Why I Still Talk to Jesus -- In Spite of Everything
In a recent interview on Fox, Christian right writer James Robison went off on a rant about how Christian conservatives need to take over the government: “There are only 500 of you,” Robison said of Congress. “We can get rid of the whole bunch in one smooth swoop and we can really reroute the whole ship!”
He added that this takeover would cause “demons to shudder” and the “gates of hell to tremble,” but what was really delusional about it was the idea that Congress is somehow devoid of Christians. In reality, 92% of Congress people identify as Christian…
That the evangelical right already controls the GOP shouldn’t really be in dispute. Not only do the Republicans do exactly as the Christian right tells them on every social issue, such as reproductive rights or gay rights, but Republicans also pay fealty to the Christian right by targeting Muslim countries with their hawkish posturing or using Christian language to rationalize slashing the social safety net. If you were trying to come up with a quick-and-dirty description of the Republican Party, “coalition of corporate and patriarchal religious interests” would be it.
A common claim is that the Republicans just use the Christian right as foot soldiers but screw them over when they get into office. As nice as that would be if it were true, the legislative record shows the opposite. Legal abortion is all but wiped out in many red states, the Supreme Court is stacked with Republican appointees who give the religious right nearly anything they want, and all gains that gay people have made have been resisted at every turn by Republicans…
But being more disparate and disorganized than they were in the past doesn’t mean they are any less powerful. If anything, one reason it’s hard for the religious right to anoint “their” candidate is that the field is too crowded. In 2012 and now, it seems, in 2016, there are a bevy of potential Republican candidates holding themselves out as the pious Christian candidates: Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker are all playing the “vote for me is a vote for Jesus” card. Even Rand Paul, who is positioning himself more as a libertarian candidate, makes sure to check all the Christian right boxes, railing against legal abortion and doing the rounds with radical Christian right organizations like the Family Research Council.
There’s no greater measure of power than being able to force every would-be candidate to toe your line to have any hope of getting the party nomination for president. So why are Christian right leaders like Lane talking as if they have to fight to take over the party? Part of it is just posturing: Using the threat of exerting even more pressure to keep potential candidates, who are already owned outright, from even entertaining the idea of bucking the Christian right party line. But part of it may be a very real fear that, while they own the GOP now, they may not be able to hang onto them forever…
As I chronicled last week for AlterNet, white Christian America, of which the Christian right is merely a subset, is losing its numbers. White Christians are now a minority in 19 states and it’s trend that is only picking up steam. A huge reason for this change is simply that white Christians are leaving the faith in droves. Both liberal and conservative churches are seeing their pews emptying out, of course, but the trend affects the Christian right as a political entity just as much as a spiritual one. Nor are they going to be able to restore their ranks by turning to people of color. After all, they’re not just asking voters to vote for conservative policies on reproductive rights or gay rights, but also on stripping the social safety net and becoming more hawkish on foreign policy. That’s an agenda most voters of color have long rejected and there’s no reason to think that’s going to change any time soon.
Right now, the Christian right absolutely controls the Republican Party, as a simple perusal of the field of potential GOP presidential nominees shows. But there will come a time—not this election, but maybe as soon as 2020–where the Christian posturing and the intolerant attitudes about religious diversity, reproductive rights and gay rights starts to turn off enough voters that the Republicans will either have to start shaking off the Christian right’s death grip on their party or start really losing a lot of elections. It’s not surprising that people like David Lane fear for the Christian right’s power, but, for the rest of us, the sooner this happens, the better.
Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of “It’s a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.”
Frank Schaeffer is a writer. His latest book —WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace
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