Oh my. It appears that editors at the New York Times has veered back into what could be called “evangelical voter monolith mode” once again.
I base that comment on the thesis paragraphs of a recent Times report that ran with the headline, “‘Saved by Grace’: Evangelicals Find a Way Forward With Herschel Walker.” That story was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). I will return to the Walker drama in a minute.
But before we go there, let’s pause and flash back to a Gray Lady report from a few months ago that ran with this headline: “As a ‘Seismic Shift’ Fractures Evangelicals, an Arkansas Pastor Leaves Home.” It’s the first half of that headline that interests us, right now. Here is some of the crucial language:
Across the country, theologically conservative white evangelical churches that were once comfortably united have found themselves at odds over many of the same issues dividing the Republican Party and other institutions. …
Michael O. Emerson, a sociologist at the University of Illinois Chicago, described a “seismic shift” coming, with white evangelical churches dividing into two broad camps: those embracing [Donald] Trump-style messaging and politics, including references to conspiracy theories, and those seeking to navigate a different way.
That’s accurate, of course. Anyone who has followed evangelical debates in the Trump era knows that the big story is rooted in tension, pain and divisions — not monolithic unity about how to approach politics.
At the same time, evangelicals are still facing a crushing binary reality when they approach election-day decisions — trying to decide, in some cases, between what they view as flawed GOP candidates and Democratic candidates whose stances on First Amendment and sanctity-of-life issues put them in a “can’t go there” category.
Evangelicals of various kinds do not agree on how to handle that, falling into camps that resemble the 2016 and 2020 national elections.
Thus, here is a flashback to my Trump-era evangelical voter typology from several years ago. When reading it this time, simply substitute “Walker” for “Trump” and apply these camps to White, Black (they exist) and Latino (they exist) evangelical/charismatic voters in Georgia. I will help with some strategic fill-in-the blank lines in this tweaked edition:
(1) Many evangelicals supported _____ from the get-go. For them, Trump is great and everything is going GREAT.
(2) Other evangelicals may have supported _____ early on, but they have always seen him as a flawed leader — but the best available. They see him as complicated and evolving and are willing to keep their criticisms PRIVATE.
(3) There are evangelicals who moved into _____'s tent when it became obvious he would win the GOP nomination. They think he is flawed, but they trust him to — at least — protect their interests, primarily on First Amendment issues.
(4) Then there are the lesser-of-two-evils _____ evangelicals. … They think religious conservatives must be willing to criticize _____ — in public.
(5) There are evangelicals who never backed _____ and they never will. Many voted for third-party candidates. They welcome seeing what will happen when _____ team people are put under oath and asked hard questions. … .
(6) Folks on the evangelical left simply say, "No _____, ever." Anything he touches is bad and must be rejected. …
This brings us back to the new Times piece on senate-candidate Walker and the evangelical monolith in the state of Georgia. After a dramatic prayer scene on behalf of Walker, readers move to the thesis statement material. This is long, but crucial:
The scene, a private event revealed in videos shared on social media, reflected the evangelical language of sin and salvation, persecution and deliverance. It was a ritual of sanctification, the washing away of sin and declaration of a higher call.
The Senate race in Georgia has become an explicit matchup of two increasingly divergent versions of American Christianity. Mr. Walker reflects the way conservative Christianity continues to be defined by its fusion with right-wing politics and tolerance for candidates who, whatever their personal failings or flaws, advance its power and cause. Mr. Walker has wielded his Christianity as an ultimate defense, at once denying the abortion allegations are true while also pointing to the mercy and forgiveness in Jesus as a divine backstop.
Senator Raphael Warnock, his Democratic opponent, is a lifelong minister who leads the storied Ebenezer Baptist Church, home to the Christian social activism embodied in the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He has inherited the legacy of the Black civil rights tradition in the South, where faith focuses on not just individual salvation, but on communal efforts to challenge injustices like segregation.
A brief pause to ponder these words about Warnock: “… where faith focuses on not just individual salvation, but on communal efforts to challenge injustices….”
Are Times editors absolutely sure that Warnock, as doctrinal progressive, holds traditional Christian views on heaven and hell, sin and salvation? That’s quite a claim and would require some investigative reporting of a rather theological nature. Does the nation’s most influential newsroom really want to GO THERE?
Later on in the Walker report, there is this additional material:
The loyalty to Mr. Walker reflects an approach conservative Christians successfully honed during the Trump era, overlooking the personal morality of candidates in exchange for political power to further their policy objectives. …
The last presidential administration shifted people’s tolerance for making allowances for their preferred candidates, said the Rev. Joseph N. Cousin, who leads Allen Temple A.M.E. Church in Cherokee County, a Georgia Republican stronghold that supported Mr. Trump by nearly 40 points in 2020. For many white evangelicals, there seems to be a comfort with religious hypocrisy if power can be achieved, he said.
Well, thank goodness for the sudden addition of “many” in front of the term “white evangelicals.” I would also agree, of course, that the Trump elections represented powerful example of religious believers (of all kinds, not just evangelicals) facing tough questions on election day.
But let’s pause for a moment and think back to a time, not that long ago, when we had another major politician who was accused, literally, of sexual-abuse and even rape.
We are talking about candidate and then President Bill Clinton. You may recall that he had his own in-house pastors and religious supporters (mostly on the doctrinal left) who prayed with him and supported him as he mildly confessed his sins, sort of, while fighting all legal charges about the crimes reported by a number of women (including at least two Democrats). The key pastors in many of these “saved by grace” Clinton scenes were the liberal Baptist Tony Campolo and the Rev. Gordon MacDonald, a mainstream evangelical.
But I would like to propose that the best way to compare the Clinton case with those of Trump and Walker is to think of feminism as a kind of religion, with its own “believe the women” and #MeToo doctrines about sexual-abuse cases.
Feminists faced a choice: Should they compromise on their publicly stated beliefs in order to support a political candidate who was on their side in, well, debates about abortion rights?
Here is a the top of a Salon piece — “Feminist Titanic” — about what happened back then:
The one thing established beyond the shadow of a doubt by the line of women outed by the Paula Jones suit is that every feminist in America -- with the notable exception of Camille Paglia -- has been exposed as a hypocrite and a phony.
The once shrill voice of feminist outrage is suddenly, deafeningly still. What we hear instead from the chorus on the left is a litany that goes something like this. What Bill Clinton does in his sex life should not be the subject of public concern. Or, as Politically Incorrect's Bill Maher summed up the reaction: "Where's the crime?" Clinton is running the important business of the ship of state. Who should care about his private acts? (As though these latest incidents of alleged sexual predation did not take place in the Oval Office, in the seat of government, in the presidential workplace -- and as though it was not visited on the President's employees.)
Better feminists should ask, what happened to all their previous concern about sexual harrassment? Where is their outrage over the abuse of women in government offices?
Or try this on, care of a Vanity Fair piece entitled “Clinton and Women.”
Okay, class, let’s review: The man in question has been sued for sexual harassment over an episode that allegedly included dropping his trousers to waggle his erect penis at a woman who held a $6.35-an-hour clerical job in the state government over which he presided. Another woman has charged that when she asked him for a job he invited her into his private office, fondled her breasts, and placed her hand on his crotch. A third woman confided to friends that when she was a 21-year-old intern she began an affair with the man—much older, married, and the head of the organization whose lowliest employee she was. Actually, it was less an affair than a service contract, in which she allegedly dashed into his office, when summoned, to perform oral sex on him. After their liaison was revealed, he denied everything, leaving her to be portrayed as a tramp and a liar. Or, in his own words, “that woman.”
What about feminists in the media? The poster woman, in this case, would have to be Nina Burleigh, who covered the Clinton White House for Time magazine. At one point, she confessed that she was “quite willing to let myself be ravished" by the president after he “ogled” her legs on Air Force One.
This led to a follow-up call from media-beat pro Howard Kurtz, with the Washington Post at that time, and one of the most infamous quotations in media-bias history. The following is from a first-person Observer piece by Burleigh entitled “My Spin Through the Cycle.”
When [Kurtz] called back, I decided my only defense would be to give him a quote that would knock his socks off. I also wanted to test the Post ‘s new “sizzle”-the paper’s post-We Broke the Lewinsky Story advertising hook. So when Howard asked whether I could still objectively cover the President, having found him so attractive, I replied, “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”
I recognized Howard’s visceral response to my words by his sudden intake of breath and the spurt of pounding fingers of keyboard. I’d never been on that side of a good quote before. It was better than sex!
That states the binary-choice issue in language that is (#ForSure) much more graphic than anything evangelicals would use.
So is the Trump and Walker era the first time that “religious” people — of various creeds, sacred and secular — have been tempted to compromise their beliefs and cast votes tainted by hypocrisy?
I think history shows that this is not a new issue.
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FIRST IMAGES: File photos combined into one graphic by News Radio WJNO for a feature entitled, “Same Church, Same Book, But Where Was the Outrage?”