Partisanship: It’s always been that way

President Donald Trump has all but thrown his support to Roy Moore, the twice-ousted former judge in Alabama who is now running for the Senate seat vacated by now-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Given that Moore is now facing charges that, as a much younger man, he had been involved with underage girls; and the ongoing #metoo movement that has highlighted sexual harassment, a lot of angry folks are asking if the strong Christian support for Moore was based solely on, shall we say, his “tribal” identity as a Republican.

But here’s something that folks don’t often understand: It’s always been that way, going back decades — and I’m talking about the early 1980s.

With the exception of a church I attended in suburban Atlanta in 1980, my brushes with the “religious right” took place generally on Christian media, which was pretty hard-right and very supportive of modern conservatism and, in practice, the Republican Party. The "700 Club’s" Pat Robertson had guests on his show that I knew not to be “born again” but were there to support that worldview. The Rev. Charles Stanley, then and now pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta (and whose “In Touch” radio broadcasts I’ve listened to for years), once said, “God isn’t a Republican or a Democrat — and He certainly isn’t a Democrat!” Stanley, by the way, was involved from the beginning with the late Moral Majority.

In 1992 I attended the opening of the campaign office for Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, which was covered on television; I ended up doing a little bit of volunteer work (though I wouldn’t do so today). Not long after that, one of the women in the singles ministry at the church I attend today who saw me said she was shocked to see me there, saying, “I thought all Christians were Republicans!” In fact, no — most African-American evangelicals are still Democrats because the conservatism that dominates the GOP is odious to most of us.

Let’s move to Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.

When the former was up for Supreme Court justice law professor Anita Hill testified during his hearing about his sexual harassment. There was more, however: ABC News “Nightline” mentioned three other women set to testify and the Wall Street Journal published a front-page story, “Strange Justice,” that corroborated such claims; in his book “Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative,” then right-wing journalist David Brock said that Ricky Silberman, one of Thomas’ patrons, responded angrily, “He did it, didn’t he?”

Brock, by contrast, was part of the right-wing media conspiracy, the subject of the book, to take down Clinton, who never has been credibly charged with rape or sexual harassment; indeed, we’d have never even heard of Monica Lewinsky had it not been for Linda Tripp, who worked in the White House, hated him with a passion and got together with “independent counsel” Ken Starr and lawyers for Paula Jones and cooked up the illegal perjury trap that led to Clinton’s impeachment. Should he have resigned? I don’t think so, because it was a setup. In fact, I’d say that his enemies should have done time. And there are many more examples besides.

The book of Ecclesiastes mentions, “There’s nothing new under the sun.” If you think that today’s hyper-partisanship is new, I can assure you that you haven’t been paying attention.