Tom DeLay has gone down.
Ralph Reed is a has-been.
Is this the beginning of the end for the Christian Right? For fifteen years or more they've dominated the Republican party and the conservative movement. Other conservative groups - business interests, nationalists - dared speak no evil of their "base." The Christian Right turned churches into massive Republican fundraising centers and volunteer banks, convincing millions of American Christians that the Republican party was doing the work of Jesus. They prospered, even as their leaders predictably fattened their pockets.
It's a great racket. The Christian Right leadership whips their base into a frenzy over abortion, gay marriage, liberal media bias, etc., and collects money and time from the faithful. These leaders then parlay that money and time into a position of power within the Republican party, which they eventually use to get personally wealthy, usually by paying themselves or getting payed to be lobbyists. The Republicans proceed to do precisely nothing about the issues that are making the "base" so mad, then blame the Democrats for blocking Republican "efforts." The base then gets even madder and contributes even more time and money. Repeat cycle.
But no cycle based on Big Lies can ever sustain itself. Sooner or later, Christian churchgoers will have to realize that Republicans aren't winning any battles for them. and eventually, some Christians are going to stand up and say that maybe the Republican agenda isn't so Christian after all.
That's why Democrats need to follow the advice of this excellent article, and "take back the faith." Nothing could be more spot-on than this:
A majority of Americans have had some kind of religious upbringing, and 90 percent of them say that they believe in God. The Democratic Party and progressive politicians and activists need not adopt their faith, but they had better take that belief into account if they hope to regain national power in the years to come.Remember that, once upon a time, evangelical Christianity was a liberal stalwart. It was William Jennings Bryan, an anti-corporate populist and Democratic presidential candidate, who raged against evolution as the prosecutor in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Christianity was a force behind prison reform, civil rights, and a host of other old-school liberal movements.
So when I see liberals like Bill Maher engaging in Christian-baiting (another example here), it makes me grind my teeth. What a fool. Liberals need to be harnessing the Christian power, not shouting that everyone should just be a nice rational atheist. First of all, even if some liberals don't believe in Christianity, those liberals should be broad-minded and respectful enough to let people believe what they want to believe (as long as it doesn't promote violence).
More importantly, there's a host of issues on which liberalism and Christianity - yes, that includes the evangelical kind - dovetail nicely. Feminists want to fight porn and stop human trafficking - so do Christians. Environmentalists want to protect the earth - increasingly, so do Christians. Liberals want to fight poverty, and so does Christianity. Liberals want to end war, and so do a lot of Christians out there.
So for God's sake (and our own), let's take this opportunity. The icons of the Christian Right have fallen, but if we just sit by and watch, new icons will spring up to take their place like hydra heads. What we liberals have to do is sever the link between Christianity and conservatism. We can do this by finding common ground and launching joint movements in cooperation with Christian organizations. But even more importantly, we've got to tell religion-baiters like Bill Maher to shut up for the good of the party - and if they won't, we've got to disavow them.
Democrats need to build a big tent to start winning. And they need some Christians - the ones who believe in protecting the Earth, respecting women, reducing poverty, and/or avoiding war - under that tent. Plain and simple.
READING GUIDE
1. This article says that even as the world's democracies draw closer together, the world's dictatorships are drawing together too. I suspect this may be true, just because of the overwhelming (but fleeting) power of the U.S. But we can't let this happen! From the age of imperialism to WW2 to the Cold War, we Americans have always thrived by taking the high road while the bad guys duke it out in the pits. Please, let's not try to just take on the whole authoritarian world by ourselves!
2. Sadly, nativist xenophobes (most of whom reside in the Republican party) have succeeded in getting people more worried about illegal immigration than ever before. That's bad news. The last thing we need is to have a shrinking, lethargic, unmotivated, complacent population like Japan.
3. The U.S. nuke Iran? Sounds like empty saber-rattling to me. Not even Bush would be stupid enough to do something like that...would he? He's just using it to frighten the Iranians into negotiating, right?...right?
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