March 12, 2008
Column #1,385
Advance for March 15, 2008
The Religious Right Is Not Dying But Changing
By Mike McManus
Last Wednesday leaders of the Religious Left and the Religious Right
debated its future at the National Press Club.
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, and co-author
(with Bishop Harry Jackson) of a new book "Personal Faith Public
Policy," argued: "I keep hearing that the Religious Right's influence is
waning, that evangelicals are cracking up. These headlines get recycled
every 6-8 years. He cited a 1981 New York Times quote by Jimmy Carter
that the Religious Right is a "distortion" of Christianity and won't
prevail.
Ronald Reagan, the Moral Majority's preferred candidate, had just been
elected President by a landslide. Similar articles in the 1990s failed
to anticipate Republicans gaining control of Congress. A recent
Washington Post column argued the McCain victory shows the Religious
Right has lost its punch.
Perkins disagreed: "The fact we have a McCain Republican nominee shows
conservatives won. We don't have a Giuliani candidacy, who we were told
would be the nominee. Pro-life, pro-marriage conservatives said if he
got the nomination, it would give rise to a third party. Rudy dropped
like a rock. When Rudy dropped out, five conservatives vied for the
nomination and McCain captured it."
Interestingly, their new book asserts that conservative evangelicals
have a common ground on many issues with such liberals as Jim Wallis,
head of Sojourners, who participated in the debate. Both sides oppose
abortion, favor racial reconciliation, religious liberties, rebuilding
the family - and surprisingly, the need to address immigration, poverty
and justice, the environment and global warming.
Bishop Jackson, who pastors Hope Christian Church and leads the High
Impact Leadership Coalition, a national coalition of black pastors, told
the Press Club that he and his Coalition met with Dr. James Dobson in
December, 2004. He told Dobson that a unique coalition had re-elected
Bush that included "many African American leaders who rallied their
church and their votes that Bush would never have gotten," due to his
support for the Marriage Amendment.
Then Jackson said while the election had been "fought on righteousness
issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, the black-led church has
been preoccupied with justice issues, such as poverty. I said
righteousness and justice for the weak and the poor are of urgent
importance to the African-American community."
Dobson surprised him by replying, "I agree with that. Let's go tape a
program."
Jim Wallis, who also wrote a new book, "The Great Awakening: Reviving
Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America," with a Foreword by
Jimmy Carter, seemed a bit surprised by what these new Religious Right
leaders were saying: "I am not one who says the Religious Right is
dead," he proclaimed. "The monologue is over, and a new dialogue has
begun. I am pro-life but I ask how does a committed life ethic address
the fact that 30,000 died today of poverty and disease? I want to find
common ground, and indeed move to a higher ground. A new evangelical
agenda is emerging. I profoundly agree that it must include people of
color and white evangelicals.
"Martin Luther King said the church should not be the master or the
servant of the state, but the conscience of the state. He never did
endorse a candidate, but he asked candidates to endorse the agenda of
his movement."
I praised Perkins and Jackson for their book's stand on the need to
reform no-fault divorce when no moral faults are claimed, such as
adultery or abuse. Their book argues, as I have: "Today 80 percent of
divorces are no-fault or unilateral, divorces. Since 1970, there's been
one divorce for every two marriages - 42 million divorces shattering the
lives of 40 million children.
"Unless a major fault is proven, couples with children should not be
allowed to divorce, unless both parents agree. If mutual-consent divorce
were to replace no-fault divorce, experts estimate that divorce rates
would fall 30 percent, saving 300,000 marriages from divorce annually,"
they write.
They also proposed replacing "sole custody with a presumption of joint
custody or shared parenting in which each parent has access to the
children at least one-third of the time each week," writing that would
push down divorce another 20%. "These two reforms have the potential to
slash divorce rates in half, saving 500,000 kids from seeing their
parents divorce."
I queried "Would you ask all the Presidential candidates where they
stand on slashing divorce rates in half?" Both said yes, as did Wallis
but Perkins said the issue is a state matter.
This is a new Religious Right taking on issues the left can agree with.
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