First up from the God machine this week is a slightly different take on school prayer.
A federal judge on Friday blocked a high school in southern Kentucky from including prayers in its graduation ceremony, prompting students to begin reciting the Lord’s Prayer during the opening remarks.
About 200 students interrupted the principal’s comments with the prayer, drawing thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the crowd.
Apparently, a student had filed suit to keep the secular public school’s public graduation ceremony religiously neutral, and a federal judge agreed. To spite the student and the judge, students prayed in protest.
Does anything express heartfelt Christian love like the spiteful prayer? I think not.
Next up is an interesting article from Amy Sullivan — who’s writing a book about [tag]religion[/tag] and the left — about [tag]evangelical[/tag] [tag]Christian[/tag] voters, who Sullivan argues may not be nearly as politically to the right as they used to be.
In recent years, [tag]Democrats[/tag] haven’t viewed the evangelical community as the most fertile ground for political efforts and policy conversations — and with good reason. The past three decades have been characterized by an increasingly close relationship between evangelical organizations and the Republican Party. The two sides snapped into almost perfect alignment during the 2000 campaign, and, in the last election, 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for George W. [tag]Bush[/tag], thanks in large measure to big voter registration efforts — by groups like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition — that aimed to sign up only [tag]Republican[/tag] voters. Christian right organizations also distributed millions of voter-education guides that highlighted differences between the two parties (on issues like abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools) and left no doubt about which party or candidate held the “right” positions.
White evangelicals have become such a crucial part of the GOP base that many political observers now see them as the key to Republican victories at the polls. [tag]Karl Rove[/tag] certainly seems to agree. He left his policy position at the [tag]White House[/tag] last month partly to repair relationships with conservative evangelical leaders who are disappointed that the president they helped elect twice has given them nothing (two Supreme Court justices aside) in return. When these old-guard members of the Christian right supported Bush in 2000, they thought they would get a president who would fight tirelessly to outlaw sexual immorality.
But Rove is also reportedly worried about another group of evangelicals: the nearly 40 percent who identify themselves as politically moderate and who are just as likely to get energized about aids in Africa or melting ice caps as partial-birth abortion and lesbian couples in Massachusetts. These evangelicals have found the White House even less open to their concerns than their more conservative brethren have.
It’s a provocative thesis. As Sullivan sees it, evangelicals are not only more diverse than the caricature suggests, their policy concerns go beyond just abortion and gays. In fact, Sullivan argues, beyond the world of Dobson/Falwell/Robertson, many evangelicals might actually take issues such as the environment and global poverty as seriously, if not more so, than the typical religious-right style agenda.
I’m a little skeptical. If there are millions of centrist, politically-active evangelicals, they keep a very low profile and have no obvious public leaders. That said, I can only hope Sullivan is right. If nearly 40% of evangelicals are self-described [tag]moderate[/tag]s, they’re not only embarrassed by trash like The 700 Club, they also can’t be happy with what they’re getting from the Republican Party right now. In the big picture, the GOP is offering these voters hard-line rhetoric on issues moderate evangelicals want less emphasis on (gays, abortion, modern biology), and practical silence on issues they want more emphasis on (poverty, the environment, Darfur).
If they stay home on Election Day — or even gave Dems a serious look — Republicans stand to lose a whole lot of competitive contests. And if it’s the beginning of a broader trend, the GOP has a serious national problem on its hands. No wonder it has Karl Rove nervous.