Or, as we say over here, the curate's egg. The curate in question being Jim Evans:
According to a story in Newsweek magazine, it appears that at least some evangelicals are moving away from the political and theological right wing. Younger evangelicals seem to be shying away from the rigid ideological orthodoxy of past culture wars and are embracing a broader range of social issues.
The Newsweek story focuses on Richard Cizik, former vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). During an interview with National Public Radio in December 2008, Cizik admitted he had voted for Barack Obama in the Virginia primary. He also indicated he had changed his mind about gay marriage and was in favor of civil unions. That's the comment that cost him his job.
[Civil unions are not "gay marriage".]
He was soon summoned to a meeting with his boss, NAE president Leith Anderson. After the meeting, Anderson announced Cizik's resignation. "Our individuals and organizations felt there was a loss of credibility for him," Anderson said at the time.
But that's not the end of the story. A year later, Cizik is back and is heading up his own Christian group. Calling themselves the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, Cizik is trying to craft a softer tone for evangelicals.
According to Newsweek, Cizik believes that the evangelical right "needs to reframe its politics, to walk away from divisive name-calling and find common ground with opponents, even on hot-button issues like gay marriage and abortion."
[Fair enough if that means the Pregnant Women Support Act and such like, and civil partnerships not restricted to unrelated same-sex couples.]
According to Cizik, he is more pro-life than Jim Wallis, founder of the Sojourner's community in Washington, D.C. In Cizik's words, "I am what we should be – that is, post-ideological. We are to be about healing, not division. We are not to be subservient to ideology, but above it."
[If it's common ground that they want, then that should be in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan in America and William Wilberforce over here; in the pro-life and pro-family causes of social justice and of peace.]
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Exactly. I could not agree more. Evangelical Protestants were a major component of the original Populist Movement. There is no reason why they can't also be a major part of a new populist movement.
ReplyDeleteOn the topic of social issues, I agree, evangelicals and other religious social conservatives should not be forced to abandon their social conservatism to be part of a new Left coalition. This is really the one major area where I disagree with the usually excellent Thomas Frank.
Frank argues that social conservatism is basically doomed to lose the culture war. I disagree. As I see it, the failures of social conservatism in the political arena are largely the result of two factors:
First, the Republican Party cynically co-opted social conservatism in order to be able to develop a broader electoral base, but with the Country Club set still in effective control.
Secondly, the Democrats abandoned the social conservatives in their own party by purposely adopting a strategy to make college educated, white-collar workers and professionals the cornerstone of their party, along with certain ethnic and racial minority groups who were kept on board by the cynical use of "identity politics." The result was a new socially liberal/economically neoliberal party reflecting the political tastes of the professional class.
A new Left Populism that is similar to the Old Left Populism of Bryan would be a potent force indeed, so long as it avoids swearing total fealty to one party or the other.