Evangelical opinion on Iraq may have recently reached a tipping
\npoint against the war.\u00a0 In January 2005 the Pew Research Center
\nfor the Press and the People reported that President Bush\u00e2\u0080\u0099s approval
\nrating among white evangelicals stood at 72% compared to 54% in March
\n2006.\u00a0 While a number of factors could account for this decline,
\nreduced optimism about Iraq is certainly one of the central
\nreasons.\u00a0 This represents a stunning reversal as white
\nevangelicals were among the strongest supporters of the president as
\nwell as the invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What should we make of this about face?\u00a0 First of all, it is
\nprobably the result of the steady drumbeat of bad news from Iraq and
\nnot the result of any great moral conversion among evangelical
\nelites.\u00a0 Like the rest of the American public, evangelicals see
\nthe casualty lists growing, have seen the photos from Abu Ghraib and
\nread about the torture at Guantanamo Bay and other sites.\u00a0 The
\nlack of weapons of mass destruction, the fabricated link between Saddam
\nand al-Qaeda, and the incipient civil war are all also part of the bad
\nnews on Iraq.
\n\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nSecond, the phalanx of evangelical leaders who helped whip up support
\nfor the war have not necessarily changed their minds, they have just
\nchanged the subject.\u00a0 These leaders are canny enough politically
\nto sense a loser when they see one and they are not dwelling on the
\ncarnage of Iraq.\u00a0 But this vacuum in moral leadership does present
\nan opening for Democrats and for new indigenous leaders among various
\nevangelical communities to speak out.<\/p>\n
Third, evangelical preachers seem to have behaved similarly in that I
\ndo not hear a lot of sermons on \u00e2\u0080\u009cHow I Got Iraq Wrong.\u00e2\u0080\u009d\u00a0 Instead
\nall I hear is silence.\u00a0 Churches that have a lot of military
\nfamilies have their hands full dealing with casualties, the stress of
\nmultiple deployments, and the tolls on families with a member
\nstruggling with reentry into American society.<\/p>\n
It is way too early to tell what the long term consequences of Iraq
\nwill be for evangelicals, but grand political vision of a united
\nevangelical world supporting a global war on the axis of evil led by a
\npermanent Republican majority is dead \u2014 and thank God for that.\u00a0
\nBut the time may be ripe for a couple of other consequences.\u00a0 One
\nwould be that Democrats need to recover a comfort with entering
\nevangelical enclaves to offer an alternative foreign policy that does
\nnot seduce evangelicals with appeals to spreading God\u00e2\u0080\u0099s gifts to the
\nMuslim world through the means of armed invasion.\u00a0 Democracy is
\nindeed a good thing, but exporting it through the barrel of gun has not
\nproven very effective.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The
\nother consequence should be that evangelical leaders need to be
\naggressively shown their collective failure in the lead up to and
\nconduct of the war.\u00a0 There were gallant exceptions in the
\nevangelical world who opposed the war from the outset and their tribe
\nneeds to increase. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Evangelical opinion on Iraq may have recently reached a tipping point against the war.\u00a0 In January 2005 the Pew Research Center for the Press and the People reported that President Bush\u00e2\u0080\u0099s approval rating among white evangelicals stood at 72% compared to 54% in March 2006.\u00a0 While a number of factors could account for this decline, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c17-featured-writers"],"yoast_head":"\n