A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on April 3rd, 2008 in Progressive Faith

Robert Jones has an interesting article in Religious Dispatches that deals with EJ Dionne‘s contention that the Religious Right is dead. But the evidence cited by Dr. Jones shows that Dionne is probably exaggerating quite a bit. He writes:

…James Dobson’s sprawling conglomerate has its own zip code in Colorado Springs and a larger monthly print circulation than the New York Times) and argue that it will not so easily wither on the vine.

Count me among those arguing against withering.

Dr. Jones’ own research, the article states, identifies the Evangelical community as split by “one-fifth, one-third, one-half”, with a fifth being liberal, a half being conservative, and a third somewhere between (which leaves 7/30 of the Evangelical population unaccounted for – nit, nit, nit). No one who has lived or worked with the Evangelical community would doubt that such a split exists. But I think I’ll have to disagree with Dr. Jones about what that split means.

He cites statistics from the Pew Center to discuss his point. From the start, I have some problems with the data.

Update: Dr. Jones emailed me to tell me that I am in error and the data presented in the chart represents percentages, not raw numbers of respondants. I apologize for the error. The problem is that the numbers don’t add up as percentages, either.

In the two groups of “Left/Center” and “Right”, according to this data, we would end up with 92% of Democrats, 47% of Independents, and 97% of Republicans being accounted for. What about the remaining 8% of Democrats, 53% of Independents, and 3% of Republicans? There are always rounding errors, but more than half of all Independents were neither Left, Center, or Right? Excuse me, but what else is there? And how is there only a difference of 17 between 31 and 61?

Update II: Dr. Jones was kind enough to double-check the numbers and find a typo, and those have now been corrected. The percentages should add up in each column. /update

Dr. Jones is correct, however, that 23% of the sample being Liberal does put it squarely within his “one-fifth, one-third, one-half split. But we are still left floundering to figure out how many the moderates (or center) represent. We can sort of triangulate around it, though. Whatever number they represent, they are 77% of the sample – roughly three and a third times as large as the liberals. Whether that works out to a third of the whole, I’ll leave to someone more mathematically inclined.

But the numbers are still skewed by plugging the Center and Left together. If we remove the support of liberals from gay rights issues, for example, support for the right of gay adults to adopt drops to eighteen percent. Support for equal marriage rights – including the name “marriage” – drops to only 1%. This isn’t an issue where we’re split? Come on!

The Religious Right isn’t pushing it because they’ve already been successful. Marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman in forty-three states and gays are prohibited from marriage by Constitution in twenty-six states. There just isn’t much more room to push that issue.

On abortion, the center is a little more closely split – 33% say they “lean pro-choice” – whatever that means and 35% favor the use of the morning-after pill. Those are sizeable minorities, but they are still minorities. When you figure that it is unqualified opposition versus qualified support, it’s all but assured that such things will happen. That’s why South Dakota is going to vote on abortion bans yet again. Coupled with liberals, these “pro-choice moderates” represent a thin majority within their coalition. Viewed from the whole (with conservatives added back in), (we) they are a minority.

Stem-cell research does a bit better – 45% of the coalition that supports that are moderates. It’s still a minority, but it’s sizeable enough to matter. But the aggregated data doesn’t delve into the issues that make people balk. What if they are embrionic stem cells? What if public funds are used? What if new genetic lines are opened? What if the government specifically pays women to get their embrionic stem cells? A “No” on these questions can turn a “support” into a “doesn’t support”.

48% of Center/Left people interpret the Bible literally. I would argue that it is impossible to be a literalist and a liberal, so that accounts for a big chunk of moderates – more than half of them. Scarily, half of the Center/Left coalition think the Bible is more important than democratic will in setting law – something that is directly opposed to liberal thought. The folks in the center are not that moderate, after all.

The problem is that the Religious Right is the one that determines what is moderate. They have their “zero-tolerance” stance and anything to the left of that is moderate. So the Evangelical center is still well to the right of the larger public’s center.

I don’t doubt Dr. Jones’ integrity or his conclusions – any flaw in the Pew data is just that and he has his own data set to go by. What I doubt is the jump that says “Therefore the Religious Right is dead or dying.” They aren’t. They have successfully taken marriage equality off the table in vast portions of the state. They have stopped public funding of abortions. They have banned IDX procedures.

If anything, the Religious Right is looking for new management. There is no doubt that new issues will crop up – the old ones are largely won. No candidate will openly embrace marriage equality this year. If universal healthcare gets serious discussion, look for it to get hung-up over public funding of abortions – and watch the good old Religious Right lead the charge. With their concentration in the Southern states, they will wield inordinate power in the US Senate (and more power in the House than they used to).

Reagan and Nixon rode to power by winking and grinning at Southern conservative Evangelicals that were put-out with the political establishment that overlooked them and considered them irrelevant. The fastest way to add a third name to that list is to repeat that mistake.

Update III Rev. Debra Haffner wrote about the same topic at her blog, but had trouble leaving a comment here. Frickin’ Haloscan…

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