Hook, Line, and Sink 'Em 02 March 2005
Next Wednesday, on March 9th, the National Association of Evangelicals will hold their annual convention in Washington, D.C., during which they will officially release their long-discussed guidelines for evangelical political engagement, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." The guidelines prompted a lot of excitement last June, when reporters and liberal pundits misread a draft version of the document as signalling a more progressive evangelical politics, more focussed on poverty than culture war. In October, a revised version of the guidelines stripped away or dulled much of the language or provisions that could have been seen as progressive. Now, on the eve of their debut (released simultaneously with a collection of essays, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy), Rob Garver of The American Prospect suggests that the real story of the guidelines' release is not its policy content so much as the announced arrival of a mighty political power.
Garver's not fear-mongering though: He'd like liberals to see the guidelines as an opportunity. He describes the NAE as middle-of-the-road and the guidelines as well-vetted and compatible with liberal positions on war and the environment, and he preemptively chastises the left for reacting to these "politically active evangelicals" with hostility or mistrust. That would be a mistake, he writes, because as large a political force as evangelicals are now, only half of them are voting; Democrats would do well to try wooing as many of them away from the Republicans as possible. So while Garver acknowledges that the NAE's opposition to abortion, stem-cell research and gay marriage is unmistakable, he sees signs of evangelicals dissatisfied with the current Republican ownership of "morality." But for Garver, that dissatisfaction is neither spiritual nor theological; he understands it as political, and thus concludes that the evangelical vote is a kind of prize for progressives to win by way of other issues.
We talked about just this last June, when the draft was first floated, and it appeared that few commentators had taken the time to read it. Then, as now, the suggestion of evangelicals turning to Democrats seemed like a siren song, tempting liberals to compromise on the culture-war issues for the sake of the larger cause. Now, as then, we suggest reading the fine print: the NAE guideline's positions on abortion and gay marriage aren't just clear, they're uncompromisable, so -- according to the guidelines -- any biblical appeals for peace won't register unless the candidate, or party, making them has already dispensed with those pesky liberal positions on reproductive freedom and equal rights.
http://www.therevealer.org/archives/timely_001721.php
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling