Playing It Smart

In the past year, the
percentage of Americans who say the GOP is "friendly" to religion

has dropped by eight points, led by a large decline among white
evangelicals and Catholics.

The latest Pew poll on religion and politics has
some amount of bad news for Democrats (more on that shortly). But the
biggest story has been on the Republican side: In the past year, the
percentage of Americans who say that the GOP is "friendly" to religion
has dropped by eight points, led by a large decline among white
evangelicals and Catholics.

One of the maddening things about polling is that you can't always tell
exactly what respondents are thinking when they answer a question. One
person might hear "friendly" and think "tolerant of or welcoming
to religious people " and another might think "favoring religious
communities."

We can safely make a few assumptions in this case. Those white
evangelicals and Catholics who no longer think Republicans are
"friendly" to religion are probably not thinking that the GOP is
hostile to religious people. But they are waking up to the fact that
they've been had, used for their electoral power, but not rewarded with
the policies they want.

As I've written elsewhere,
religious conservatives tend to get their way with the GOP whenever
their interests coincide with those of big business. But when the two
are in conflict, it's no contest. Big business wins out every time.
Because while conservative evangelicals and Catholics may provide the
votes for the Republican party, business interests provide the cash.

There's an important lesson in these results for liberals. A popular
line of attack against Republicans has been the argument that Bush and
his administration are in the thrall of religious fundamentalists and
that our country is on the verge of becoming a theocracy. Books like
Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy and Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming have promoted this thesis by exposing the extreme theologies subscribed to by some of Bush's religious supporters.

It's true that there are some disturbing theological views out there
that need to be critically examined, and that Bush has been guilty of
playing on those beliefs in order to mobilize his most right-wing
followers. But aside from the troubling of area of public health — in
which religious views, and not science, have dictated policy — there is
no evidence that Bush's actions have been influenced by religious
conservatives. Is it hard to believe that he would have invaded Iraq
anyway if fundamentalists didn't have apocalyptic theories about the
Middle East? Or that he would continue to oppose environmental
regulation even if some folks didn't believe that global warming was an
essential part of the End Times? (For more on this, read Peter Steinfels' excellent book review in this month's American Prospect.) 

The damning criticism of Bush is not that he is too religious, but that
he is not religious enough. He used the faith-based initiative to reel
in religious supporters and then slashed the funds available for
faith-based and other service providers. He spent the campaign talking
tough about protecting children from wireless porn and then backed
down when cellular companies protested. And for all Bush's talk
about the culture of life, religious conservatives are starting to
realize that the Republican Party doesn't want to see Roe overturned.
That's what has damaged the GOP's religion-friendly image — not the
idea that the party is made up of a bunch of theocrats.

Liberals might have better luck — and might attract the attention of
some disillusioned evangelicals and Catholics — if they criticized
Bush's exploitation of religion instead of religion itself. And it just
might help change their reputation for being unfriendly to
religion at the same time.