The Anti-Manichaeist

Frank Rich’s recent article points out how religious conservatives in Blue America are only getting largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment, which still doesn’t have a prayer of rounding up the two-thirds majority needed for its passage. He points out the hypocripsies of Fox News and how media capitalism is more responsible for a decline in traditional values than anything else and yet, they fall under the radar of the religious right.

Rich underscores the tentative nature of the political influence of the religious right by pointing to how the Republican party’s three biggest stars in post-Bush Republican politics are

Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All are supporters of gay rights and opponents of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. Only Mr. McCain calls himself pro-life, and he’s never made abortion a cause. None of the three support the Bush administration position on stem-cell research.

IMO, such is the consequence of the prevalence of poorly developed habits of political deliberation among the religious right. They do not submit their leaders to sufficient scrutiny and demand that they innovate in the political strategies meant to acheive their objectives, rather than deliver their votes reliably and cheaply to the economic conservatives that still predominate over the republican party.

For example, let us take Ron Sider, his failure to mention the likely futility of passing a heterosexual marriage constitutional amendment in his pre-election letter to prism-epistle readers makes me wary of the extent that he and the NAE are truly committed to delineating factual understanding for us evangelicals. The man never mentioned the likely consequences of what laws would be more likely to change as a consequence of Bush being elected rather than Kerry. This is something he should have apologized for in the more recent prism e-pistle news-letter.

Now, if the fault lied solely with the lack of habits of political deliberation among many religious conservatives, we would be in big trouble. Habits of political deliberation don’t change dramatically over night, but the fault also lies in the political solidarity on a narrow range of issues caused by the cultural wars. Therefore, if we can depoliticize abortion and take the winds out of the sails of gay-rights activists that want legal gay-marriages, the religious right will need to reconsider the issues on which they are politically active. And that will no doubt reduce their solidarity as a voting group. Instead, they will need to debate and therein deliberate.
dlw