> http://slate.msn.com/id/2089641/#John
> How Prayers Poll
> Debunking myths about the religious right.
> By Steven Waldman
> October 10, 2003
>
> I heard about this guy who called himself "evangelical," said he lived
> a "Bible-centered life," had a personal relationship with Jesus
> Christ and voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush.
>
> A confused, lonely, iconoclast? Actually, in 2000, at least 10 million
> white "evangelical Christians" voted for Gore.
>
> Many people, especially secular liberals, misunderstand the nature of
> religion in politics which is, to be fair, ever shifting. To them, if
> it's not about Jerry Falwell or Joe Lieberman, it's kind of a blur.
> So, just in time for another religion-packed election, here is a guide
> to sorting through some common myths about God and American politics:
>
> Myth 1: Evangelicals all vote Republican. People often confuse the
> words "fundamentalist" and "evangelical." Fundamentalists are very
> conservative and almost entirely Republican because they view the
> deterioration of traditional morality as the primary public policy
> crisis. But fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals, which is a
> more diverse group.
> <snip>
Yes. This is well-known to everyone except bi-coastal political reporters. Take Lutheranism. The largest Lutheran church in the US is the EVANGELICAL Lutheran Church in America (ELCA; http://www.elca.org/index.html ). That's the "liberal" Lutherans. Yup, they have the word "evangelical" right there in their official name. There are two smaller conservative Lutheran churches, the Missouri Synod (officially the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, LCMS) and the Wisconsin Synod (officially the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, WELS). Most people who attend an ELCA-affiliated church would doubtless describe themselves as "evangelical" Christians, but they are not by any means lock-step repug voters, and the ministers are often well to the left of their congregants, both culturally and politically. Many members of the United Methodists, another "liberal" denomination strong across the midwest, would also call themselves "evangelical."
Lutheranism is found in the US mainly in areas of heavy German and Scandinavian settlement, i.e., the upper Midwest and some areas of the mid-Atlantic, notably Pennsylvania. Indeed, in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Lutheranism is the dominant Protestant denomination. These are relatively progressive states, which is all the more striking since neither has large African-American or immigrant populations. Both were carried by Gore in 2000.
The question of religion in US politics is interwoven with matters of region and ethnicity that are often difficult to "tease out," as the expression goes. Midwestern Lutherans of the ELCA stripe are just as "evangelical" as Southern Baptists, but have a very different political profile. I suspect, though, that the sharpest dividing lines run within denominations rather than between them, and often boil down to differing attitudes about gender and sexuality, and people's relative anxiety levels about rapid social change in these areas of life. That's what the abortion issue, for example, is _really_ about for most folks, leaving aside a handful of consistent pacifists.
Jacob Conrad