Many younger evangelicals are thinking outside the box promoted by their elders, and it may have consequences for the presidential race
Ricardo Luna is a 25-year-old evangelical Christian and a registered Republican who, if the election were today, would vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
Joseph Lange, a 30-year-old evangelical and Republican, will vote for Obama’s GOP opponent, John McCain.
As Nov. 4 approaches, the two men may well symbolize the ongoing change in a culture group largely responsible for President Bush’s victories in 2000 and 2004 — evangelicals. Surveys show younger evangelicals have fractured politically as they have expanded beyond the traditional clutch of issues their elders have staked out as moral values.
Luna, a master’s student at
Lange, a law enforcement agent who also lives in
Lange said he does believe more evangelicals will vote for Obama this year than voted for John Kerry in 2004 or Al Gore in 2000. But he doesn’t think the shift will be huge.
The question is whether the fracturing of the young evangelical vote will be enough to break up the voting bloc largely responsible for Bush’s victories. Bush had the support of 68 percent of all white evangelicals in 2000. In 2004, he got the votes of 79 percent.
The answer: It’s not clear.
A July Pew survey found that Obama trailed McCain among white evangelicals by 36 points. That was less than the 43 points by which Kerry trailed Bush at the same time in 2004. But a new Pew survey released last week found that McCain’s support among white evangelicals has climbed 6 points since July, while Obama’s had remained largely unchanged. Undecided, white evangelicals appear to be moving toward McCain in the final weeks of the campaign.
And, as The Economist recently reported, McCain’s lead of 44 points among white evangelicals in a September Pew survey was larger than Bush’s 30-point lead over Gore in the summer of 2000.
But there’s no doubt that younger evangelicals are less united, politically, than their parents. A September 2007 Pew survey found that white evangelicals ages 18-29 are less approving of the job Bush is doing than white evangelicals who are 30 and over. Since 2001, the survey found, party identification among young, white evangelicals has shifted away from Republicans (a 15-point loss) to independents (a 10-point gain) and Democrats (a 5-point gain).
A larger universe of moral issues
Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at
“You have on the one hand Chuck Colson and James Dobson, who persist in saying the only salient moral issues are abortion and same sex marriage,” he said, but younger evangelicals see a larger universe of moral issues that includes global warming, the environment, AIDS and poverty.
“If you press (younger evangelicals), they will say, ‘I am pro life,’ or ‘I believe homosexuality is a sin.’ But there is no passion behind this,” Balmer said, adding that sexual orientation is less of an issue to younger evangelicals than it is for the older generation, which seems obsessed by it.
Balmer said the battle over abortion has made younger evangelicals perhaps more leery of the political process than their elders.
“The younger generation is recognizing that abortion is becoming something of a canard,” Balmer said. There was a period between the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court and the mid-term elections in 2006 when Republicans controlled all three branches of the
That different way of looking at the world that some younger evangelicals bring to the political dialogue is straining what had been a coalition of evangelicals. At the same time, other evangelical voices are rising to take the place of the elder statesmen of the movement.
Folks like Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in
Abortion and homosexuality remain important
The combination of new leaders and the expansion of what constitutes a moral value means that abortion and homosexuality remain important but not always make-or-break issues for younger evangelical voters.
Luna said he wishes abortion didn’t happen, but electing Bush, who he called an “incompetent president,” didn’t make it illegal. And Luna doesn’t believe making abortion illegal would stop abortion — it would simply drive it underground. He said he wants to see a greater focus on education and communication that might help reduce the number of abortions.
That doesn’t mean Luna takes a completely liberal stance on abortion. Though he supported Obama early on because of his stance on health care, he later became disenchanted because of the Democrat’s opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which extends legal rights to infants born alive after failed abortion attempts and requires attempts to save them. Obama opposed the act in the Illinois Legislature, saying it would undermine Roe v. Wade. Congress and the president approved the law in 2002.
Referring to that act, Lange called Obama’s stance on abortion “ultra-liberal.” He said wants to see more pro-life judges appointed to the Supreme Court and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“I’m very pro-choice. You can choose to have sex or choose to not have sex. But once you do, you have to live with the consequences,” Lange said.
On homosexuality, Luna agreed with Balmer, saying he wants the government to have “nothing to do with my bedroom.” He said the same should apply to homosexuals, and he supports civil unions.
Lange said he doesn’t hate homosexuals.
“I think God loves them. They should be welcome to come into the church, accepted and loved, but I don’t think they should be ministers,” he said. “… In the same way, if a pastor is having sex with anyone other than his wife, I don’t think he should be a pastor.”
Deciding who to support
Since first becoming disillusioned with Obama, Luna has moved to supporting Ron Paul, considering Mike Huckabee, remaining undecided for awhile, supporting McCain and, currently, moving back to Obama’s camp. In addition to being passionate about abortion, Luna said he is concerned about what are less conventional issues for evangelicals, such as access to medical care and retirement, because his faith drives him to want to help people.
Luna said the sex scandals of the last few years that dogged members of the “so-called party of God,” along with the Republican Party’s lack of charity, have made him open to voting for Obama despite the Democratic candidate’s stance on abortion. Luna said he’s a big fan of the free market and small government, which is why he supported Paul for a time.
“But we need some socialist controls to balance out the lack of caring of the ultra-conservative right, and so that’s why I swing back and forth,” Luna said.
Lange said he began the election cycle as “one of those Ron Paul fanatics” because of his belief in limited government and personal responsibility — the second a belief he said matches with God’s giving people the choice to take responsibility for their eternity by choosing to follow Jesus or not.
While Lange views McCain as too moderate and disagrees with him on many issues — including the recently approved financial bailout McCain supported — he agrees with McCain on what he considers three critical issues — guns, the
Will the youth break up the evangelical voting bloc?
Not everyone is sold on the idea that evangelicals are splintering in their support for the Republican Party.
Evangelicals will follow the Republican platform, at least “for the most part,” said Ginnie Robertson, a 58-year-old evangelical living in
As a small-business owner, she supports lower taxes. As a Christian, she said she’s “adamantly pro-life” and conservative on other social issues. The active volunteer with the
Many evangelical leaders are working to prevent a shift to the left. There are plenty of signs that the religious right is alive and well.
Vision America rallies in
Scarborough, speaking at the
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Many right-leaning evangelicals respond to the shift among some of their youth by pointing out that evangelicals, who make up roughly a quarter of America’s population, have the potential to decide elections if they vote together. While 25 percent voted in 2000, 50 percent voted in 2004. Scarborough said during the
“You can pray until the cows come home, but sooner or later you’ve got to realize, folks, that faith without works is dead,”
Putting faith above politics
Luna and Lange, who are close friends, agreed that they can build close relationships and live in fellowship with those who don’t share their political beliefs. Luna said in evangelical churches “it’s becoming less taboo to be something other than a Republican” and referred to bestselling evangelical author Donald Miller, 37, who has endorsed and campaigned on behalf of Obama, as a future leader of the church.
Luna said the shift toward more political diversity in the church comes in part from a realization that actions such as “having a beer” aren’t sins. Not doing what God wants is sin, and defining it is sometimes more complicated than focusing on traditionally hot-button issues.
Lange said there are more core issues to his faith than political views, which is why he can befriend those with whom he does not always agree politically.
“If you are a Christian, then we can fellowship and that’s the most important thing, and if you aren’t a Christian, then my hope is that someday we can have that,” Lange said. “Either way, Jesus is what we have in common, whether it’s something that we have now or whether it’s something that I want us to have.”
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