June 24, 2008 marked the first major, deliberate attack on the credibility of Barack Obama’s faith by a mainstream Evangelical. Using his Focus on the Family radio address, Dr. James Dobson spent 18 minutes tirading against Obama - charging the candidate of conducting a “lowest common denominator” approach to morality and a “fruitcake interpretation” of the constitution. Alert the presses: The Quadrennial American Religious Political Holy War had begun.
Forget that Dobson vowed never to vote for John McCain only months ago, or that Obama is a former lecturer of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. In any event, the chattering class similarly readied their spectacles for the first shots in the 2008 Religious-Political Battle; for the other shoe to drop. Just as Dobson had assumably hoped for, Evangelical leader after Evangelical leader hit the presses and the airwaves adding their two-cents in response to the radio address.
The catch? The lion's share of Evangelical leaders that chose to speak up came quickly to Senator Obama's defense. Dobson took the hard end of the press cycle; he had pulled the trigger, and the gun had backfired.
The day following the address, this headline appeared across the blogosphere: "Dr. Dobson Has Just Handed Obama Victory", the summary of an editorial authored a fellow pro-life Evangelical, Frank Schaefer. Schaefer writes:
“the new generation of evangelicals is sick of . . . their association with fossils like Dobson. There are many evangelicals . . . who are not all about homophobia, nationalism, war-without-end and American exceptionalism or the Republican Party. . . . . they believe that America has a responsibility to do something about global warming, poverty, AIDS, human trafficking and other issues. They see through Dobson and the other so-called pro-life leaders,”
Schaefer wasn’t alone in his criticism; that same day, well known Texas Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell launched the collaborative:
www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com
On the website, there is a side-by-side of Dobson's charges and Obama's actual statements. In addition to the rebuttal, Caldwell’s launch includes (as of today) over 12,000 signatures – growing daily - from cosigners to an anti-Dobson creed that includes the following:
“Dobson doesn’t speak for me . . . when he uses religion as a wedge to divide . . . when he speaks as the final arbiter on the meaning of the Bible . . . when he denigrates his neighbors views when they don’t line up with his. . . ."
Another political action committee - Matthew 25 - held a high dollar fundraiser condemning Dobson's action and seeking donations for a political response.
Throughout the press cycle that week, Dobson suffered a barrage of dissent from his Christian peers in the political arena. Pastor Jim Wallis, head of Sojourners Group in Washington D.C. was equally critical. Wallis contributed an editorial that echoed Schaefer and Caldwell, reminding viewers that Dobson wasn't in attendence at the 2006 Call to Renewal address he chose to attack, but that he himself was:
"Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals . . . [belonging to] part of a much wider and deeper agenda. That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to James Dobson . . . evangelical votes are in play this election year, especially among a new generation, and are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for James Dobson's attack”
The list went on. Peter Wehner, a self-described evangelical conservative and former assistant deputy to President Bush contributied material to the Washington Post:
“If Christian conservatives want to be taken seriously, they need to make serious arguments and speak with intellectual integrity. In this instance, Dobson didn't. He has set back his cause and made some of us who are evangelicals and conservatives wince.”
The number of not simply journalists or talking heads, but true Evangelicals that distanced themselves from Dobson and his stance against Obama has thusfar heavily outweighed those in Dobson’s corner. Pastors like Rick Warren and T.D. Jakes have spoken very warmly about Obama's candidacy; the candidate has received some criticism from the black church, but far more enthusiastic support. He has even received more donations from pastors and clergymen nationwide. This is all part of a far-wider phenomenon that Dobson either failed to calculate or has no problem with isolating.
This is not to say that no one applauded Dobson's opinions. Most notably, Pat Buchanan gave the Doctor a nod with an editorial and press appearances in his support. Buchanan defended the Focus on the Family radio address, declaring that:
“Obama . . . is now preaching a kumbaya Christianity where leaders who believe abortion is the killing of the innocent unborn are to set their convictions and cause aside in the name of ecumenical amity.
There can be no peaceful coexistence in a cultural war because it is at root a religious war. Far into the future, Americans seem fated to face each other again and again at some disputed barricade.”
But the irony of Dobson's response is how well it represents the divisive, single-sided religiosity that many in the Evangelical church have become embarrassed by, and tired of defending at the behest of their own convictions.
It is because pro-life leaders have maintained a rhetoric of life, yet set those convictions aside on issues like war, genocide in Darfur or poverty, that the Evangelical community is waking up to a perceived insincerity of their former allegiances.
It is because leaders like Buchanan themselves choose to wage a cultural war - against not only members of other faiths - but sadly their brothers and sisters in the Christian faith - that many Evangelicals are waking up instead to a gospel of peace, justice and altruism.
Plenty of Evangelical voters will (and certainly do!) scoff at the idea that Obama has a chance to gain traction with the conservative factions of the white church in America. Another four and a half months will pass before any ballots are counted. This type of lost loyalty will be described today and tomorrow by many as a product of a liberal media with an anti-Evangelical agenda. Many others - themselves Republican candidates or operatives - know the fuller truth. To Obama’s advantage lie two related streams of momentum that are exponentially working against McCain, neither the consequence of his own doing, but at the core of why he's already running a number of negative ads.
First, as is heavily documented above, the conversation on “values” has changed drastically, and the political tables have turned against our current President - a man who promised us all a compassionate conservatism.
Bush set the bar for Dobson's political reccomendations, and he set it pretty low. Further, the failures of the Bush Administration have only reminded values voters how much they have failed to deliver on.
The unforgivable response to Hurricane Katrina cemented the picture of Bush’s administration as not simply incompetent, but as unconcerned with those in the shadows of our nation. Bush’s non-response to Darfur has outraged a huge number of Evangelicals – especially in the younger generations who pray daily for those suffering there.
There is plenty of evidence of torture and human rights abuses, captured powerfully by the photos at Abu Ghraib and the admonition of human rights abuses against the United States from the international community. All have exposed the hypocrisy of Bush’s "compassionate" conservatism.
There is more anger over the staunch injustice of Scooter Libby’s pardon and Valerie Plame’s outing, not to mention the perceived cover-up in its aftermath within an Evangelical community believing in a just God. Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay have become icons of the GOP’s marriage to corporate financing and electioneering that has shaken both older, fiscally conservative Republicans and young observing minds alike.
Bush’s exit from the recent G8 Summit on climate change and his infamous benediction: “Goodbye from the world’s Biggest Polluter” underscore the arrogance of the Administration elected by those who believe the earth to be God’s own creation; themselves stewards of it. These in concert have exposed the hypocrisy of Bush’s compassionate "conservatism" .
There is a reevaluation of what it means to vote with moral values taking place across this country, opening a window for Barack Obama’s intersection of faith, values and action. Likewise, his message of change understandably resonates to voters of conviction, liberal and conservative alike.
The second front in McCain’s losing battle is the obvious result of the aforementioned: the deflated base of support McCain begins with.
For example, in 2004, 22% of Americans said “moral issues/values” (defined as opposition to abortion & gay marriage primarily) was their top concern for Presidential pick; in 2008, when asked the same question only 8% of Americans respond the same way – a deep cut of nearly 2 in 3 voters.
McCain also faces the challenge of running in the wake of a tremendously unpopular President. Bush’s approval rating – in the mid to high twenty percent range for months now – is roughly half what it was when Bush himself faced re-election. Just think: the last time a President’s approval rating was (almost) as low in election time was 1980.
The political climate then could be summarized as facing deeply strained relationships in Middle East tied to a fuel crisis accompanied a sweeping national mood against the incumbent because of a sinking national economic outlook.
Thus, a good-looking candidate from seen as a Washington outsider cloaked conservative policy in a soaring centrist rhetoric and crushed Jimmy Carter by a 10-1 electoral advantage. The most significant moment in that election for many in remembrance was the eventual victor’s question to America: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” If this situation doesn’t illustrate trouble for John McCain, I’m not sure what could.
Dobson doesn’t seem to understand any of this. Democrats lost the 2004 election because they didn’t understand the importance of communicating, in a way that didn’t sound politically charged, their understanding of how faith and politics collide. Ironically, 2008 might spell the same future for the Republican party.
McCain is already sinking under the collateral damage of the Bush Presidency. While Republicans accuse Obama of playing politics with faith to win an election, it is their own bid for the Presidency that remains at stake for lack of a sound, inspiring message based on the principals of faith.
One of the most lasting legacies that Bush may end up with is the overwhelming burden he has become for McCain. The AP/Pew Research Center reported in late 2007 that Bush’s approval among white evangelicals aged 18-29 has sunk from the high 80s in 2002 to the low 40s in 2007. Of course, this problem has become a compound one now that Obama is the nominee, and is more popular among this age group than any candidate in my lifetime.
This represents half of a generation of voters who have been brought through adolescence and into adulthood under the marriage of the Bush Presidency and the GOP, only to become of political consequence in within the storm of Barack Obama.
Thus, the Bush/GOP relationship becomes a marriage they no longer remain interested in adherence to. The future of the Evangelical church is seeing other people, seeing little in common with John McCain besides their marriage status: divorced.
Hey Dr. Dobson - what did Jesus have to say about that?
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