will have only received 1.2% of the cuts). Further, under Bush's guidance the number of Americans without health insurance has steadily climbed. Bush has also advocated the slashing of Medicare and educational programs aimed at disadvantaged students. Although projected as a Christian administration, Bush's presidency has been marked by a shocking and callous disregard for the needs of America's disadvantaged.

This raises a question: how are many Republican politicians persuading Evangelicals that they consider the teachings of Jesus in their policy decisions, even though they often support positions that seem directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus?

Political Capture of the Evangelical Christian Vote

Republicans have succeeded in capturing the Evangelical vote by placing several morally conservative positions at the center of their platform. This strategy deflects attention away from their disregard for other, arguably more important, Christian positions. The Republican Party's outspoken and vehement opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and euthanasia have turned those issues into effective rallying points for the Evangelical vote. Without delving into a theological analysis (dozens of which can be found easily), it will be granted that it is not a stretch of Christian rules to oppose abortion and euthanasia, and possibly gay marriage, on biblical grounds. This is especially true for Evangelical Christians who tend to interpret the Bible literally. Although these positions may arguably be correct in terms of Christian theology, the Republican Party's advocacy for them seems to be little more than Christian adornment in light of their other policies favoring war, torture, the death penalty, and importantly, the abandonment of the poor. By fervently and very publicly supporting Evangelical/morally conservative positions, Republicans have succeeded in giving many Christians the impression that the Republican Party is a Christian party, and that a handful of highly publicized moral positions should trump all others at the polls. The support of the Christian Coalition and other prominent ministers has lent this position even more credibility in the eyes of Evangelical voters. The Evangelicals' support for these morally conservative positions has been so strong that they have been willing to ignore the other, often extremely un-Christian, policies advocated by many of the Republicans they vote into office.

The Future of the Religious Right

If the Evangelical Christian community is to truly vote in-line with the teachings of Jesus it must abandon its support for candidates that are supporting policies in conflict with the issues that were most important to Jesus - particularly those dealing with poverty. Evangelicals, justifiably, could continue to support morally conservative policies, and lend support to candidates advocating those positions. Evangelicals, must also however, consider the other policies advocated by those same candidates when voting. Recently some cracks have appeared, as some Evangelical ministers have spoken out against the Bush administration's fiscal and environmental policies. This movement may possibly be the beginning of a decrease in the power of the religious right. These leaders are beginning to instruct Evangelical voters to support candidates that reflect the values of Jesus overall, rather than allow their voting to be swayed by a single issue. Although this trend may in the long-run damage the heavy political clout of the religious right, it seems as though it could also allow Evangelical voters to make political decisions that more accurately reflect the teachings of Jesus.

u---- Note: The choice of this topic, and the essay itself, is not in any way an espousal of or an attack on Christianity, conservatism, liberalism, or a claim to factual accuracy of any information in the Bible. However, it is undoubted that the teachings ascribed to Jesus and the rest of the Bible have greatly impacted American politics. Individuals who are Christian profess belief in the words and actions of Jesus, regardless of their factual accuracy. This is especially true among Evangelical Christians who tend to interpret the Bible literally. Accordingly, a study of how an Evangelical Christians should vote must accept as true the teachings of Jesus, because those voters regard the teachings to be true. This paper is an attempt to focus attention on the way that Christianity has been used recently to increase the power of the Republican Party, even though many of the initiatives advanced by that Party seem to conflict with the most basic teachings of Jesus.

• The entire essay, and particularly this last preposterous note, proceeds on the basis that your reading of the Gospels is the reading of the Gospels, and that your idea of the social, ecclesiological and political consequences that flow from it will naturally be those of Christians whose intellectual approaches to the Bible (however "literal" you may think them) are at least as sophisticated as the one you present. But you don't show any sign of having learned anything about how Evangelicals in America have traditionally understood their relation to politics, or indeed of having tried to learn. What did you read before writing this? And how did you convince yourself that you could argue on the basis of your view of Christian doctrine? For George Bernard Shaw, in--say--the preface to Androcles and the Lion, Christian Socialism is presented as a provocation. "Liberation theology" is a view of doctrine, presenting itself to the Catholic Church as the views of the Spiritual Franciscans were presented, but I would remind you that the Catholic Church holds heretical the doctrine of the poverty of Jesus. To present yourself as having "the" view of the Gospels against which supposedly Christian political doctrine can be measured is simply bizarre.