Origins of the God Gap

Amy Sullivan returns to her thesis in TIME magazine, "The Origins of the God Gap." Here's the conclusion of that piece, which recalls the conclusion of dozens of other articles and blog posts from Sullivan:

Today, Democrats find themselves in an unusual situation, with a surfeit of faith-friendly front runners. If they want to court and keep new religious voters, however, this time the conversion will have to be party-wide.

This in a nutshell is Sullivan's advice to Democrats: Winning elections means appealing to "religious voters," and that requires "faith-friendliness" -- whatever that means.

I don't exactly disagree with this advice -- electoral success usually requires not demonstrating disrespect for any large bloc of voters. But I can't exactly agree with it either because I don't think this so-called "God gap" is what Sullivan makes it out to be.

The gap she describes, first of all, is only a phenomenon in predominantly white churches. In predominantly black churches the voting gap is much, much wider, and it goes in the opposite direction. This is true even for most black churches that would fit a theological definition of "evangelical." (As opposed to a cultural definition of evangelical. It could be argued that even something like the theologically evangelical Church of God in Christ wouldn't fit such a cultural definition because, well, it's not white.)

Sullivan would counter, I'm guessing, that this voting gap in the black churches is not specifically a matter of the particular religious perspective of those churches, or in any way particular to questions of religious faith at all. It is, rather, simply a reflection of the very wide and enduring partisan gap for all black voters.

But to make that case, Sullivan would have to explain why this sauce for the goose is not also sauce for the gander. She would need to demonstrate that the alleged "God gap" in white churches is the result of the parties' respective "faith friendliness" and not merely a reflection of a broader cultural gap among white voters arising from the Southern Strategy begun by Richard Nixon and continued by Karl Rove.

That strategy is not focused exclusively at southern evangelicals, but southern evangelical culture is certainly part of what the Southern Strategy is geared toward. And with regard to southern evangelicals, the strategy has been an overwhelming success. From the televangelist empires of Falwell and Robertson to the southern/evangelical factions of the Baptist and Presbyterian denominations, the post-civil rights transfer of party allegiance is now complete. "We have lost the South for a generation," President Johnson said after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was not wrong.

The southern-ness of much of American evangelicalism is clearly a factor in Sullivan's "God gap." This is a geographical reality and also a theological one. Evangelicalism's otherworldly focus is a theological adaptation that arose to accommodate the awkwardly indefensible situation of white Christians "owning" Christian slaves (see "In the sweet by and by"). The largest single bloc of American evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention, was created in 1845 in defense of the principle that missionaries be allowed to own slaves. The history of many other evangelical institutions is rooted in a more recent expression of that same racism -- as in the explosive growth of private Christian schools following Brown v. Board of Education.*

The partisan identity of these southern evangelical voters, in other words, has little to do with "faith friendliness" or with faith at all. If the Democratic Party adopted an anti-gay, anti-abortion platform and selected T.D. Jakes as its "faith-friendly" nominee, it still would not be able to overcome the partisan gap among certain southern strands of white evangelicalism.

If Sullivan wants to advise Democrats on how to reach out to that particular voting bloc, she'd be better off focusing on economics than on "faith-friendliness." The divide-and-conquer southern strategy has worked long and hard to convince working-class white voters that they are in a zero-sum competition with non-white working-class voters (aided, unfortunately, by the predisposition of its target audience). Convincing them otherwise will likely involve even longer and harder work, but it is necessary work.

My agenda is somewhat different than Sullivan's, so I tend to look at this less in terms of the strategic challenge it presents to Democratic candidates and more as a theological challenge for the church in America. Racism is a sin. That sin is woven into the fabric of American Christianity in general and American evangelicalism in particular. Canny politicians have been able to exploit that sin, but it is not primarily a political problem, and the responsibility for fixing it does not fall to any secular political party.**

Sullivan's God gap holds true, of course, even within the large streams of American evangelicalism that stand apart from its southern roots. The midwestern strands of evangelicalism represented by Christianity Today or Wheaton College are just as pervasively partisan as the SBC and the other southern varieties of evangelicalism. Here I think the question of party loyalty comes down to one, and only one, thing: abortion. That will have to be the topic for another post.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Homosexuality and abortion are sometimes referred to as the "social conservative" agenda, but that term -- "social conservative" -- often also carries meanings that have nothing to do with genital politics, but rather with a desire to undo the civil rights movement. The conservative code-word "activist judges" refers not just to Roe v. Wade, but also to Brown. The Roberts Court has already begun delivering on both parts of this social conservative agenda.

** What is required, I think, is illustrated by Tony Campolo's retelling of Clarence Jordan's story about meeting a hillbilly preacher in the 1950s who oversaw a thriving, integrated congregation. Jordan asked the man how his church had grown so large and diverse:

The pastor smiled sheepishly and said, "Well, this church was down to a handful when the last preacher died. It was such a small congregation, they couldn't get a new preacher nohow. They went on for a couple of months without anybody to give any sermons, so one Sunday I said to the head of the deacons that if they couldn't get a preacher, I'd be willing to preach. So he let me! When I got in the pulpit, I just opened the Bible and put my finger down. It landed on that verse where Paul tells us that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. And so I preached about how Jesus makes us one and how once we're in Christ, there should be no racial divisions between us. When the service was over, the deacons took me in the back room and they told me that they didn't want to hear that kind of preaching no more."

Clarence asked, "What did you do then?"

The old preacher answered, "I fired them deacons!"

"How come they didn't fire you?" asked Clarence.

"Well, they never hired me," the old preacher responded. ... "Once I found out what bothered them people, I preached the same message every Sunday. It didn't take much time before I had that church preached down to four!"

Comments

[Bugmaster]

I could be wrong, but the way I read Amy Sullivan's article, it seems like she's equating "religion-friendly" with "anti-abortion, anti-gay". Sadly, I fear that, in modern American politics, she might be right.

In a more general view, it still remains to be seen whether non-religious (not to mention, openly atheistic, or even openly non-Christian) candidates are electable at all in America. My guess would be, "no". After all, even Mormon candidates are treated as suspect in the current election.

[Tonio]

Fred, do you have evidence that "social conservative" equates to opposition to Brown and civil rights? If this was 1968, the year of the Nixon/Thurmond "Southern strategy," I wouldn't hesitate to agree with you. I would like to believe that Pat Robertson and Donald Wildmon are promoting racism as well as sexism and anti-Semitism and theocracy, but I haven't noticed any overt appeals to anti-black prejudice in their rhetoric. Can you provide examples?

[hapax]

Tonio, I live surrounded by Southern evangelical social conservatives, and I can tell you that racism is the cornerstone of their worldview. Alas, there aren't any blacks left to hate in this benighted corner of Dixie (we done run them all out eighty years ago), so we have to content ourselves with anti-BROWN prejudice instead.

Not that we have anything against Jose mowing our lawns or Maria scrubbing our bathrooms, mind you. It's just, well, they talk funny, and park on the lawn, and they're lazy, and they have attitude, and their food smells bad, and what part of ILLEGAL don't you understand?

[Ursula L]

The more I see of it, the more that I think that the white-southern-evangelical-social-conservative mindset goes beyond what one ordinarily thinks of as racism (or sexism, or any of a countless number of other prejudices). The proper description of this mindset is xenophobia. Anything that isn't the mirror image of their (always male) preacher terrifies them. They're even scared of themselves, to the extent that they deviate from their white-male-fundie ideal.

[peatey]

good point hapax, sounds like Emerson and Smith needs to add to their work, 'Divided by Faith.'

[Scott]

Fred, do you have evidence that "social conservative" equates to opposition to Brown and civil rights?

That's the beauty of the "code words" argument; Fred gets to pose the moral judge of those racist 'others' w/o having to actually prove anything. Racism merely means standing in opposition to Fred's Compassion(tm). As his opponents are by definition evil, he is by definition good, and we must now validate Fred's wonderfulness by filling his comments section w/ praise of his superior morality.

[Simon St.Laurent]

Your point about the south is well-taken, Fred, but what about your home state of PA?

Religion's played pretty thoroughly through state politics, and I don't think you can lay that to Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy (or his Quakerism).

Bob Casey - pro-life Democrat, and revered by many in PA - seems to speak all too well to Sullivan's thesis. So do the pockets of often religious and conservative Democrats all over rural Pennsylvania.

Maybe Pennsylvania's less exciting now that Democrats are winning it more regularly, but looking there and around here at upstate NY, I'd say there's something to Sullivan's point. Worse, I hear people around here saying pretty much exactly what Sullivan suggests is the problem in similar ways.

While it seems to be cheap entertainment for liberal Christians to blast Sullivan for repeating Republican talking points, I wish we'd at least contemplate figuring out how to talk to the people - many of them even nominally Democrats - for whom her thesis holds true.

[Mabus]

I'm a little appalled to be agreeing with the resident troll, but for once I feel as if he has a point. I don't see any reasoned argument about these "code words" in most places (in a few, perhaps). They're simply assumed. "Everyone knows."

Ursula's suggestion is most baffling of all. I'm a sci-fi/fantasy fanatic. I'm drawn to, not frightened by, the weird. The more bizarre a feat of science (or magic) is, the better I like it. I believe in the personhood of all manner of aliens, sapient AIs--even vampires (should any of the above turn out to exist). That doesn't sound like xenophobia to me, although I suppose someone could argue that perhaps I'm using fictional beings as an excuse for treating real ones badly (though that claim should require a little evidence).

Yet somehow, because I include fetuses in that list of persons who deserve fair treatment, and because the idea of giving someone "extra points" or whatever because they're black doesn't sound like racial equality to me, I'm presumed to be eeevil.

Look, I don't even try to pretend I agree with people on this site most of the time, which is why I mostly only post on LB Watch threads anymore. I do try to be courteous and assume that most of you disagree with me from sincere and virtuous motives, rather than because you're nasty bad people. It works out best when the favor is returned.

[Tonio]

My original understanding of "code words" was that they invoke certain stereotypes and myths without mentioning them directly. The Southern Strategy lexicon included "welfare queen" and "decent, hard-working, and law-abiding." More recently, the religious right has used terms like Laura Ingraham's "anti-Christian entertainment elite," which invokes anti-Semitic myths.

Like Fred, I'm not quite sure about the intended meaning of "faith-friendliness." I'm tempted to suspect the worst meaning - wanting government to favor Christianity at the expense of other faiths. I base that on the rhetorics of the Tom DeLays and Sam Brownbacks who equate government neutrality among competing faiths with government hostility to all faith.

I had always understood the term "social conservative" to refer to opposition to homosexuality, abortion, and pornography. That was the point of my original post. Sort of a synonym for "family-friendly," except that some demagogues use the latter term in ways that suggest a Vast Left-Wing Gay Conspiracy to destroy families.

[he_he]

Scott - don't worry, no compassion from me - my sympathy for people who can't find racism in anything is probably less than the likelihood that you self-righteously believe that you cannot possibly be racist.

Mabus - when I was born in the state of Virginia, the race on my birth certificate determined who I could legally marry, depending on the race on my spouse's birth certificate. (My German wife was shocked to see 'race' on my birth certificate, by the way.) Do read the Wikipedia link about Massive Resistance, 2 years after the Supreme Court decided separate but equal in education was no longer the law of the land - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

Also note that both Falwell and Robertson are Virginians - and in the case of Robertson's family, part of Virginia's power structure from that era. From http://www.answers.com/topic/absalom-willis-robertson (linking in the article is worth following) -

'In 1956, Robertson was one of the 19 senators who signed The Southern Manifesto, condemning the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and the resulting public desegregation. When President Lyndon Johnson sent the First Lady on a train trip through the South to encourage support for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Sen. Robertson was one of four Southern Senators who refused to meet with her on the whistle stop trip. In retaliation, President Johnson arranged to unseat him. He was defeated for renomination in 1966 and resigned on 30 December 1966. He was one of the architects of the Southern Strategy, utilized by presidential candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 and a mainstay of Republican election strategy to this day.

Willis' best known son is televangelist Pat Robertson.'

After you have read (take your time, a lot of this just seems to get glossed over when discussing recent American history for some reason - Germans aren't allowed such a casual reading of their recent history, for example), do get back to me about how 'unfair' it is to give people 'points' because of their race - it only seems unfair when you seem to be the 'disadvantaged' - turn it around, and it is the merely the way things were - and were supposed to be, of course. Especially according to such fine quotes from the Southern Manifesto as "The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law." That's right - separate but equal was established law, and only naked power was going to force those upstanding American citizens to have any nigras sit in a classroom with their children.

To the gentle readers - at least in a state like Virginia, it requires a certain skill to deny racism exists - and generally, the racists are the best ones at playing that game. Carefully note the quote above again - 'naked power' was forcing blacks and whites to actually go to school together, while 'established law' was separate but equal. See any code words? I don't either - they didn't need any at that time, as they were the ones in charge, fighting as hard as possible against desegregation.

For a real jolt, read the reasoning of the Virginia judge while defending the legal basis to prevent white and black citizens from marrying - "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/loving.html

After reading such basic facts, just repeat after Scott - 'That's the beauty of the "code words" argument; Fred gets to pose the moral judge of those racist 'others' w/o having to actually prove anything. Racism merely means standing in opposition to Fred's Compassion(tm).' I don't bother with code words when noting the background of such figures as Falwell and Robertson - both come out of a racist culture which used religion to justify the evil it practiced while decrying any attempt to overturn its authority as being discrimination against God's natural order.

And Scott, I bet you still listen to Virginia's 'retired' state song, seeing as how there aren't code words in it - 'There's where the old darke'ys heart am long'd to go,/There's where I labored so hard for old massa.' Ah, the good old days, when 'massa' was the natural role of a white man, and where an old darky knew his place - in the field, laboring, naturally. Oh, the song was adopted in 1940 - none of my examples stretch back to before the Civil War, they exist concretely in the lifespan of many of us. And yes, the song was written by an African American - in 1880 - it was adopted 60 years later - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carry_Me_Back_to_Old_Virginny And it wasn't 'retired' officially until 1997. That's right, in 1996, imagine a classroom of 1st graders singing
'Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered,
There's where this old darke'ys life will pass away.
Massa and missis have long gone before me,
Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore,
There we'll be happy and free from all sorrow,
There's where we'll meet and we'll never part no more.

Not this likely happened - in practice, the lyrics were just too embarassing. See, it doesn't have any code words.

[the opoponax]

I'm a sci-fi/fantasy fanatic. I'm drawn to, not frightened by, the weird. The more bizarre a feat of science (or magic) is, the better I like it. I believe in the personhood of all manner of aliens, sapient AIs--even vampires (should any of the above turn out to exist). That doesn't sound like xenophobia to me,

Yeah, it's real easy to be all about the diversity, as long as those weirdos stay in black and white on the pages of a book. And especially in the case of SF, as long as they're hypothetical/mythical. It's a completely different thing to actually surround yourself with people who are different from you.

I know a lot of people who talk a real big game about being "tolerant", who inevitably come to visit me in NYC and go bugeyed (not in a good way) when they hear each of their fellow bus passengers speak a different language into their cellphones.

Also, for Tonio, the older generation of fundie evangelists are pretty openly and obviously racist -- all you have to do is look back at the things they said and did during the 60's and 70's. One of the most insidious tricks of the right is their constant attempts at historical amnesia. What, me, speaking out against integration in 1965? Couldn't have happened... What, me, a Nixon staffer during Watergate? No way...

[the opoponax]

Also, @ Tonio -- I might be wrong here or just too much of a leftist, but I always assumed "social conservative" to mean just what it says. Conservative on social issues. Social issues being anything and everything from welfare to reproductive rights to censorship/"obscenity laws" to the reflection of race/gender/sexual orientation in public policy. Nothing in the term indicates that it's limited to Teh Sex.

He_he and Opo, you're absolutely right about fundamentalism's racist history. I'm trying to determine if the younger fundamentalists long for the return of legal segregation, or at least harbor a false romanticism for the segregation era.

A related question - the original Rev. Bob Jones equated opposition to segregation with opposition to God. (If he were alive today, I would be tempted to force him to watch interracial porn just to drive him insane.) Today, the university he founded is one of the largest publishers of home-schooling curricula in the country. Does the material promote racism or sexism or anti-Semitism?

[Tonio]

That was me with the 9:48 a.m. post.

[the opoponax]

I'm trying to determine if the younger fundamentalists... harbor a false romanticism for the segregation era.

If you haven't already determined this, you haven't been paying much attention.

This is another situation that causes me to wonder, "Do we live in the same country?"

[Rosina]

Also, for Tonio, the older generation of fundie evangelists are pretty openly and obviously racist -- all you have to do is look back at the things they said and did during the 60's and 70's.

Not wishing to disagree with the opoponax on the specific point, but on a more general matter (which has arisen in various other guises in the last few topics), I do think that you should not automatically assume that what someone said (or did) in the 60s necessarily reflects the way they think and act 40 years later. Particularly where you are looking at a period in which ingrained thought processes (racism, sexism, belief in God etc) have been dragged out into the open and examined. If you don't allow that people were wrong, and recognize that they were wrong, and do what they can to put themselves and others right, then - well, where's the point? Deep down, in the hidden recesses of their hearts, they may still be sexist, worried about inter-racial marriage, and would be massively disappointed when their son told them he was gay. But if they don't preach hatred, don't act on it, and make no attempts to enshrine these inner qualms in law, then I don't think that the terms such as racist are justified.

[Jesurgislac]

Rosina: Deep down, in the hidden recesses of their hearts, they may still be sexist, worried about inter-racial marriage, and would be massively disappointed when their son told them he was gay. But if they don't preach hatred, don't act on it, and make no attempts to enshrine these inner qualms in law, then I don't think that the terms such as racist are justified.

But if you were a Christian, and therefore believed that the hatred people feel in their hearts actually matters, you would.

Someone who feels sexism, racism, homophobia, and other hatreds "deep down, in the hidden recesses of their hearts" may tell themselves that they never let it out. But when their daughter comes home to let them know she's marrying a black man, and their son comes home to let them know that so is he, at that point they do have to choose between loving their children and old comfortable hatreds, however well-hidden.

And since no parent can be absolutely certain that's not going to happen, I personally think all potential parents ought to consider, in advance "What if this does happen?" and figure if they really want to love their children anyway. If they decide they'd rather not love their children more than they love to be sexist, racist, and homophobic, then their solution is contraception, abortion, or adoption...

[Mike Timonin]

Simon St. Laurent

I'm a member of a Unitarian church in the Southern Tier of NY, and we're part of an organisation of religious groups - mostly churches, but also synagogues - who are trying to convince the state legislature (at the very least) that left wing politics =/ anti-religion. Or, perhaps, that religion =/ right wing politics. Perhaps the problem is not so much that (if I'm reading the snippits of Sullivan correctly) Democrats have "abandoned" religion, but that a large part of the party base has convinced itself that its religious views and its political views are antithetical and must be kept sepparate. If religious people were to tell their representatives "hey, I'm religious, AND I support gay rights/abortion/pick your cause" perhaps there would be less pandering to the religious right.

[Mike Timonin]

But Jesurgislac, contraception and abortion are anti-religious! And, adoption - whew, you never know who's going to end up with the baby, could be some sort of pagan brown folks. Far better to have lots and lots of kids and raise them to your own twisted agenda.

[he_he]

Rosina -
you raise a very valid point, and one which civil society requires. Judging people on their beliefs from the past, and not their actions in the present, is one of the dangers of exploring the past to understand the present. People do change, and they may sincerely regret their past beliefs or actions. Or to the extent they simply go along with the new consensus, they are not punished for 'thoughtcrime.' (Germany has a lot of experience in this area over several generations at this point.)

But an equal point to consider - why is it so daring to 'non-P.C.'? And why are the people most concerned with the issue generally white males, who love to show their strength (or complain about being unfairly fenced in) by calling a spade what they want to call a spade, regardless of what anyone thinks. Just like in the old, pre-P.C. days.

Hmm - starting to see a certain connection?

Racism has not gone away, it has merely been forced offstage, and some of the 'marginalized' actors would like to return to center stage, when the theater only allowed blacks on the stage as performers, or after performances to clean up, but never in the audience. And though America may be less racist today than 40 years ago, it has a long, long way to go. Maybe Bush can commute a few sentences of people who don't have white skin, neo-con friends, or a nicely padded defense fund? Until then, I don't think it is justice that is blind in America.

[Simon St.Laurent]

Mike Timonin -

That's great to hear! I've heard of similar things going on in Buffalo, and a lot of local Quakers reference their religious beliefs in letters to legislators and Congressfolk when it's a motivating factor.

We might get somewhere eventually with the representatives; my bigger concern is with the voters! (And, alas, with my fellow local Democrats.)

It's a good start, though.

[Tonio]

@Opo,

"If you haven't already determined this, you haven't been paying much attention..."

It's quite obvious to me that the younger fundamentalists have a misguided romanticism of the old sexist gender roles. And I strongly suspect they also romanticize segregation. I just haven't found any specific statements or actions that would provide solid confirmation of my suspicions. Many fundamentalist leaders declare openly that God intended men to be in charge of families. But from what I can tell, only a few on the ultra-extremist fringe still declare openly that God intended the races to be separate.

[Tonio]

Somewhat off-topic: Wal-Mart to test-market Bible action figures

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200707171211DOWJONESDJONLINE000491_FORTUNE5.htm

Most of the stores chosen for the test are in the Midwest and South, where fundamentalism appears to be strongest.

[Zingo Stertch]

That toy article is incomplete without pictures of the bible toys and "remakes of Satan and evil things".

[Holdie Lewie]

And since no parent can be absolutely certain that's not going to happen, I personally think all potential parents ought to consider, in advance "What if this does happen?" and figure if they really want to love their children anyway.

Cast that quote in stone and place it in every courthouse and classroom in the land.

[LL]

Atheist here, grew up in OK, now live in TX. Just FYI.

I'm beyond sick of hearing (self-described) religious people bitch about how their religion is ignored in the public sphere. First, have you had a gander at the public sphere lately? You should be grateful that your religious tradition isn't more prominent, or they (whoever they are who hope to use religion for their own gain) would have you wishing quickly that they'd just forget about it. Second, "In God We Trust" on the money and a president and numerous Congressmen/women who pimp Jesus every chance they get isn't good enough for you? I have to wonder what the poor ignored religious folk expect to get for their party loyalty. Do they really think they're gonna get abortion outlawed everywhere, no boobies on TV and prayer for every public school child? I don't think it's gonna happen. Most people in America claim some sort of religious belief, but most (from studies I've read and just personal observation) are not nearly as hardcore about it as the SBC or the Vatican (for example) would like. I believe most people in America are sick of Dobson and the Pope bitching about everything they like, they don't want abortion to be illegal and they want a government that actually works, not one that presumes to preach to them and tells them that if they're not Republican, they're part of the "culture of death." Yeah, there are still millions who support Bush and the RNC, but they are a definite minority in a country of 300 million people.

As for "code words," for the most part, these people don't use code. It's only "code" to people from other parts of the country who don't know that "states rights" and "activist judges" means "The federal govt shouldn't be telling you all what to do, WE should." They are NOT in favor of rights, as most people understand that word, and they care least of all for Constitutional rights. They don't want the federal govt to have any power because they want it all for themselves. Racism (and now homo-hating) are the tools they use to get the stupid people to vote for them.

[Timothy]

Tonio:

Having grown up with an education in part from Bob Jones curricula, I can say that their curricula isn't overtly racist. There may be isolated pockets of lingering racist fundamentalists, but far more of them think that race just isn't an issue anymore - except when someone "plays the race card." Most fundamentalists long for the "Leave it to Beaver" aspects of the 1950's, not the Jim Crow aspects.

It's more a blithe ignorance of the real state of affairs than anything else.

[Bugmaster]

@Mabus:
I personally don't think you're eeevil. Wrong, yes, but not evilly so. Unfortunately, your position has been historically associated with extremists, who are treating everyone who disagrees with them as a spawn of Satan. I realize that you personally are quite sane and civil, yet you can expect to continue getting a negative first impression from people, just because of the radical Christian clerics who give your pro-life position a bad name.

[straight]

Particularly where you are looking at a period in which ingrained thought processes (racism, sexism, belief in God etc) have been dragged out into the open and examined. If you don't allow that people were wrong, and recognize that they were wrong, and do what they can to put themselves and others right, then - well, where's the point?

Rosina, I generally believe that Christian charity demands granting people the benefit of the doubt in this way.

But when someone has openly and publicly sinned (and it should be obvious now that segregation was a sinful system and supporting it was wrong), then they need to publicly renounce their sin and demonstrate some amendment of life. If they haven't done that then I think we are justified in saying that these men are unrepentant and do not deserve our support.

[the opoponax]

I do think that you should not automatically assume that what someone said (or did) in the 60s necessarily reflects the way they think and act 40 years later.

The problem with that is that none of said old guard fundies have actually changed their outward behavior. They just stopped openly advocating segregation. While I think that for most people, yeah, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt and think they might have changed since then, when you look at the old guard fundies then and now, they haven't changed. The only thing that's changed is they used to openly advocate segregation, and now they use code words like "states rights" and "welfare queens".

With regard to the "new guard": I'll agree up to a point that they don't literally dream of the return of literal Jim Crow laws -- there's just been too much social change since the 60's for anyone to think that would ever happen. Not to mention that de facto segregation is so easily achievable now that there's no reason for any of that. I'll also concede with these guys that I'm not sure that they see the scaling back of civil rights as a religious imperative. However, a lot of the rhetoric they spout with regard to both reproductive rights and immigration has a racist tinge to it, and with all the history behind these religious movements, I'm not willing to give them a pass.

[Dan S.]

" . . . In fact, as Table 1 shows, religious beliefs are stronger correlates of vote choice and partisan affiliation than are religious behaviors. Beliefs in a personal Devil and in scriptural authority are the best indicators of Republican choices, followed by ideas about the nature of God and life after death. In questions phrased in the other direction, belief in “religious pluralism” or what Hoge, Johnson and Luidens (1994, 112-115) call “lay liberalism,” and in evolution as the best explanation for the origin of human life point a voter toward the Democrats. [Religious Mobilization in the 2004 Presidential Election (html-ized PDF)]

In 2000, "Supporters of George W. Bush were overwhelmingly White Protestants, including four of five voters who identified with the Religious Right.

In contrast, members of minority religions – Jews, those with no religious preference, and those who identified with a religion that was not Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish – voted overwhelmingly for Gore." [Catholics split down the middle]

Bob Jones U?

"Although BJU admitted Asians and other minorities from its inception, it refused to enroll black students until 1971, eight years after the University of South Carolina and Clemson University had been integrated by court order.

. . . The university did not admit unmarried blacks until 1975. . . . In May 1975, as it prepared to allow unmarried blacks to enroll, BJU adopted more detailed rules prohibiting interracial dating and marriage—threatening expulsion for any student who dated or married interracially, who advocated interracial marriage, who was "affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage," or "who espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University's dating rules and regulations." [42]

On January 19, 1976, the Internal Revenue Service notified the University that its tax exemption had been revoked retroactively to December 1, 1970. The school appealed the IRS decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the University met all other criteria for tax-exempt status and that the school's racial discrimination was based on sincerely held religious beliefs, that "God intended segregation of the races and that the Scriptures forbid interracial marriage."
. . . The case was heard on October 12, 1982, and on May 24, 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Bob Jones University in Bob Jones University v. United States (461 U.S. 574). The University refused to reverse its interracial dating policy and (with difficulty) paid a million dollars in back taxes. Also, in the year following the Court decision, contributions to the University declined by 13 percent.

. . . In 2000, following a media uproar prompted by the visit of presidential candidate George W. Bush to the University, Bob Jones III abruptly dropped the interracial dating rule . . ."

[hapax]

opoponax: "While I think that for most people, yeah, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt and think they might have changed since then, when you look at the old guard fundies then and now, they haven't changed. "

In my home state a proposed apology for slavery--minimal gesture that it is--still was intensely controversial, and even as we prepare to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the integration of Central High in Little Rock (at gunpoint!), the same school district is roiled in controversy with heavily racist overtones.

No, nothing has changed, except the code words. And you won't find those "officially" written down and defined anywhere; but you don't need an explanation of the cross burning in your front yard, or the spittle on your shoes, to know what "everybody knows" that it means.

[Fraser]

I'm bothered by Sullivan's assertion that Democrats can't make headway with churchgoers because they refuse to take some sort of anti-abortion stance.
I believe in the right to abortion as a right, and I wouldn't think much of anyone who wanted to take it away to win votes (of course in my neck of the woods, no candidate who wasn't right to life has a snowball's chance).
In many ways, Sullivan strikes me as treating religion as some kind of campaign policy, like having a plan for fighting terrorism, rather than well, religion.

[the opoponax]

Yeah. I remember the first time I said to one of my brothers back home that I think it's kind of shameful that we have old plantation homes open to the public as tourist attractions (I grew up not far from the River Road district in southern LA, the place the expression "getting sold downriver" comes from), when if you think about it, they represent such a terrible time in American history. My brother looked at me like I had just spit in his Cheerios and said, "But they're our heritage..." He grew up in the same "tolerant" home I did. Our family is considered crazy leftist radicals.

"Heritage" -- another code word, btw.

[Drak Pope]

the oppoponax -- As long as they don't try to portray the plantations as some kind of magical land of harmony and nature where nothing bad ever happened then you can just treat them like a Holocaust Museum. "Just because we don't hide it," you can say, "doesn't mean we're proud of what went on."

[--susan]

but far more of them think that race just isn't an issue anymore - except when someone "plays the race card."

It's easy to say that race "isn't an issue" when you self-segregate.

[cjmr]

I don't see a problem with having plantations open for tourists--as long as the museum is honest about what went on there. It was very enlightening for my son to stand in a room the size of our living room and learn that it was the home of the 15 (I think) slaves who were gardeners at Mount Vernon.

[Fred]

Simon (way back at 8:06) --

You ask about Pennsyltucky? Keystone State politics have been described as Pittsburgh, Philly and a whole lot of Alabama in between. Central Pa. is pockmarked with Klan Kountry, and that's not purely a matter of ancient history -- it's still fertile recruiting ground.

[Cat]

I think it's worth pointing out that in Canada, the political party that was founded by an ordained minister, and to this day still has the highest number of clergy in its ranks, is the NDP. They're the furthest left of Canada's three main political parties; they support gun control, a woman's right to choose, gay marriage, public healthcare, public transit, affordable tuition, the greening of the power grid, and a strong social safety net. They want to legalize pot, institute nationalized day care, and do more to promote sustainability. They believe in getting tough on crime by getting tough on its causes: poverty, racism, and disenfranchisement.

Equating religion with social conservatism is an American thing; it doesn't have to be that way.

[Tonio]

@LL,

Perhaps "code word" is the wrong term. "Euphemism" may be more appropriate. Whatever the term, the goal is to appeal to prejudice indirectly in an era when open expressions of prejudice are considered unacceptable. Obviously, the terms have less meaning for people who aren't aware of the cultural and historical context.

Here's a famous example of the term "state's rights":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39345-2004Jun13.html

@Fraser,

I consider myself pro-life personally and pro-choice politically. However, I wouldn't reject a pro-life candidate if I agreed with the rest of the candidate's positions. I would never choose abortion myself, and I don't understand why some people choose abortion over adoption, but I have no right to tell people what choice to make in that situation. My political concerns is that the religious right is using the abortion issue as a proxy in its larger war on women's equality.

Surely there are many voters, Christian and otherwise, who agree the Democrats on most issues but cannot bring themselves to support the party because of abortion. This is an issue that goes straight to one's views of morality, and intelligent and rational people can come to radically different conclusions about the issue. I think Democrats and feminists have made a public relations error in treating abortion as inherently about women's equality, instead of focusing on the gender-neutral principle of individual conscience. Although plenty on the religious right want to go further and restrict access to birth control, I strongly suspect the majority of pro-lifers reject that agenda.

@Opo,

I'm a fan of historian James Loewen and I support making plantations open as tourist attractions, as long as they don't whitewash (pun intended) their history. Better to keep them open to the public as tools to teach about slavery. There are too many otherwise intelligent people whose opinions have been subconsciously shaped by "Gone With the Wind"-style revisionism. I know of at least one plantation where tour guides did not use the S-word for decades after the Civil War.

[ako]

While it seems to be cheap entertainment for liberal Christians to blast Sullivan for repeating Republican talking points, I wish we'd at least contemplate figuring out how to talk to the people - many of them even nominally Democrats - for whom her thesis holds true.

Here's my worry.

There is one political party that is overwhelmingly against my moral beliefs (I think forced pregnancy is wrong, consensual sex between unmarried adults isn't, environmental problems are going to make future generations suffer because Jesus isn't going to destroy the world and erase them all, providing charity can be a moral good but doesn't justify a system where people are left to starve, and voluntary contraception is a good thing), and in a very real way, opposed to people like me (I like other women, and I don't believe in God). They are very religious, and successful in lining people up behind their policies bases on their religious values. While the war is costing the Republican party a lot, I don't think they're going to drop the aggressive religious push, because that works for them.

The Democratic party wants me to vote for them. And they get a lot of leeway for having the Republican party as the only other viable alternative on a national level (local elections are a different story). But the more they decide to toss my values out (by being anti-abortion, and anti-contraception), or sell people like me out (by ensuring that I can't get married, and I'll be subjected to more state-sanctioned 'encouragement' to embrace religion), the less reason I have to support them. So I don't think being more Republican to win Republican voters is a good thing, even if it gets more Democrats elected. And I have no reason to hope for more faith in politics (I see no way that the results will be anything I want to happen), although sadly many reasons to anticipate it.

[the opoponax]

1. Yeah, the plantations are generally very, very whitewashed. They are not "let's visit auschwitz and edify ourselves about a major world tragedy". You're generally expected to put yourself into the shoes of the wealthy planter inhabitant, not the slave. I wouldn't say they lie, exactly, but at all but one of the plantation "museums", slavery is not mentioned, or mentioned in only the most cursory way. Imagine touring auschwitz, and the guide only mentions the Jews with a comment like, "So these are the gun turrets, where the guards made sure the inmates didn't escape". There is, however, one plantation in the area, called Laura, where some effort is made to talk about slavery and what the experience of a slave would have been like.

2. It's not so much that I'm miffed that these homes still exist and are open to the public, but the way the information is handled. The point is to go and wonder how totally awesome it must have been to live that lifestyle, to have the things they had. Not to understand the horrible sin the antebellum inhabitants perpetrated by owning their fellow human beings. It also creeps me out the degree to which they're promoted as symbols of southern "heritage".

The conversation I mentioned in my post started in talking about Louisiana's "state" quarter. There was a huge controversy when the design was chosen, because one of the options was a plantation home. Most whites felt that this would be an ideal choice for the quarter, and that anyone outraged about it was just being overly PC. Yeah, let's choose a plantation as the one visual emblem of our state. Totally. (I think the ultimate choice was a saxophone, representing jazz, which angered and the whites who wanted the plantation, because, yep, you guessed it, they didn't want the one symbol of our state to be something black people invented).

[Andy]

As a church-going social progressive, I have to confess I really am not comfortable with the Democrats' new emphasis on public expressions of faith. While I believe it is essential to loudly counter the claims and assertions of the narrow, distorted form of Christianity coming from the GOP die-hards, I'm not sure I want it coming from the Democrats. I don't think increasingly overt protestations of faith from the Left is going to help matters in Washington, and it concerns me that in a (sincere, I hope) effort to woo voters, we are enabling the conservative strategy of establishing a permanent, implicit endorsement of Protestant Christianity by the federal government. It's fine with me if folks like Jim Wallis want to lobby politicians on behalf of the poor and point to passages from Micah and Amos, but then I want those politicians to turn around and act based not on Scriptural justifications but on sound research in the service of effective policy.

Making the Democrats the official party of mainline Protestantism and leaving the Republican party to the dispensationalist Evangelicals is going to further fragment the nation and the faith communities. It's exactly what the Fathers were afraid of. Splitting the faith communities in this way will turn bipartisanship into a heresy and -- not to sound shrill -- sets us on the path to civil war.

[Jeff]

I think the ultimate choice was a saxophone, representing jazz, which angered the whites who wanted the plantation, because they didn't want the one symbol of our state to be something black people invented

When I first read this, I thought "something black people invented" referred to the saxophone, and I was oing to object to that. I see that it was, instead, meant to refer to jazz.

The LA quarter features a pelican, a trumpet with musical notes and an outline of the Louisiana Purchase on map of the U.S. The trumpet isn't as obvious a jazz-reference as a saxophone would be, so I guess the white people breathed a sigh of relief.

[cjmr]

The trumpet isn't as obvious a jazz-reference as a saxophone would be, so I guess the white people breathed a sigh of relief.

Hmmm. When I think trumpet, I think Dizzy Gillespie!

[LL]

Even down here in Dallas, my non-religious (but not atheist, either) acquaintances and coworkers think the "no drinking, no sex before marriage, earth is only 6,000 years old" types are nutjobs. They don't look to these people for guidance on how to vote, and they sure don't want them running things. The nutjobs have political power because so many of those who don't agree with them are apathetic and often don't vote (esp. the younger ones). If the Democrats want to continue their success of 2006, the last thing they should be doing is aping the Republicans. They should be working on getting out the vote (esp. among the religious "left" who are supposedly so appalled by the Republicans and claim that they are more representative of religion than Dobson and his ilk) and talking about issues that people can relate to and actually affect their lives (like health care costs, energy costs, the cost of education, freedom of speech, etc.). We don't need the Democrats to pimp religion. We already have a party that does that and look what a bunch of criminals and idiots they are. Frankly, I don't have much hope for most Democrats, either, but the Republicans have spent the last 15 years or so making them look like a really good alternative (or the best we can get, anyway).

RE "code": yeah, maybe I didn't articulate adequately. I know they say "states rights" when they mean "black and brown people are bad and I don't want them anywhere around me" or "activist judges" when they really mean "judges who think consenting adults should make their own decisions." I'm just saying that they're bad at subtlety, I guess because they're really not very smart. Nobody who votes for one of these idiots can say they were "fooled" because they (Brownback, Lott and the like) are pretty open about what they want. Power. They hate the federal govt not because they love freedom - they hate freedom. Some of them have even said this pretty explicitly, voicing a concern that Americans have too much freedom. They hate federal interference, unless of course the federal interference goes in their favor, like in prohibition of medical marijuana or gay marriage or monitoring our phone records. Then the federal govt and all those activist judges have made a sound decision. But Roe v. Wade is bad because they don't agree with it. If the Republican-led federal govt. had spent even 1/10 as much time and effort on, say, disaster preparedness as they did gay marriage and abortion, the federal response to Katrina wouldn't be an international punchline now.

[the opoponax]

Nobody who votes for one of these idiots can say they were "fooled"

And yet, millions of people who vote for them are fooled, over and over and over. While I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that most Americans really don't know what "states rights" and "activist judges" means, they're ambiguous enough terms that if you don't go out and educate yourself as to what far-right politicians mean when they use those them, you might not get the code. The Republicans have been able to re-frame the dialogue using this tactic over and over.

For instance, aside from one history course I took that happened to be taught by a rather liberal teacher, we always learned in school that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, per se, but about "states' rights". As if there really was such a thing as "states' rights" which really is an issue outside of slavery/civil rights/race, and as if a terribly bloody 5-year war was really fought over the intricacies of jurisdictional policy.

[Jeff]

When I think trumpet, I think Dizzy Gillespie!

I'm not saying that the trumpet isn't good for jazz, it's just associated with other music forms as well (marches, frex).

Did you (cjmr) read my post on Roger Mahoney in "You Are Not The Pope Of Me"?

[cjmr]

I'm not saying that the trumpet isn't good for jazz, it's just associated with other music forms as well

True, but for at least one-raised-in-the-north white girl, the trumpet is very associated with an African-American man, so if they were trying to get an instrument that wasn't they failed miserably!

Did you (cjmr) read my post on Roger Mahoney in "You Are Not The Pope Of Me"?

Actually, I've been avoiding that thread, as I do have other things to do this week, but if you tell me how far up the thread it is, I'll go take a look.

[Drak Pope]

And yet, millions of people who vote for them are fooled, over and over and over.

Really? How? Why? Are these millions of people affected with short-term amnesia? It's highly unlikely that they can keep electing people who struggle to curtail civil liberties and interfere with the personal lives of strangers and still be surprised when it happens. I mean, I know that some people aren't politically adept but that's just ridiculous.