Name:   copperline - Subject:   God and Caesar in America Date:   3/1/2012 7:05:15 PM

An interesting essay (God and Caesar in America: Why Mixing Religion and Politics is Bad for Both – Foreign Affairs, March 2012) discussed what happens when political parties and religious groups combine to promote a social agenda.   i thought it made several important & surprising points, and thought i would throw a few out for response. 

Of course, religion has always played an important part in every important social movement since the Mayflower,  but “the close intertwining of religion and politics in the last 40 years is unusual, especially in the degree of the politicization of religion itself.”

“Over the last 20 years, church attendance has become the main dividing line between Republican and Democratic voters…. With the exception of Black voters, who are the most religious group in America…”   they remain mostly aligned with Democrats.    in the 60’s, church-goers were more likely to be Democrats, but this has changed since the 1980’s, culminating now in a situation wherein “Republicans must seek to appease their fervently religious base without alienating a general electorate that increasingly finds the mixture of religion and politics distasteful”.

The essay argues that the Tea Party is a manifestation of a movement to combine evangelical Christianity with right wing politics, evidenced by survey data that Tea Partiers endorse the wish to “see religion play a prominent role in politics”.  “Tea Partiers are, on average, more religiously observant than the typical American, but not more so than other Republicans”.  They believe that the country would be better “if the country had more deeply religious elected officials,  that it is appropriate for religious leaders to engage in political persuasion and that religion should be brought into public debates over political issues.  The Tea Party leaders might say that their overriding concern is smaller government, but the rank and file is after a godlier government”.

As we have observed in the GOP Primary, the need to court the highly religious right wing of the party has forced candidates to abandon moderate policy stances in light of this ‘Religious Absolutism’ (my phrasing) that equates political compromise with failure to live up to a religious standard.  

The political generals of the GOP have sought to capitalize on this particular upsurge of evangelical voter momentum since the Reagan years, but do so with risks to the party’s long term prospects for success.   “…most Americans opposed the idea of religious groups campaigning against specific candidates”  and “growing numbers …expressed the conviction that religious leaders should not try to influence government decisions”.  Accordingly, “70% [of the responders to the national General Social Survey] said that religion should be kept out of public debates over social and political issues”

The authors cite demographic evidence that the reaction to this will be that the GOP is losing it’s moderate and progressive voters who find it distasteful to combine church and politics.  But the REALLY interesting evidence is that the political-leaning religious groups contribute directly to a decline in religious participation overall.   That’s because so many people feel that religion should transcend politics and attend to higher human needs.   After reviewing data outlining a plunge in religious influence in American life, the authors conclude that the founders of the religious right “intended to bolster religion’s place in the public square.  in a sense, they have succeeded.   Yet….the movement has pushed a growing share of the population to opt out of religion altogether”.   This is all the more true of younger voters, “because all they have ever known is a world in which religion and politics are intertwined.   To them, ‘religion’ means ‘republican’, ‘intolerant’, and ‘homophobic’. “

“Republican politicians facing the loss of the religiously moderate middle and pastors seeing a rapid graying of the dwindling flock are both paying a serious price for the religious right’s dip into politics.”  “Beyond that, all sides, - progressive and conservative, religious and secular—should be concerned that placing a partisan label on religion has hurt the ability of religious leaders to summon moral arguments on behalf of causes that transcend left and right”