Evangelical voters and Huckabee

It seems that evangelical Protestant voters aren't the sure bet for Huckabee that many thought they might be. That's what Eve Fairbanks at TNR points out in a recent article. In a state where 60 percent of the primary electorate self-identified as evangelical in exit polls, Huckabee came in second with 23 percent of the vote. Fairbanks' article is thoughtful and surprisingly sociological. She actually surmises that Huckabee might fare worse in states with a high percentage of evangelical voters.

She notes a huge discrepancy between an informal pastor poll she conducted and the actual results among evangelicals in the primary. She says in her poll four in five pastors supported Huckabee, while in the primary, Huckabee won only among evangelicals who attend church "more than weekly." Weekly attenders went with McCain. At least in South Carolina, evangelical pastors are more likely to value religious conservatism in politics than lay evangelicals. One pastor she interviewed went so far to say that evangelicals that

respondents favoring other candidates, "they're not real evangelicals. If people say, 'I like [Huckabee] because of Scripture, but I don't like his tax policy,' they are not reflecting an evangelical lifestyle." Hamlet defines "real" evangelicals as people whose votes rest on sanctity of life, character, and a candidate's interest in the Judeo-Christian ethic more than "lower issues" like immigration or terrorism.

Scary. Interestingly, this mirrors the tendency for mainline Protestant clergy to be more liberal than mainline Protestants themselves.

Fairbanks' really nice insight is that in a state like South Carolina where a large chunk of the population is evangelical, there is likely to be tremendous diversity in those evangelicals political views:

The evangelical community in South Carolina is so big--60 percent!--that it functions more like a microcosm of the Republican pool than as a bloc that behaves differently. Evangelicals in South Carolina aren't a smaller, ridiculed (and therefore bonded) subset keen to assert their power by turning out en masse for a candidate. On the contrary--it's actually trendy in South Carolina to call oneself an evangelical.

The evangelicals within the evangelicals--i.e., hardcore evangelicals, like pastors or those who go to Saturday Bible study and Wednesday prayer circles, Hamlet's "real" evangelicals--went for Huckabee; but a lot of other self-identified evangelicals felt free to pick McCain on the basis of electability and national security.

This is really insightful and probably true. It will be interesting to see how he fairs in other states.

Notably, my new friend, who is a non-denominational evangelical, isn't a fan of Huckabee. He told me he doesn't like how Huckabee has used religion in his campaign.

A new friend

What happens when a Unitarian Universalist and a non-denominational evangelical Protestant befriend one another? Well, I'm finding out. I recently befriended a really nice guy that happens to be an advisor for the local Campus Crusade for Christ group. I went to Starbucks to study one Saturday morning and sat down near a nice-looking guy reading an interesting-looking book. I asked him about it and he asked me about mine (I was reading some book on religion for school). We struck up a conversation and before we knew it, two hours had passed. We talked about religion, school, politics, family, and more. It was easy, comfortable, and exciting for some reason.

Here we were - an agnostic, post-Mormon, liberal UU intellectual and a self-professed non-denominational evangelical working for Campus Crusade for Christ. Yet, despite our differences, which are many, we are alike in many ways. We both like to talk and think about religion and we both value education and family (he attended the University of North Carolina and his kids are just a bit older than mine). We exchanged business cards and went on our way. Recently, we got in touch again and met for lunch. It was a lot of fun and we plan to get together again sometime.

I'll admit - part of my excitement over this is a sort of intellectual fascination and academic exercise. As a UU and sociologist of religion, it can start to get easy to see evangelicals (and political conservatives) in a negative light. Also, coming from a Mormon background and having attended the University of Michigan and now Penn State, I haven't had a lot of interaction with evangelical Protestants. So here is a real live one! I know that must sound funny, but it's true in a way.

But it's more than an intellectual fascination. First of all, as some of you may know, it's hard to make friends once you have a family and a career. So, I welcome the chance. Second, it's wonderfully healthy and enriching to interact with and befriend people that are very different from one's self. It helps one to see that people often have good reasons to believe and act the way they do, even if you fundamentally disagree with them. I'm finding that my new friend and I are very much like another in ways but very different in others. Most importantly, though, we can talk openly and frankly about most anything, and we've only spoken now for a total of four hours or so. It's not very often that you connect with someone like that. Anyway, while deeply religious and evangelical (and openly so), he is very respectful of other viewpoints and cares more about people than about converting them.

Campus Crusade for Christ itself is interesting. I'm learning a bit about it. From their website:

When Bill and Vonette Bright first launched Campus Crusade for Christ as a campus ministry in 1951, the underlying concept was to "win the campus today and change the world tomorrow." More than 50 years later, the mission remains the same.

Today, the campus ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ is a network of vibrant, growing movements on 1,029 campuses in the United States and beyond. Proven and diverse outreach strategies expose millions of students to the gospel each year. Over the past five years, more than 37,900 students made a decision to become a Christian.

You can also read their Statement of Faith here. It's very Bible-based and theologically conservative. You can also read about their goals for the campus ministries here. They see themselves as providing an opportunity for college students to come to Christ and develop a personal relationship with God at a time when they can

find themselves in an environment that is tearing away at their moral and spiritual stability. They can feel trapped by the pressures of academic life and the deep need to be accepted by their peers. All of this can add up to a college career filled with anxiety, superficial relationships and fear of the future.

Jesus offers today's students something different. In the Bible, Jesus says, "I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly." (John 10:10). When students begin a relationship with God, they find purpose and meaning, and they experience life the way that God intended.

Admirable goals, though I don't necessarily agree with the message. I agree that college can be a tough time emotionally and spiritually, and then students should find some sort of spiritual or religious foundation for themselves. But that can come from a variety of sources, and need not even include God. I think what matters is that that foundation help them to get their priorities straight and to reach outside of themselves to make a difference somewhere.

Interestingly, I meant to ask him about the word "crusade" in the name of the organization, but he brought it up before I could. He said he thinks it's a bit unfortunate that it's part of the name, but that back when the organization was founded it didn't seem so weird. Understood in light of the evangelical movements and historical context of the time, it makes sense. He thinks that the name has mostly stuck now because of the recognizability.

Anyway, I'm happy about my budding friendship. Wouldn't the world be a better place if more UUs and evangelicals hung out together?

What's on my mind

I'm back! It's been too long since my last post. Rather than focus on one particularly topic at length, as I usually do, I'm going to share some of the things I've been watching, reading, and thinking about in the last month.

2008 Presidential Campaign

Does anyone else get tired of candidates talking about "change" without backing it up with an intelligent explanation of what that will entail and how it will be accomplished? Anyone get tired of how the media boils down a campaign to who is the "change candidate" and who is the "experience candidate"? Jonathan Schell at The Nation offered a very humorous analysis of the situation, complete with a hilarious count of how many times Romney and Clinton used the word in recent speeches.

Obviously, vague talk of change allows voters to project their own hopes and dreams onto a candidate and his or her promise of change. That's the problem. Coupled with the media's treatment of the campaign as a beauty pageant or primetime TV drama, this results in a troubling dumbing-down of the the whole process. Watching TV coverage of the campaign is endlessly frustrating and useless.

Furthermore, the way that religion is used by candidates and the media is troubling. Republican candidates feel compelled to blur church-state lines and pander to the Religious Right, while Democratic candidates fail to speak out forcefully about the multi-religious nature of our nation and the need for absolute separation of church and state and the importance of judging candidates (and other Americans) not by their faith but by their actions. I came across a fascinating news conference on the Pluralism Project's website. Religion scholar Diana Eck and two others discussed the role of religion in the campaign. Diana Eck was particularly good. It's worth a listen.

Films

Over the holidays I watched a LOT of movies. The best may have been Juno, a film about a teenage girl that gets pregnant. While somewhat conventional and predictable in its plot and outcome, the humor, the acting, the realism, and the celebration of love and parenting make this film a cut above the rest. Ellen Page is particularly wonderful in the titular role. She makes this film work. I was really moved by the film, particularly because I was adopted. Juno has a great payoff at the end that caps a funny, satisfying film.

Mormonism

Mormonism continues to receive considerable attention in the media because of Romney's campaign. Recently, a fascinating article about Romney and Mormonism appeared in The New York Times Magazine. Noah Feldman, the author, contends that Mormonism's "otherness" and strangeness have always been an obstacle for it despite it's reputation beginning in the mid-20th century as a wholesome, American religious way of life. He says that at certain points the church has faced tremendous pressure to change and become more mainstream and that the resulting changes have been beneficial for the church. Feldman speculates that a Romney loss in the election might be a big blow the church and would signal that the church isn't quite there yet in terms of respectability and legitimacy. Feldman ends this way:

If the reality of soft bigotry does not today pose an existential threat to Mormons as explicit oppression once did, it would nevertheless undercut the hard-won public face of Mormonism as a distinctively American religion characterized by worldly accomplishment. For conservatives to reject a Mormon because he is a Mormon would be an especially harsh setback for a faith that has accomplished such extraordinary public success in overcoming a history of painful discrimination.

If Mormonism were to keep Romney from the nomination, the Mormon Church hierarchy may through continuing revelation and guidance respond by shifting its theology and practices even further in the direction of mainstream Christianity and thereby minimizing its outlier status in the culture. Voices within the LDS fold have for some time sought to minimize the authority of some of Joseph Smith’s more creative and surprising theological messages, like the teaching that God and Jesus were once men. You could imagine Mormonism coming to look more like mainline Protestantism with the additional belief not in principle incompatible with Protestant Scripture that some of the lost tribes of Israel ended up in the Americas, where a few had a vision of Christ’s appearance to them. If this hypothetical picture of a future Mormonism seems unimaginable to the contemporary LDS faithful, as it may, today’s Mormon theology would look almost as different to Brigham Young.

Religious development, driven by turns from within and without, is, after all, the mark of a vital faith. Today we do not think of the Catholic pope as the occupant of the pagan Roman office of pontifex maximus, but of course the pontiff is precisely that: the living exemplar of how Christianity met, conquered and was changed by the very empire that presided over the crucifixion. All religions assimilate and change, even as they claim to hew to the old truths.

America changes, too. Today the soft bigotry of cultural discomfort may stand in the way of a candidate whose faith exemplifies values of charity, self-discipline and community that we as Americans claim to hold dear. Surely, though, the day will come when we are ready to put prejudice aside and choose a president without regard to what we think of his religion.

I'm not sure I agree with him on everything, but it sure is interesting.

The other thing under the theme of Mormonism that has impressed me lately is a book written by Jan Shipps, a well-known non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism. Her deeply reflective and personal Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons is a must-read for anyone wanting to get a fair treatment of Mormonism and its history by a non-Mormon. I haven't read the whole book yet, but I have been deeply moved and informed by it. As I grapple with my Mormon past and my current relationship to the church, it was refreshing and even comforting to hear what Shipps has to say about the church.

Anyways, Shipps, though not a sociologist, brings the sociological perspective that Feldman lacks. Shipps tries to understand why being different matters to Mormons and how important Mormon identity is. Feldman only sees the church's political and public face while Shipps is interested in what all this means to Mormons.