The Religious Right Has Had Its Day? Fat Chance

By Rob Boston, Church and State. Posted April 16, 2007.

A provocative essay in Time magazine raised more than a few eyebrows in mid-February with a headline that made a startling claim: "The Religious Right's Era Is Over," it blared.

Moderate evangelical minister Jim Wallis, the author of the piece, confidently asserted that the Religious Right's day has passed.

"We have now entered the post-Religious Right era," wrote Wallis, author of the popular book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. "Though religion has had a negative image in the last few decades, the years ahead may be shaped by a dynamic and more progressive faith that will make needed social change more possible."

It's a stunning claim that might have sold more than a few magazines. But is it true?

A careful reading of Wallis' column reveals that his evidence for the death of the Religious Right could charitably be called thin: He asserts that younger evangelicals are deserting the Religious Right "in droves" and that a more broadly based evangelical agenda is emerging.

This new agenda, Wallis insists, will shift the focus away from divisive social issues like same-sex marriage and intelligent design and toward "poverty and economic justice, global warming, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, genocide in Darfur and the ethics of the war in Iraq."

Concludes Wallis confidently, "The era of the Religious Right is now past, and it's up to all of us to create a new day."

If the Religious Right is dead, someone forgot to tell that to many leading political figures. The unusually early start to the 2008 campaign season has been marked by a number of aspiring Republican presidential hopefuls contorting themselves to please Religious Right honchos.

One of the nation's leading experts on the Religious Right, John C. Green, a professor of political science at the University of Akron, said that Wallis has probably overstated the case in proclaiming a post-Religious Right era.

"Wallis has a point about the Religious Right losing its near monopoly on political discourse in American politics," Green said. "The rise of the 'Religious Left' and the reaction of moderates means that religious voters will encounter a wider range of options at election time.

"However," Green continued, "it may be premature to claim that the Religious Right organizations will fade away or that their target constituencies will withdraw from politics. Indeed, the existence of other religious voices may lead the Religious Right to step up its activism in the short run. The last 30 years have shown that religious conservatives are very resourceful and not easily discouraged in the face of opposition."

Another Religious Right watcher, journalist Michelle Goldberg of the on-line magazine Salon, whose 2006 book Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism is highly critical of the Religious Right, isn't persuaded by claims that the movement is dead.

"I sincerely hope that Jim Wallis is right. I also sincerely doubt it," Goldberg said. "Certainly, the movement has suffered some major setbacks, including the falls of Ted Haggard and Tom DeLay and the loss of Congress. But the Religious Right has been pronounced dead many, many times before -- after the televangelist scandals of the late '80s, after Clinton was elected and reelected and during the 1999 presidential race, when The Economist opined, 'The armies of righteousness, which once threatened to overwhelm the Republican Party, are downcast and despondent.'"

Goldberg noted that the 2006 election may in some ways have strengthened the Religious Right, since incumbents representing some of the last vestiges of northeastern moderate Republicanism lost their seats.

Is the Religious Right kaput? Even a casual glance at some recent news stories would seem to indicate otherwise. Consider, for example, the case of Mitt Romney.

Running for a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts against Ted Kennedy in 1994, Romney positioned himself as a different kind of Republican -- a socially liberal one. On the campaign trail, Romney vowed to defend legal abortion and be an even bigger champion of gay rights than Kennedy.

Today Romney sounds like an entirely different man. After losing to Kennedy and going on to be elected governor of Massachusetts for a single term, Romney has decided to seek the Republican presidential nomination. He now blasts legal abortion and plays up his opposition to same-sex marriage. He also accepted an invitation to deliver this spring's commencement address at TV preacher Pat Robertson's Regent University.

What happened? Political observers say the answer is obvious: Social liberalism might have been fine for a Massachusetts Republican, but it will never play well on the national GOP stage. To survive the primaries, Romney must placate the Religious Right -- and that's exactly what he's doing.

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Rob Boston is the editor of Church and State magazine.

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