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Election 2006: What it means for and to the religious right

Reports and analysis

Christian Right Agenda In Shambles After GOP Defeat

Moderate Evangelicals seen chafing against narrow priorities like abortion, gay rights. Will some work with Dems?

by Larry Cohler-Esses, New York Jewish Week, November 11, 2006

For a man witnessing a debacle in real time, Rev. Louis Sheldon, a leader of the Christian Right political movement, sounded amazingly sanguine Tuesday night – even as an early AP exit poll indicated that almost one-third of white Evangelicals chose a Democrat for Congress.

“We know that in America the people are with us,” insisted the founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, one of the largest groups in the Christian right. “They’re just confused.”

Now, taking a break from monitoring discouraging election returns on television, Sheldon stressed that the defeat of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives signaled no decline for the movement that has been so central to GOP tenure there.

The issues that brought defeat, he said, had nothing to do with his movement. Continue.

Religion and Ethics Newsweekly Election Analysis

WNET-TV, PBS, November 10, 2006

Discussion of how various groups voted (the religious right 70% Republican) with guests: John Green, a fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and a political scientist at the University of Akron; Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington; E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for the Washington Post. Click here.

Some Evangelical Christians Reconsider Their Faith in GOP

by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, San Francisco Chronicle via Common Dreams, November 13, 2006

Pastor Steve Madsen urged the 4,000 people worshiping at his Livermore evangelical church on the Sunday before the election to be sure to vote.

Madsen said he didn't push any issues or candidates, just made clear that parishioners should fulfill their moral duty. But exhortations like this have been a boon to Republican candidates and ballot measures, largely because evangelicals support the party's stances against abortion and same-sex marriage.

Evangelicals showed broad support Tuesday for President Bush and candidates aligned with him, bucking the nationwide trend that cost the GOP the House and Senate. But Republican and evangelical leaders said how the GOP reshapes its moral stances may determine the strength of their ties in the future. Two national Republican leaders said this fall that the party needs to soften some of its ideological positions in order to broaden its base. Continue.

Religious Voting Data Show Some Shift, Observers Say

By Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times, November 9, 2006

Ever since George W. Bush won a second term two years ago by relying on the turnout of his religious conservative base, Democrats have been intent on siphoning off religious voters.

Some liberal religious advocates proclaimed yesterday that the Democratic sweep showed that their party had succeeded in closing what they called the God Gap. But the results are more mixed than that, according to experts who analyze trends among religious voters.

Defying predictions of widespread disillusionment, white evangelical and born-again Christians did not desert Republican Congressional candidates and they did not stay home, nationwide exit polls show. Continue.

Open season on gays is over

Chris Crain, Bay Windows (New England GLBT newspaper), November 8, 2006

The national wave that swept Democrats into power in the U.S. House and perhaps the Senate has brightened the prospect for gay rights legislation in Congress and thrilled activists by knocking off one of the country’s top anti-gay incumbents. Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank is poised to become one of the most influential men in America when he assumes the chairmanship of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. And gays also celebrated the defeat of a broadly worded ban on gay marriage and civil unions in Arizona — the first time that’s happened in 25 states where such measures have been tried. Continue.

Conservatives sifting through the ashes of Tuesday's overwhelming electoral defeat

Christian evangelical leaders start rallying the troops for 'the biggest battle we have faced for our core beliefs' says the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins

Bill Berkowitz, Media Transparency, November 10, 2006

A round-up of the Republicans' defeats and reactions of religious right leaders. Click here.

Evangelical Leader: GOP Got What It Deserved

by The Associated Press, 365Gay.com, November 9, 2006

(Washington) Conservative Christian leader James Dobson accused the Republican party of abandoning values voters in the midterm elections, and paying the price by losing control of Congress.

"What did they do with their power?'' Dobson said in a statement. ``Very little that values voters care about.''

Finger-pointing abounded in the days after Democrats seized control of Congress after 12 years in the minority. Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, issued a statement railing against the Republicans for letting their majorities slip away.

"They consistently ignored the constituency that put them in power until it was late in the game, and then frantically tried to catch up at the last minute,'' said Dobson, who argued that religious conservatives ensured Republican wins in 2004. Continue.

Evangelicals Sour on Politics

A new Beliefnet survey reveals why many born-again Christians have cooled on Republicans and political fray.

by Steven Waldman, BeliefNet.com, November 2006

A large number of evangelical Christians have soured on Republicans and the political fray.

A large number of evangelicals have soured on Republicans and believe that President Bush’s faith has no effect on what kind of President he is, according to a new online survey by Beliefnet (click for full results here).

The results help explain why Democrats improved their standing among evangelicals on Tuesday and suggest Christians are reassessing their attitudes toward politics.

Since many Americans who are described by analysts as "evangelical Christians" don't actually identify themselves that way, the Beliefnet survey instead considered evangelicals to be those who said both that "accepting Jesus as your personal Lord and savior will give you eternal life" and that the "Bible is the inerrant word of God." 770 people answered yes to both questions. Continue.

Losses on ballot measures, including abortion and gay marriage bans, jolt the religious right

David Crary, The Capital-Journal (Topeka, Kansas), November 8, 2006

From the country's heartland, voters sent messages that altered America's culture wars and dismayed the religious right -- defending abortion rights in South Dakota, endorsing stem cell research in Missouri, and, in a national first, rejecting a same-sex marriage ban in Arizona.

Conservative leaders were jolted by the setbacks and looked for an explanation Wednesday. Gay-rights and abortion-rights activists celebrated.

The verdict on abortion rights was particularly clear. Oregon and California voters defeated measures that would have required parents to be notified before a girl under 18 could get an abortion, and South Dakotans -- by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent -- rejected a new state law that would have banned all abortions except to save a pregnant woman's life.

"This was really a rebellion in the heart of red-state, pro-life America -- the heart of the northern Bible Belt," said Sarah Stoesz, head of the Planned Parenthood chapter that oversees South Dakota. "It sends a very strong message to the rest of the country." Continue

Jewish evaluations

Election results offer a chance to reassess Jews’ domestic agenda

OP-ED By Steven Windmueller, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 15, 2006

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 15 (JTA) — In light of the midterm election results, a new level of political engagement for Jewish community activists has emerged around the domestic agenda. The transition of U.S. congressional power from Republicans to Democrats will allow Jewish organizations involved in multiple issues to assert core social-policy concerns. Continue.

Assessing the 2006 Midterm Elections

By Jason Isaacson and Richard Foltin, American Jewish Committee, November 15, 2006

Toward the end of their 9-page analysis, the writers turn to issues relevant to this website:

If Middle East policy (excepting Iraq), energy and immigration reform afford the prospect of bipartisan cooperation, the religious liberty area presents a set of issues for which the best that can be said is that we are unlikely to see a reprise of several troubling assaults on the separation of church and state – largely the result of GOP attention to its Christianconservative constituency. The House-passed Public Expression of Religion Act (which would deny attorneys’ fees to a successful plaintiff in a case challenging an Establishment Clause violation, contrary to the normal practice in civil rights cases), as well as Housepassed measures stripping away prohibitions on religion-based employment discrimination in government financed social service programs administered by faith-based organizations, and rolling back the military’s efforts to assure that chaplains provide a “pluralistic ministry,” will not likely move forward again.
On a more proactive level, it may be that the Workplace Religious Freedom Act will advance, if Democratic leaders come to see this antidiscrimination measure as a way to show that they can serve the needs of the religiously observant in a way that Republicans failed to do when the latter were in charge. There is also reason to believe that the Democratic leadership – heading up a more moderate caucus in the 100th, and with James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who chairs the House Faith Working Group, likely to become the new Majority Whip – will look for mechanisms to support faith-based efforts in social service delivery that do not subvent discrimination or break down church-state safeguards.

Click here to read the full analysis, a PDF document.

The view from the religious right

Putting Faith Before Politics

By David Kuo, The New York Times, November 16, 2006

SINCE 1992, every national Republican electoral defeat has been accompanied by an obituary for the religious right. Every one of these obituaries has been premature -- after these losses, the religious right only grew stronger. After the defeat of President George H. W. Bush in 1992, the conventional wisdom held that Christian evangelicals would be chastened. As one major magazine put it, Mr. Bush’s defeat meant that "time had run out on their crusade to create a Christian America." Yet in the next two years, the Christian Coalition grew by leaps and bounds; in 1994, it helped usher in the Gingrich revolution.

In 1996, after Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, Margaret Tutwiler, a Republican strategist, declared that in order for Republicans to win, "We’re going to have to take on the religious nuts." Two years later, after Republicans failed to gain any ground on Democrats -- despite Mr. Clinton’s impeachment -- John Zogby, the pollster, concluded that "Christian absolutism" scared voters. Wrong again. Those same Christian "absolutists" helped sweep George W. Bush into office in 2000.

Jesus was resurrected only once. The religious right has been resurrected at least twice in just the past 15 years. Continue.

As Democrats Take Over Congress, Conservatives Seek Silver Lining

Pro-Family Leaders Agree -- Voters Rejected Liberal Republicans, Not GOP Values

By Jeff Johnson and Jenni Parker, AgapePress, November 9, 2006

In the aftermath of the U.S. midterm elections, many conservative analysts are concluding that the Democrats' takeover of the House -- and possibly also the Senate -- had less to do with waning support for the Republican Party and more to do with many voters' disillusionment over Republicans who have failed to live up to their word or to conservative ideals. Continue.

Dr. Dobson Says GOP Abandoned Values Voters

What's next for the pro-family movement?

by Pete Winn, Focus on the Family, November 10, 2006

"...On his national radio broadcast today, Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson said he rejects the idea that the change in Congress somehow represents an end of the pro-family agenda. 'The way that it is being spun by the media and even by some Republicans is that this is a rejection by the American people of the pro-family agenda, the values-voters' perspective,' ..." Click here for the report, which also quotes Gary Bauer saying the religious right will fight on.

A Pounding at the Polls

Why Conservatives Lost

By Chuck Colson, Prison Fellowship, Breakpoint, November 9, 2006

Election Day is over, the votes have been counted, and it’s clear that conservatives took a beating. I have always maintained that Christian leaders should not make partisan endorsements—and I never have. But I am unashamed to say that I am a conservative.

In one sense, I think, all Bible-believers are conservative, because we believe in governing our lives by revealed truth rather than by man-made, utopian ideologies. Modern liberalism wants to remove all restraints on people’s behavior. Conservatives believe in the moral law. So Bible-believers might be liberal on a lot of issues, at least in the common sense of that word, like helping the poor, but they would be fundamentally conservative in their disposition toward life.

So, what happened in Tuesday’s election? The economy is strong. And it’s true we’re in an unpopular war, but people vote their pocketbooks most often. Yet the conservative movement, which had been gaining ground, has blown it. It has been defeated. Why?

The answer is one that may startle you. Conservatives lost because they deserved to. They failed to live up to the high standards of personal behavior they preach about. And that’s what brought them down. Continue.