Back Down the Sawdust Trail

Just as the longed-for influence of evangelical Christian voters is being acknowledged in nearly every quarter, and strategists from both the West Wing and the Left wing are asking how to deal with this powerful group of believers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have stepped back on stage and provided the caricatures our adversaries need to force the faith groups back outside, back to our tent meetings.



The old leaders of the religious right are celebrating the role of evangelicals in the recent election, as they should. But they are also seeking to have a major voice in the discussion to come, something they should avoid.



This week, Falwell announced that he was launching the Faith and Values Coalition. "The group's central premise is to utilize the momentum of the November 2 elections to maintain an evangelical revolution of voters who will continue to go to the polls to 'vote Christian,” Falwell said. “Essentially, the Coalition is a 21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority.”



For years, Robertson and Falwell have been the two most-reviled conservative Christian figures in America. Much of the bile is unfair; unfortunately, part is deserved. The last time we heard from Robertson was just a few weeks ago, when he was playing for ink by dissing the President on Iraq (remember: he told the president that Iraq would be messy). The last time we heard from Falwell he was characterizing the attacks of 9/11 as the judgment of God on America for its tolerance of homosexuality and other social sins.



This is no time for their re-emergence. It will divide the cultural conservatives that came together powerfully in this election, and make the new coalition vulnerable to the wiles of liberals who will soon be schmoozing its fringes and singing Amazing Grace at every gathering. Yesterday in The Washington Post, Sojourners head Jim Wallis, an evangelical liberal, said: “There is a vast religious middle, including progressive evangelicals, resurgent mainline Protestants and socially conservative African Americans, that could be attracted by biblically based prophetic appeals to make peace, fight poverty and spread social justice.”

It is wrong to conclude that America has found Jesus. And even more wrong to conclude that when voters cited moral values they were signing membership cards to the new Moral Majority. The values voters were a blend of white evangelicals, conservative Catholics, family-oriented blacks and Hispanics, and other deists who connected with the morality and goodness of the President. Many will run the other way when Jerry comes calling.



We Are The Mainstream

The values voters are now centrist, Atlanta writer Shaunti Feldhahn argued in the Journal-Constitution:



“Many media leaders were shocked that moral values topped the list of "most important issues" in the election, that being a regular churchgoer was the best predictor of presidential choice, and that the religious right came out in such numbers.



That surprise demonstrates just how out of touch the elite media and the liberal establishment are. For values voters are not the "religious right." We are the mainstream.

Our values are absolutely in keeping with the mores that founded this country and run deep through our culture to this day --- including among minorities who voted for Sen. John Kerry in spite of his social stands, not because of them



As strange as this sounds after years of media messages to the contrary, this election demonstrated that those holding traditional moral beliefs are centrist. Those who say otherwise prove that they are actually the ones out of the mainstream, way off on the left bank somewhere.



This makes the recent calls for President Bush to stop pandering to his right-wing base and govern from the center all the more nonsensical. On moral issues at least, he has been governing from the center --- the center of America, just not the center of a party divide that has increasingly skewed left. That the Democrats felt comfortable putting the race in the hands of their most liberal senator --- who opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion, for goodness' sake! --- shows how far left the party has drifted.”



Right and Wrong

James Dobson may have captured one aspect of these voters: “A values voter,” he said, “is someone with "a Christian worldview who begins with the assumption that God is -- that he not only exists, but he is the definer of right and wrong, and there are some things that are moral and some things that are immoral, some things that are evil and some things that are good. Although liberals may mock Bush for his good-vs.-evil approach to the world, it is seen by many of us not as a negative but as a positive.”



A Good Man

"The first thing that drew me to Bush was his morals and his character," said Nancy Wallace, 44, a homemaker in suburban Columbus. "There was never really a choice for us," Mrs. Wallace said. “And I'm speaking not only for me but for my husband and neighbors. He's just an honest, hard-working, good man who had a tragedy to deal with and I think he did a great job.”



Character Can Trump Self-Interest

The new values coalition is full of people who see character as more important than self-interest. The Marin (CA) Independent Journal reported: "When Sausalito resident Marty Krasney was in Ohio this month working on the Kerry campaign, he met a woman with a life-threatening disease who lacked health care insurance and could have benefited from stem cell research. Krasney was surprised when the woman told him she planned to vote for George W. Bush, not John Kerry. 'I can't vote for a baby killer,'” she told him. It is this combination of conviction and character that has Democrats across the country scratching their heads and pondering just what they need to do to restore the party's majority status.



Evangelicals Have Many Concerns

Even if the new values coalition was comprised completely of evangelicals, there is not unanimity on many issues and (as I argued on Nov. 5 in this space) the bloc is not concerned only about the issues of the old Moral Majority.



I have helped Jerry Falwell in a number of public relations challenges over the years and I have a high opinion of him as a person. He’s a much better man than the nation knows. He’s a good and compassionate person, and a loving father and grandfather. He’s fought the good fight. But his day is past. He can no longer be effective in helping the movement go forward because he is a polarizing figure and he divides the new values coalition. Jerry, please pass the torch.



If the old guard of the religious right demands the spotlight, the MSM will be more than glad to grant it to them, and the new Christian values coalition will head back down the old sawdust trail.

--James Jewell