Democratic Wings: "Christian" Right Scandals

November 04, 2006

"Christian" Right Scandals

"Republicans have wrapped themselves in the American flag, and then they appear to be carrying the cross of Jesus Christ — if you're not with us, you're against Christianity. Those are high standards to hold themselves up to, and the current Congress has failed miserably — taking bribes, influencing votes and now Mark Foley. It's hard when they say one thing, and do something else. The population is just tired of the hypocrisy." Conservative Christians and evangelicals — a typically reliable Republican voting bloc — may be up for grabs come Tuesday's general election.

Credited with delivering crucial ballots that helped propel President Bush to his second term in 2004, some of these once steady voters are wavering in their support of the GOP, following a series of morally dubious incidents.

In January, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to charges involving fraud, public corruption and tax evasion for conspiring to bribe public officials. Abramoff became an issue in several races, including the failed attempt by former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed to win the GOP nomination for Georgia lieutenant governor.

More recently, U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned amid reports he e-mailed inappropriate messages to teenage pages. On the coattails of that scandal, David Kuo, former deputy director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has been promoting his book ("Tempting Faith."), asserting the Bush administration courted evangelicals in 2004 then privately mocked them.

And on Thursday, a national religious leader with ties to the White House resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after a self-described male escort accused him of paying for gay sex.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, an adviser to the Bush White House, denied the allegation but stepped down from the umbrella group for evangelical churches, which has 30 million members.

Whether the flock stays away from the ballot box Tuesday remains to be seen, but there are suggestions that the so-called "God gap" in politics is narrowing.

Richard Williams of Fayetteville, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, said he has a history of voting for Republicans. But he won't be voting for a Republican congressman this time.

"Republicans have wrapped themselves in the American flag, and then they appear to be carrying the cross of Jesus Christ — if you're not with us, you're against Christianity," Williams said. "Those are high standards to hold themselves up to, and the current Congress has failed miserably — taking bribes, influencing votes and now Mark Foley. It's hard when they say one thing, and do something else. The population is just tired of the hypocrisy."

Nearly three of five white evangelicals registered to vote — 57 percent — indicated they'd vote for Republican congressional candidates in this election, a drop of 11 percentage points from the eve of the 2002 congressional elections, according to a poll released Oct. 5 by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

"The honeymoon is over," said Robert Franklin Jr., presidential scholar and professor of social ethics at Emory University's Candler School of Theology. "Republicans have had to look at their own leaders who aren't perfect."

Franklin has visited evangelical and conservative congregations, hearing their frustrations about the current administration. But he has also found that churchgoers are a bit wiser and more mature about their expectations.

"There were a lot of conservative and evangelical voters who thought that with a Republican president and congressional majority, everyone would be singing out of the same hymnbook and would usher in a new kingdom. But in their quiet moments, they talk that what they expected [of political leadership] was more than was realistic."

For voters like Jean Eichoff of Decatur, there is a desire to move beyond the headlines and continue her support of individuals who legislate with integrity.

"We're obligated to vote for the best of what we see. I'm a Republican, but I don't always vote that way," Eichoff said. "The integrity of a person is important to me. We're all human, and individually we all fail. Clinton failed. We could each tally up a gazillion people on both sides that have fallen short. We aren't perfect.

"Let's move it [beyond Foley]. He's wrong. Do something to him. We have got to get beyond these individuals and rise up to something greater as a party," she said.

The political ground, however, seemed to shift even before the Foley scandal. Prior to that episode, the number of white evangelicals who viewed the GOP in a "favorable" light had fallen this year, from 63 percent to 54 percent, according to Pew polls.

In September, the national Christian Coalition historically split after some members added higher wages and environmental concerns to their issue base. And even the critical "wedge" issues that evangelicals have counted on for Republican support — such as banning same-sex marriage — have been minimized or ignored by Republican candidates.

No matter what denomination, faith organizations still remain critical in getting out the vote for both Republicans and Democrats.

African-American religious leaders, for instance, are urging their congregations to make every vote a "values vote."

"Youth concerns, education and health care are critical issues," said Bishop Earl McCloud Jr. who recently led an Interdenominational Theological Center conference of national black church leaders to discuss public policy and the African-American church.

"I try to remind the people that there really is no public policy that is divorced from the church, because whatever is done in the legislative bodies and the other bodies of government directly affects the people in our churches," McCloud said. "We want preachers and Sunday school teachers to provide information so people can make up their own minds. But are the people listening — and will they vote?"

That's a question also dogging Christian conservatives.

Last month, during a "Stand for the Family" rally in Nashville, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson told the crowd that there was a concerted effort by some to use the Foley scandal to keep Christian conservatives home.

He reminded them that the issues of sanctity of human life and the direction of the Supreme Court were too important for conservatives not to vote. Still, the exhortations of Dobson and others may not be persuasive enough.

"I know of different Senate and gubernatorial races where pastors are telling me a lot of their members in their congregations are not going to vote — they just don't see any difference between the Republican and Democratic candidate," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

"They voted Republican since 1980 based on abortion and marriage issues, but when candidates don't emphasize those issues, or shy away, the bottom falls away from their support. The only one who can deliver the values voters to the candidate is the candidate himself or herself — no one else can close the deal."

"Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Reference

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Quotations

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!" ~ William Shakespeare

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Marian Evans)

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." ~ Jane Addams

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." ~ Agatha Christie

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." ~ John Stuart Mill

"I don't give 'em hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell." ~ Harry Truman

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" ~ Will Rogers

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony

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Democratic Wings is dedicated to Gloria Steinem, whose courage, wisdom, and selfless devotion to the cause of equality for women has inspired us to believe in ourselves and to believe in our dreams.

Democratic Wings honors the tradition of Senator Paul Wellstone, who liked to say, "I represent the democratic wing of the Democratic party."

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November 04, 2006