I must admit I am a Rush Limbaugh fan. His combination of humor and politics is a crowd pleaser and certainly attracted me - not that I agreed with everything he said. He proved himself skillful in shoe-horning certain individuals into the category of "liberal" and proving again that what motivates one's disciples is disgust for a common enemy, in this case the dreaded religion-hating, big-government, robber-barren liberals. Yet rarely are people so easily put in rigid philosophical groups. Witness the polling data and viewpoints displayed in this essay.
In an article published in the August/September, 1997 issue of First Things, a journal of religion and public life, John Green, Lyman Kellstedt, James Gruth, and Corwin Schmidt reported a survey of voters in the presidential election of 1996 which was heavily contested between current President Clinton and Bob Dole. More recently the Milwaukee Journal (November 4, 1998) published exit polls showing the gender, religious, and philosophical differences between Wisconsin voters and their candidates of preference, particularly in the Russ Feingold/Mark Neumann Wisconsin United States Senatorial races. Knowing the information presented in these polls allows us to assess not only the attitudes toward the candidates mentioned but the attitudes of religious groups toward orthodox Christian beliefs. This is because of the uniqueness of the data contained in these polls and the well-known reputations and political stances of the candidates featured in the polls.
At the time of the presidential election of 1996, Bill Clinton was known as a staunch liberal and also a pseudo-Christian who opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion and catered to the homosexual cause. By contrast, Dole was seen as leaning toward conservative Christian causes and even criticized the media in a way that would make Christian warrior Don Wildmon proud.
The Senate race also featured two candidates with very divergent philosophies. Mark Neumann is a Christian who favored banning partial-birth abortion and did not cater to the homosexual movement. Neumann spoke at my church a short time before the election. He was described in the publicity with the catchy title: "A Christian in Washington." As for Feingold, well, Feingold is a Democrat and Democrats are often considered the party of the antithesis to Christianity. Green and his co-writers conclude that the GOP is still an alliance of white Protestants, and I should mention that recently numerous publications have questioned whether the lower echelons of the GOP should be so closely allied to the leaders of religious movements like the Christian Coalition. Nevertheless, Republicans are seen as being closely allied with Christian conservatives while Democrats are seen as moving away from these conservatives and it is along these perceived lines of demarcation I draw my analysis of these polling results.
The Milwaukee Journal poll shows voters spread quite evenly over age, gender, and party lines. As far as religious affiliation, nearly 88 percent consider themselves either Protestant, Catholic, or "Other Christian." Because of this you might expect an overwhelming majority of Protestants and Catholics to vote for Neumann. Such was not the case, for only 54 percent of Protestants voted for Neumann and 47 percent of Catholics. Those in the category of "Other Christian" who voted for Neumann were 62 percent, a remarkably more predictable figure. Equally predictable were those in the "Other" or "None" (religious) category where 76 percent voted for Feingold over Neumann.
The abortion issue was seen as one of the main deciding factors for conservatives where 77 percent voted for Neumann whereas 83 percent of the liberals voted for Feingold. More moderate voters chose Feingold than Neumann which suggests that, as one becomes more liberal in values, one is inclined to vote for a liberal candidate.
Green and his associates subtitled their essay "A Collision of Values." In it they say that the major disputes are between traditions: disputes between religious liberals and religious conservatives. The liberals they call "Modernists" while the conservatives they call "Traditionalists." Modernists, they say, have responded to the forces of social modernization by revising historical religious beliefs, producing new rituals or practices and "progress" while traditionalists have reemphasized orthodox religious beliefs. This pits religious liberals who would "liberate religion from the past" against conservatives "who would conserve the religion of the past." We see examples of liberal religious values in writings of Shelby Spong who claims we must rescue the Bible from fundamentalism or in those of Joseph Fletcher who would base a religious philosophy on "love" while being willing to kill an unborn child if not wanted to his or her parents. [Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality, Westminster Press: Philadelphia, PA]
The polling data of Green and his co-writers, along with the information in The Milwaukee Journal poll, bring out important differences. For example, of white Catholic, 31 percent of modernists voted for Dole whereas 52 percent of traditionalists. Of white evangelical Protestants, 48 percent of modernists voted for Dole whereas 74 percent of traditionalists voted for Dole. For Clinton, the votes were 42 percent and 22 percent respectively. In the category of "Other Christian" - the category that only separates voters between Mormon and "All Others" - 74 percent of Mormons voted for Dole and only 21 percent for Clinton while of the rest only 41 percent voted for Dole.
What this seems to mean, when we combine these results with those reported in the Journal, is that it is mostly the liberal vote that accounts for the "Christian" vote for Feingold and Clinton. Those religious voters who voted for Clinton and Neumann likely come largely from those who are liberal. This is no surprise since many who call themselves "Christians" often embrace non-Christian causes such as the call for funding abortion and the embrace of "Christian atheism" which, if anything, is clearly a contradiction. We might call these people "cafeteria Christians" because they take what pleases them and discard the orthodoxy that is unsettling or "distasteful."
Knowing this, it is easy to understand why the religious liberal vote was so strong for Clinton, and, doubtless, Feingold. Clinton presents himself as the quintessential religious liberal. He attends church but there is rarely any relevance of it in his life or in the policies he sets forth or advances. It would seem that Christianity is like a warm blanket one can easily put on and take off and then cast aside in some dark closet . It serves your purposes but demands none of your loyalty. This is essentially the religious base of religious liberals who would bring Christianity into the twenty-first century by updating Christian values to fit an increasingly secular culture. This is also the attitude of too many "Christmas-Easter" Christians - many who are my friends - who have some allegiance to church but see no reason to seek any loyalty to orthodox Christian values. They are called "Christmas-Easter" Christians because they usually attend church only on those two holidays.
We may conclude a study like this by remembering that there is a cultural war going on between the Christians of any denomination and the humanists who control the media - those who, by speaking their minds, control the tempo of our culture. There is also a battle between traditionalists and religious liberals. Many of our politicians have brought unsavory characters into the political mix who are religious liberals - either uninformed or supportive of a liberal view of orthodox beliefs.
We might remember that in Jesus' day he was rejected by the very people who should have hailed him as Lord - the religious liberals of his day. Traditionalists may have as much of a battle adapting the message of Christianity to the twenty-first century as those liberals who dismiss it and yet maintaining the label "Christian."
written early 1999