Are religious conservatives finished as a political and cultural force? Not at all, argues David French, responding to someone who claims that Mike Huckabee’s inevitable defeat will put the nails in the coffin of the Christian right.
French says that Christian conservatives don’t have to vote for Huckabee because every other Republican candidate are claiming their issues. Furthermore, back in the Sixties, the left had essentially taken over America’s churches, but now the mainstream theological liberals have dwindled to near insignificance, while evangelicals and other theological conservatives dominate American Christianity and have had a cultural impact, especially on life issues.
Read his argument after the jump. Is he right or wrong? Or only partially right or partially wrong?
From David French, Why a Huckabee Loss Would Be a Win for Religious Conservatives | National Review Online:
A Huckabee primary loss — which will happen entirely because of his more liberal record on taxing and spending — is a sign of religious conservative strength. With every single candidate in the Republican field vowing to protect life and religious liberty, and with every single candidate highlighting the plight of the persecuted church overseas, religious conservatives aren’t reduced to voting for the “most overtly Christian” candidate to make their voices heard in the culture war. When Mike Huckabee loses the Republican primary, he’ll be defeated by another pro-life, pro–religious liberty candidate — but one who probably has a stronger conservative economic record or better national-security credentials. How is that a sign of religious-conservative weakness?
For some time now, I’ve been decrying culture war defeatism, defeatism that’s mostly centered around the repressive leftist response to the same-sex marriage debate. A longer view, however, tells a much different tale — one of remarkable cultural resilience, persistent cultural strength, and miraculous acts of culture-building even in the face of extreme elite hostility. In many ways, Mike Huckabee’s political career is a victim of religious-conservative success, not a marker of its failure.
Mike Huckabee’s political career is a victim of religious-conservative success, not a marker of its failure.
The true low point in the culture wars came not during the same-sex marriage arguments, where President Obama’s solicitor general said the tax-exempt status of religious colleges would be “an issue” if they failed to recognize same-sex marriages. The true low point was January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and legalized the slaughter of tens of millions of unborn children. The case was bad enough, but it arose out of a cultural context where no-fault divorce laws (the first catastrophic redefinition of marriage) were rampaging through state legislatures, and — critically — the church itself was either largely silent or complicit in the change.
The Protestant Christian community was largely contained in the vast mainline denominations — churches that were already shrinking, already losing their theological moorings, and thus ill-equipped for mounting any kind of coherent response to the sexual revolution. Even the Southern Baptist Convention supported abortion rights. Marriage was changing, life was held cheap, and the institutional church was failing. Aside from the tiny “fundamentalist” denominations, the Left not only controlled the elite culture, it was capturing the church itself.
What followed, however, was a religious sea change in the United States, with a regenerated church re-engaging in the public square to transform a cultural rout into a true cultural conflict. The Left has lost as many battles as it has won in this war, and religious conservatism has not only thoroughly mainstreamed itself but in many key respects dominates one of America’s two great political parties.
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