The new religious right

THE SPECTATOR [UK] - By James Forsyth - February 26, 2007 The three leading contenders for the Republican nomination are two divorcees and a Mormon. Hardly, an ideal choice for the Christian conservative establishment. The rest of the field does, though, contain two candidates with seemingly sound religious right credentials, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee. What makes them more interesting than previous candidates from this wing of the Republican Party is that their agendas go far beyond the standard liturgy of the religious right. Brownback and Huckabee are both solidly pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Both want Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that declared broad bans on abortion unconstitutional, overturned. Both argue against gay marriage with Huckabee declaring that, “Until Moses comes down with two stone tablets from Brokeback Mountain saying he's changed the rules, let's keep it like it is.” Yet, this is not where their politics end. Huckabee, the former governor of Bill Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, is an evangelist for healthy eating. He lost 110 pounds after being diagnosed with type 2-diabetes. Much to the ire of fiscal conservatives, he has pumped State money into various healthy lifestyle programmes. Small government conservatives have been irritated by what they see as his nannying bans on smoking and unhealthy school vending machines. This is not the first time that Huckabee has broken with Republican orthodoxy. Back in 1996, he pushed through a conservation tax to help pay for environmental upkeep. Brownback touts an even more diverse set of issues. Even those who recoil from his social views, regard him as one of the most committed humanitarians in the Senate. He is the leading voice for US intervention in Darfur and a major proponent of increased US funding for AIDS prevention. Domestically, Brownback is also an advocate of penal reform. The significance of Brownback and Huckabee’s agendas is that it means they have to work with those who do not share their social and cultural views to get things done: Huckabee has teamed up with Bill Clinton on healthy eating, Brownback has done the same with Barack Obama on AIDS. This has led both of them to publicly step away from the shrill rhetoric traditionally associated with the religious right. Huckabee confessed to an interviewer last year, “we’ve not been very good about depicting the Christian evangelical faith. We’ve done a lousy job, sometimes focusing more on what we seem to be against than what we’re for… we’ve done a lousy job of communicating warmth and heart.” While Brownback famously apologised to Hillary Clinton for having hated her at a meeting of a Senate prayer group saying “I felt righteous. That’s not a Christian virtue.” Since then, the unlikely pairing of Brownback and Clinton has worked together on various bills. Brownback and Huckabee’s tone stands in stark contrast to that of the previous generation of leaders of the religious right. Days after 9/11, Jerry Falwell, a co-founder of the Moral Majority, fulminated “that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen’.” Falwell’s statement, which he made on the radio show of another key figure on the religious right--Pat Robertson, caused such a furore that in the patriotic atmosphere following 9/11 Falwell felt obliged to apologise. But the remarks were not out of keeping with the way in which the old religious right with its narrow outlook has conducted politics. By contrast, a religious right with an agenda that goes beyond abortion and gay rights could help end the needless polarisation that so cripples the US political system. http://www.spectator.co.uk/online-edition/exclusive/28182/the-new-religious-right.thtml FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.