The worm turns for evangelical Christians and what of John McCain?

In the FT article that is directly adjacent to that which concerns whether George W. Bush will convert to Catholicism is an article about John McCain and his strained efforts to connect with evangelical Christians - 'A struggle to energise evangelicals'. It concerns a Southern Baptist convention in Indianapolis and the views of its' attendees about McCain. Not only does this throw George W. Bush into a sharper relief but it also indirectly addresses part of his legacy upon the Republican party when compared to the neighbouring article about George W. Bush possibly converting to Catholicism.


"Four years after helping deliver a second term for George W. Bush, evangelical voters are struggling to summon enthusiasm for the 2008 race. "We feel like we're in trouble", said Raymond James, paster of a Baptist church in Tampa, Florida. "There isn't a candidate that represents our values." A quarter of US voters consider themselves evangelicals, or 'born-again', Christians, and in 2004 nearly 80% supported Mr Bush. [John MaCain] is viewed with deep suspicion by many evangelicals because of his mixed record on social issues, including support for stem cell research. When running against Mr Bush in the 2000 primaries, he famously described evangelical leaders, such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, as "agents of intolerance". "right or wrongly, we viewed Bush as one of our own", said Micheal Griffith, a Baptist paster from Arkansas. "We don't feel the same way about McCain."

If I may interrupt the news article for a moment. When evangelical Christians have reached the point that they say "rightly or wrongly, we viewed Bush as one of our own" and George W. Bush is looking into the eyes of the Pope and believing himself to be looking at God we have what looks like a bit of a situation. The article is meant to be highlighting how John McCain is not an easy choice for evangelicals to support, what with his "agents of intolerance" style remarks, but it also seems to be saying that evangelical Christians and George W. Bush have also fallen out of love with each other and they were meant to be a hand-in-glove fit, if the 2004 election campaign was anything to go by. George W. Bush has been a very unpopular president around the world but why would the president turn away from the support base that delivered his 2004 (real) victory? It only exposes how politically motivated the marriage between the Republican party and evangelical Christians was, i.e. they needed a 'real' victory to set the 2000 election campaign straight and evangelical Christians gave that to them. Indeed the evangelicals must feel not only like they are "in trouble" as the politics behind the religion comes unstuck but they might even feel downright cheated as Bush turns away from them; Bush is on his way out and he doesn't need to prove anything to anybody anymore for any future election campaign. That is for the next poor sod to sort out and while Bush thinks of his next step after he has finished with the oval office he (just like Tony Blair) looks towards the Vatican. Interestingly the article continues...

"Many younger evangelicals have grown frustrated by the [Republican] movement's narrow focus on abortion and gay marriage and are pushing to broaden the agenda to include more left-leaning issues such as poverty and climate change. "Young evangelicals are recognising that Jesus would care more about the 30,000 children who die every day because of hunger and disease than about gay marriage", says Jim Wallis, a prominent moderate evengelical leader."

This must be quite a bombshell for the Republican Party I can imagine. The notion of a left-leaning evangelical Christian is not one I can easily get my head around, and here I was thinking that it was the Christian element that was narrowing the focus down to abortion and gay marriage for the Republican Party, not the other way around. If this focus upon a strict view regarding gay marriage and abortion is partially political motivated instead of just purely theologically motivated them there is some hope that their relative importance compared with world poverty and climate change may allow the American politco-religious culture to development beyond being held on a single issue leash. A more mature politcal perspective from evangelical Christians is long over due and since they seem to be realising this now to a greater degree, if this article is anything to go by, it will presumably make the battle for the political centre ground that much more interesting to watch in the future. The issue is whether John McCain can take the evangelical votes with him after criticising them in the past and relying on a platform that is very similar to Bush's, which evangelicals may also be quite tired of? And as a final question, just how much politics is getting done through the conduit of Catholicism outside of national political parties?