The Decline of the Conservative Evangelical Movement

New York Times Magazine examines the recent political crisis of the conservative evangelical movement:

Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful, although it would be hard to find a cast of characters more ill fit for those shoes: a lapsed-Catholic big-city mayor; a Massachusetts Mormon; a church-skipping Hollywood character actor; and a political renegade known for crossing swords with the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Nor is the problem simply that the Democratic presidential front-runners — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards — sound like a bunch of tent-revival Bible thumpers compared with the Republicans.

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.

One positive trend here is that the next generation of evangelical leaders are not just obsessed with gays; they're looking at the rest of the bible too:

Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.

More like, “don’t ask, don’t HELL!”

A brief introduction for our friends at Ursinus: those of you who follow me and Fz’s Communism for Dummies column are probably familiar with our ongoing feud with the Internet sinkhole that is Conservapedia. I did not provide the link for their site because a) giving them more web traffic, even negative web traffic, only encourages them, and b) anything bad that can be said about Conservapedia has already been said. Far be it from Fz and I to beat a dead horse.

Instead, let me reveal to you a little-known fact about our feud. We received an email from a Conservapedia sysop who was irrationally angry about a tiny little mention we made in one of our columns that anyone who vandalized Conservapedia would receive 77 virgins in Heaven. Or something like that.

Now, that in itself is not really worth noting. What is worth noting, however, is that said disgruntled sysop made it a point to mention his considerable stint in the U.S. Navy. This struck us at first as an odd thing to say (something along the lines of “Hey! My irrelevant career qualifies me as an intimidating figure, unhampered even by the anonymity of the Internet!”), but, after we stopped laughing, we soon realized its dire implications. Ladies and gentlemen, there are conservatives in our military.

I was just as shocked as you.

Now, I cannot imagine that recruiters don’t screen for this kind of behavior early on in the application process. What that means, then, is that conservatives are hiding their political affiliations – going into the closet, if you will – in order to infiltrate our armed forces. This clearly cannot stand. Can you imagine the damage that would be done to troop morale if conservatives were allowed to work alongside our normal soldiers? There’d be mutinies left and right! Not to mention, of course, that banning conservatives from the military is really in their best interest, too. Were a solitary conservative soldier put in with a company of liberal soldiers, the harassment and hazing that would inevitably result would not only endanger the conservatives’ life and well-being, but ultimately our way of life, as such disunity would dissolve the cohesive bonds which make our armed forces the effective fighting machine it is today.

On behalf of the American people, I am calling on you, our country’s military recruiters, to throw out your policy of “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” in regards to a soldier’s political affiliations and institute strict background checks and screenings to keep conservatives and lesser Republicans from trying to defend America. Be especially wary of those who have voted for Bush, those who advocate things like “strict constructionism,” “Reaganomics,” or “Jesus,” and especially Toby Keith fans. Remain vigilant - the fate of the nation may depend on it.

In Defense of the New York Times (and John Edwards [and liberalism])

The Times has a pretty standard article about John Edwards' trip to New Orleans. It discussed his stated purpose (poverty, of course), listed a few questions from reporters about non-poverty issues (i.e. Louisiana's sad excuses for representatives - particularly Senator Vitter and Congressman Jefferson), and gave his smooth-as-ice responses. It didn't criticize; it didn't cheer. It just told. But, it elicited this response from a reader:

Did he ride into New Orleans in his Porsche, or his private jet?

The Champion of The Poor…as he lives as far away from the poor as possible?

Absurd…only a liberal hallucinator would go for this non-sense…the same crowd that accepts statements like “we voted against the war before we voted for it.”

…same crowd that calls the Iraq war a quagmire, even though we destroyed the 5th largest military in the world in a matter of days, and the amount of casualties sustained thus far is far below any figure that military planners even imagined.”

Liberalism and Islam are the recipe to the destruction of America.

…feel proud liberals.

The NY Times is undermining this nation everyday…this article continues the madness.

I've defended John Edwards against this attack before, but it bears repeating. Someone does not have to be poor to stand up for the poor. Just as it took action on the part of white people to make the goals of the civil rights movement a reality, it will take action on the part of astronomically wealthy people (the only people capable of reaching the highest seats of government) to make any attempt at ending poverty (which is probably a naive goal anyway, but we'll let that slide).

Next, this ridiculous Iraq claim. It isn't a quagmire because we beat the Iraqi army in a matter of days and we didn't have as many casualties as some people thought? First, no one is claiming that the Iraq war is a quagmire because of the Iraqi army. After the first week or two, the war had absolutely nothing to do with the Iraqi army. And second, the quagmire-esque state of a war is not measured by deaths, it is measured by how much progress is being made or is capable of being made. There are plenty of wars in American history that had heaps of casualties but were not quagmires. This guys arguments simply don't deal with the quagmire argument.

At all.

I love that this guy thinks that liberalism and Islam are the harbingers of the destruction of America. Oddly enough, the combination of the two (i.e. Liberal Islam) would solve many of our problems. I, for one, fail to see how equal rights, fairness, and/or worshipping Allah will destroy America, but his conclusion, "...feel proud liberals" has an air of authority, so I'll accept it.

Even if you are a conservative and are offended by the Times' slightly liberal slant (which is nowhere near as noticeable as Fox News' conservative slant), it is a big stretch to say that it is undermining the nation, and that a simple article explaining a candidate's appearance somewhere is "madness." God, what would this guy say if he saw the op-ed page?

The Politics of Transformers

The politics of Transformers? "What politics?" you might ask. Perhaps you only see Transformers as a butt-kicking, if slightly cliched, action movie. Well, my friend, you are hopelessly naive. Just ask Libertas:

The films politics are decidedly pro-American, pro-military, and even *gasp* pro-freedom. Bay’s affection for the American military is obvious in every scene they’re in. They are uniformly portrayed as heroic, extremely competent, selfless, and even kind to Arab children. The theme of the film is spoken out loud more than once: No sacrifice, no victory. And the Autobots have come to liberate us from the terrorist Decepticons because the Autobots believe freedom is the right of everyone. Yes, there is a gentle, somewhat affectionate jab at Bush, but Jon Voight’s Secretary of Defense makes it clear at every turn that the President is running the show.

Steven Spielberg and Bay both exec produced, but make no mistake about it, this is a Michael Bay film all the way; from the booming score to the editing and camera shots. It’s not smart (why does Sam have to save the world by getting that cube to the top of a building when an Autobot could do it in two seconds?), it’s far from perfect, but you’ll have a great time and more than a few hearty laughs despite the lulls. And after all the relativist junk we’ve been suffering through, it does mean something to watch the fight for freedom portrayed with valor, good and evil distinguished, and the dreaded-until-needed military industrial complex save the day.

Am I complimenting the film’s politics because I agree with them? Maybe. Regardless, the world view presented in Tranformers is more than just one that I happen agree with, it’s also new, refreshing, daring, and counter-culture — which counts for something in storytelling.

In the comments, Planetsuz adds his take:

... [I]t was great in one scene when the covert ops guys with the John Turturro character are at odds with the Army soldiers. To defuse the situation Jon Voight says to the covert agents, “You better do what he says. These guys don’t lose.” or words to that effect. Could that be a statement to Harry Reid and all of the Democrats who keep dishonoring our military by saying we’ve lost in Iraq?

I agree completely. Let's face it: Transformers had to be a conservative movie. If liberals had been in charge, humans would have been down on their knees worshiping Megatron faster than you can say "surrender monkey." Then the Cube would have turned every Best Buy and Radio Shack in the country into a Battlebots arena. (If you saw the movie, you know what I'm talking about.) Unfortunately, it turns out that one of the screenwriters of the movie has a blog. And this is what he has to say about the matter:

All this reveals is two thing -- first, this sort of culture score-carding is idiotic. It's way, way beyond wet-brained. The Variety review, for example, pointed out how Optimus Prime sounded like Bush when he said "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." What the reviewer plainly does not know is that is the Big Guy's catchphrase, and if I'd left it out of the first draft a mob of people in cardboard transforming costumes, led by Seth Green and his now full-sized and deadly Robot Chickens, would have gibbed me. I didn't sit there and say "You know what, I should use this movie as a way to express the righteousness of an international crusade of liberation and nation-building." And although I can't speak for Kurtzman and Orci, I don't think that was their gig either.

Second, hopefully this may slooooowly spin you around to the idea that being "pro-American, pro-military and even *gasp* pro-freedom" are not just conservative values. Progressives are also pro-American, pro-military -- in my first draft, the Army guys actually have bigger role, although they're a little grungier and working-class than all shiny and model-y -- and *gasp* pro-freedom. We just believe you serve these values in different ways. Demonizing each other is a way the Bastards in Suits try to jkeep the game going, and keep their little scams in place, so we don't suddenly notice that we're all on the same side, we all support the troops. we all rather like each other, and despite our many disagreements maybe we'd like all the professional hate-mongers to bugger off now, please.

Darn. And I had thought I had another True-Blue Red-Blooded Conservative movie to put in my collection next to Patton.