Evangelicals: This group has been in the media frequently, and this time it has been McCain courting their vote, as the Republican party has decided to align themselves with conservative Christianity.
At the core of the Evangelical faith is the idea of evangelism; that is, spreading that Good News that many ppl try to avoid hearing shouted at them on sidewalks. However, despite what you may have seen on Jesus Camp, not all Evangelicals are "fundamentalist" in nature. Actually, they are a breakout group of the Protestant reformation, just like the Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and basically every Christian that isn't Catholic or Orthodox.
This is the main clue that many of them, like most liberal-leaning Protestants, are not as ultra-conservative as one might be lead to believe from the media.
So who are the Evangelicals that are being courted? Apparently they are the neo-Evangelicals, a splinter group that has pockets of believers (shockingly) in the South. This group claims to be fundamentalist in nature; that is, they believe in the absolute word-for-word Truth that is in the bible. (Although there is no explanation as to why anyone should do this or if there are really any benefits to doing so. ) There is not even any proof that many of them
know the Bible word-for-word beyond the certain passages they keep harping on, but that's a different post.
The fact is, this group has gained prominence politically due to GW Bush and the extreme nature of their worship (the tongues, the jumping, the tears, the writhing in the pain of sin). But according to Wikipedia, there really aren't that many of them, and most of them aren't dead set on the Republican agenda:
However, the Christian Right is not made completely (or even a majority) of Evangelical Christians. According to an article in the November 11, 2004 issue of The Economist, entitled "The Triumph of the Religious Right", "The implication of these findings is that Mr. Bush's moral majority is not, as is often thought, composed of a bunch of right-wing evangelical Christians. Rather, it consists of traditionalist and observant church-goers of every kind: Catholic and mainline Protestant, as well as evangelicals, Mormons, and Sign Followers. Meanwhile, modernist evangelicals tend to be Democratic." Although evangelicals are currently seen as being on the Christian Right in the United States, there are those in the center as well. In other countries there is no particular political stance associated with evangelicals. Many evangelicals have little practical interest in politics.
Not only that, but they seem to actually care about the traditional Christian values as well:
According to recent reports in the New York Times, some evangelicals have sought to expand their movement's social agenda to include poverty, combating AIDS in the Third World, and protecting the environment.
Clearly as Bush leaves office, the Evangelical support is also leaving the Republican party, as observed by Dr. James Dobson's nonsupport of John McCain:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53743,Despite the atrocities that Focus on the Family has invoked on the American family, this sect now lies without a Bush-like candidate to mandate to its listeners, as their hope for a Mike Huckabee presidential bid is all but gone.
The NAE, National Association of Evangelicals, says that it doesn't even endorse candidates. (Which is the contrary of that great Jesus Camp scene worshiping the cardboard GW.) However, Lester Feder of the Huffington post is quick to point out that the President of NAE, Rich Cizik, also distances himself from McCain, noting that apparently the dislike between these groups is in fact mutual:
Cizik's favorable disposition to Huckabee's campaign is expected. Huckabee is widely regarded as the evangelicals' greatest hope in 2008. But his view of John McCain may come as something of a surprise. McCain is regarded as having dealt his 2000 campaign a deathblow a week after George W. Bush defeated him in a dirty South Carolina primary when he blasted Bush supporters on the Religious Right in a Virginia Beach speech. He condemned Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance" in the political campaign, and expressed disdain for their opposition to his signature issue, campaign finance reform. "I don't pander to them, because I don't ascribe to their failed philosophy that money is our message. I believe in the cause of conservative reform." Though not all evangelicals agree with Falwell and Robertson, McCain's attack on the movement's high profile leaders is believed to have ended any remaining hope that he could win over the key GOP constituency.
In conclusion, after reading this the answer may indicate that the Evangelicals are in fact not really to be cared about. But I caution against this thinking. One immediate lesson to be learned is that a politician's personal faith can (and as we have seen repeatedly throughout politics, DOES) influence how they act in office. While the Evangelical influence may be at bay for now, this has also shown that this is a real marriage between Church and State. All presidential candidates, and certainly most candidates at State or local levels, are tying themselves with or pandering to Christianity in some form.
So the real question might be, who
are the important Christian groups in this election cycle, and what are their issues?
