Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Quite an interesting article.
Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. They turned out for President George W. Bush in record numbers, supporting him for re-election by a ratio of four to one. Republican strategists predicted that religious traditionalists would help bring about an era of dominance for their party. Spokesmen for the Christian conservative movement warned of the wrath of “values voters.” James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, was poised to play kingmaker in 2008, at least in the Republican primary. And thanks to President Bush, the Supreme Court appeared just one vote away from answering the prayers of evangelical activists by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders.
The 2008 election is just the latest stress on a system of fault lines that go much deeper. The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.
“In the evangelical church in general there is kind of a push back against the Republican party and a feeling of being used by the Republican political machine,” [Paster Paul Hill] continued. “There are going to be a lot of evangelicals willing to vote for a Democrat because there are 40 million people without health insurance and a Democrat is going to do something about that.”
#30, Scott,
… exactly how do they continue to gnash their teeth?
Have you ever seen those wind up dentures that gnash away? Some of those preachers get so wound up they can gnash forever.
http://tinyurl.com/ynmpu4
30. Misanthropic Scott And, in the absence of life, exactly how do they continue to gnash their teeth?
Ahh, an easy theological mistake to make, especially if you aren’t familiar with God’s Country, also known as the Holy Land or the Promised Land (but which, of course, I mean the England). You see, the great gnashing of teeth actually refers to the ubergot Gnasher, who can live forever, even in an absence of life. You can get the synopsis of the story here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnasher_and_Gnipper but for the full and ancient text you’ll want to see: http://www.beanotown.com/
If you explore Beano Town properly, you’ll also discover the identity of the original and true Denis the Menace and realise that his American cousin is in fact a nancy-boy daisy pressing softy.