Politics and Pastors

First it was Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then Rev. John Hagee and John McCain. Given the fallout we might wonder about the precarious relationship between spiritual and political leaders, but this would be the wrong lesson to apply.

The role of religion in post-60s American politics has turned into a one-sided affair, with the Republicans reaping the rewards of an important orthodox and evangelical constituency. Meanwhile, secular Democrats decry this relationship as a violation of some sacrosanct separation of church and state. Leaving aside the constitutional argument, the political one is usually less well understood.

The partisan turning point among evangelicals and other orthodox religious denominations occurred during the Carter presidency. Most evangelicals voted for the Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter over Gerald Ford in hope that he would be sympathetic to their social conservatism. But Carter ignored them in office and then threatened to deprive Christian religious schools of their privileged tax status because of discrimination. Feeling unjustly attacked, evangelicals voted overwhelmingly for Reagan in 1980 and they've been voting conservative ever since. But they were always traditionally conservative and secular Democrats have done little to appeal to these groups beyond scolding them for their participation in politics. In so doing, Democrats have mistakenly attributed religious voters' motivations to religious orthodoxy rather than recognize their legitimate political agenda. For example, evangelicals virtually ignored Pat Robertson's 1980 presidential bid in favor of a more secular, divorced, Hollywood actor.

Republican strategists, first Lee Atwater and later Karl Rove, quickly recognized the political potential of the conservative church-going population. Being strategists, they realized the true power of evangelism was organizational, not doctrinal. In a sense, mega-churches play a role for the political right that most approximates labor unions for the left — they educate, inform, and instruct. In recent decades this organizational capacity has benefited Republicans as evangelical congregations have expanded while labor unions have shrunk. But the bottom line is that religious faith has been inextricably intertwined with American politics since the beginning and religious voters' political preferences are as legitimate as any other in society.

This gets us back to pastors. The track record of ambitious spiritual leaders has been mixed and the list of prominent failings include Ted Haggard, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and the political fortunes of Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. The error Barack Obama made was to have his political career so closely linked with the volatile Rev. Wright. John McCain is not so personally linked with Rev. Hagee, but his strategic error was to seek the easy endorsement of the leadership in order to shore up support among the congregation. True believers are suspicious of subordinating their faith to earthly politics and their politics can often diverge from their pastors. But their political power is not found in their religious beliefs, it's in their regular church-going behavior. One can get a targeted political message out more effectively than with an atomized constituency and the lesson here is that McCain should eschew high level endorsements of preachers and pastors in favor of a grassroots appeal to conservative religious congregations. This is a strategy not really available to or easily countered by Barack Obama. (However, Obama's advantage may lie in his successful use of the Internet.)