The final frontier

I have mentioned in other entries that during services on the Sunday after last year's general election, the pastor of my interracial evangelical church had all of us African-Americans stand and then instructed the rest of the congregation lay hands on us, saying that "a spiritual stronghold has been broken."

He did that because he knew he had a politically divided congregation, with most of the whites likely supporting John McCain for president that year, indeed, two weeks previously he preached against such division during the campaign. (This is an evangelical church, after all, and polls indicated that 70 percent of white evangelicals nationally backed the Republican candidate.) By contrast, 95 percent of African-Americans, regardless of faith affiliation, supported Barack Obama.

I've been heartened with the serious efforts that have been made over the past couple of decades toward racial reconciliation among evangelicals -- the Promise Keepers started it all, of course, and some denominations and parachurch groups have made serious strides toward such harmony. However, we have yet to address the ideological differences that still exist, and until that's done we will not achieve it.

Because, bottom line, the issue is one of worldview.

When I became a Christian in 1979, the conservative movement in general and "religious right" in particular was just kicking into gear, with its primary target being government, especially the Feds. The complaint was that it had overstepped its constitutional authority by passing laws and using tax money for purposes it didn't agree with, most notably "Great Society" programs that benefited the poor. More to the point, however, conservatives demonstrated an assumption that authority, whether cultural, social or political, was their right.

African-Americans, on the other hand, historically have had different issues. Most identify with the civil-rights movement, which used the Federal government, including court decisions and legal remedies, to obtain justice (because state and local authorities opposed their efforts). And they -- we -- didn't have the same access to the power structure; thus, it had to be done through moral appeals.

Sadly, in part for that reason, the civil-rights movement eventually pitted one set of Christians against another set of Christians. Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1955 was just a local pastor in Montgomery, Ala., was later denounced as a Communist, and the resentment among white conservatives became so strong toward the national Democratic Party for supporting civil rights that in 1966 the Republican Party, practically non-existent in the South then but already leaning to the right nationally, saw an opening and began running candidates there.

That's the reason that you almost never see African-Americans on Christian TV or hear them on Christian radio; when you do it's in support of the "approved" viewpoint that doesn't accurately reflect the overall views of the black community -- which generally aren't right-wing. I find very interesting that conservatives talk about reaching out to the black community but simply to put a "black face" -- and yes, you can take that as a pun -- on policies and attitudes most blacks just don't accept.

Talk-show blowhard Rush Limbaugh said that, after Obama won that high percentage of the black vote, his color was the primary reason that African-Americans voted for him. Nonsense -- had McCain been black and Obama white, blacks (even evangelicals) would still have voted for Obama, overwhelmingly, or turned out for Hillary Clinton in virtually identical numbers had she won the Democratic nomination. And I'm sure you noticed that the anti-Obama "tea party" movement that got started in April is virtually all-white -- think that's a coincidence? African-Americans just don't have the fear of government that white conservatives do.

For there to be true reconciliation between black and white evangelical Christians, whites have to understand the views and histories of their black brothers and sisters and not believe that they have the last word when it comes to social and political involvement. (For what its worth, African-Americans already understand the conservative view and have rejected it; it's up to the conservatives to find out why.)

Conservatives forgot their history, not their "principles"

With the disaster of the last general election, conservatives are taking stock of their future prospects for success — or at least they think they are. But as things stand now, get ready for the same old, same old.

As New York Times columnist David Brooks pointed out in a recent piece, the traditionalist school believes that conservatism lost because of its hypocrisy, preaching “smaller government and lower taxes” while spending gobs of public money on even their own pet projects and becoming entrenched in the ways of Washington.
 

That sounds good, except for one thing: It isn’t true.

What really killed the conservative movement was that its tactics of divide-and-conquer, reducing campaigns to class and culture wars as far back as the Nixon years but which found the motherlode in 1980, finally stopped working. Its political class from the start acted as though power and authority were its birthright, and its propaganda machine was exposed about a decade ago. In short, it never intended to answer to anyone else, let alone the public — and that cultural arrogance brought it down.

In fact, what we call modern conservatism had four distinct pillars that normally didn’t mesh: 1) libertarians, who really do believe in less government; 2) social conservatives, including the “religious right”; 3) business groups; and 4) neo-conservatives, including Cold Warriors. That coalition hung together as long as the Federal government remained the target, but things started to crumble with the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Iron Curtain.

As a result, libertarians became at odds with the neo-cons, who were often former liberals who believed in using governmental power to promote conservative ideals; the business groups, who contributed highly-paid lobbyists to subvert the process; and the social conservatives who, they believed, wanted a theocracy. Corporate honchos ran afoul of the social conservatives because of their tomcatting. And so on, and so on…

That’s why Bill Clinton became a threat when he ran for president in 1992.

Chairman of the business-friendly Democratic Leadership Council, Clinton managed to shear off the business wing of the Reagan coalition, causing no end of consternation for the conservatives desperate to regain dominance. They thought they had succeeded with the gimmickry of the 1994 “Contract On” — whoops — “With America” during the midterm election and became sure that they could build on it.

However, the next year Clinton booby-trapped the freshman House Republicans in a showdown over the Federal budget, offering a balanced budget but saving the social programs they wanted to be cut, the standoff leading to two government shutdowns for which the GOP was blamed. That skirmish ensured Clinton’s reelection and prompted the conservative apparatus to trigger a failed impeachment, in part because it now understood that the populace really wanted Social Security and Medicare, among other programs. Eventually, thanks indirectly to Hillary Clinton’s complaint about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” (which was true for the most part), the right-wing media machine was exposed.

Ultimately, however, it was conservatives’ failure, especially under George W. Bush, to govern properly that has driven them into exile — the debacle of the war in Iraq and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, plus the Jack Abramoff-fueled lobbying scandal and James Dobson’s ineffective “Stand for the Family” rallies in battleground states during the 2006 general election. Still reeling, the early “October surprise” of the September financial meltdown not only finished off John McCain but, perhaps more importantly, gave more seats in both houses of Congress to the Democrats.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum was quoted in an article, “The Fall of Conservatism” published in May in The New Yorker, as saying that “the problems in the Republican Party will not be fixed.” I think he’s right, because the political right is now in denial — trying to figure out how to sell its ideology to a public that has clearly rejected it. Incredibly, congressional Republicans have hunkered down and remained committed to the cause, evidenced by their unanimous opposition to the financial bailout — but for the foreseeable future they will continue to be little more than irritants with no real power. Serves them right.