Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

February 2005 – By historical standards, the election of 2004 undoubtedly will be viewed as one of the most important in our history, and voters seemed to sense the magnitude of it. According to Time magazine, nearly 120 million Americans voted – 15 million more than in 2000.

In the aftermath of that momentous election, many analysts, determined to explain the outcome, kept tossing around phrases like "moral values" and "values voters." Their interpretation of President George W. Bush’s re-election was simple: Conservative Christians and others concerned primarily with morality had come out and pulled the lever for the guy they believed would lead the nation in the right moral direction.

Is that analysis correct? If so, are the results of the 2004 election a way – a pattern – for a newly energized, conservative Christian host that will, through political activism, remake the moral landscape? Or is it merely a moment in time when circumstances coalesced to give the church a window of opportunity to reinvigorate itself and return to its first love?

The evidence points to the latter, and Christians must answer the challenge not only to continue and increase their political and social activism, but also to recover their true Biblical calling: preaching the gospel.

Conservative Christians find their voice
There can be little doubt that morality is a big concern for many Americans. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, conducted in November after the election, revealed that most people in the U.S. have great concerns about the moral foundations of the country. Only about a fourth of respondents (26%) said the "overall state of moral values" in the country was excellent or good, while 73% said it was only fair or poor. Moreover, 64% said they thought "the state of moral values in the country as a whole is getting worse."

Those concerns appear to have had an impact on the 2004 election, which seemed tethered to what Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs said were "the questions of values that simmered beneath the headlines throughout the campaign."

According to exit polls, 22% of voters said moral values were their top concern when they voted. Time magazine noted that a subsequent Pew Research poll put the number even higher at 27%. 

The overwhelming number of those voters cast ballots for Bush: Those who said moral values were the most important issue went 79% to 18% for the president. Among those who were "once-a-week churchgoers," exit polls demonstrated that Bush had a sizable 58% to 41% advantage over Kerry. 

Without a doubt, in this election conservative Christians found their voice, and getting them to the polls was a key part of the Republican strategy. Gibbs said, "The weight that voters attached to values suggests that [Bush campaign chief strategist Karl] Rove’s single-minded attention to the goal of turning out four million more evangelical voters than in 2000 may have paid off."

But while it may have been Rove’s goal to do so, Washington Post writers Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall suggested that the untold story of the election was that "evangelical Christian groups were often more aggressive and sometimes better organized on the ground than the Bush campaign." In other words, "Christian activists led the charge that GOP operatives followed and capitalized upon."

Equally likely is the fact that no other issue ignited conservative Protestants and Catholics more in this election than same-sex marriage. Cooperman and Edsall explained: "In battlegrounds such as Ohio, scores of clergy members attended legal sessions explaining how they could talk about the election from the pulpit. Hundreds of churches launched registration drives, thousands of churchgoers registered to vote, and millions of voter guides were distributed" by Christian groups.

"On this election, because of the issues before the state of Ohio and the nation, [Christians] were passionate," said one Ohio pastor. "It was all hands on deck. I have never seen a rush for voter registration cards in my life as a minister." 

In the key battleground state of Ohio, for example, the scope of the effort to protect traditional marriage was impressive. According to The New York Times, Citizens for Community Values in Cincinnati, Ohio, a pro-family group, distributed 2.5 million church bulletin inserts, handed out 20,000 yard signs and called almost three million homes.

Nationwide, all of this Christian activity paid off for the Bush campaign. According to the Washington Post, 79% of the more than 26 million evangelical voters and 52% of the 31 million Catholic voters pulled the lever for the president.

Temporary ‘values voters’?
But the "values voters" scenario doesn’t convince everyone. Political analyst and columnist Charles Krauthammer thinks the media’s belief that moral issues were decisive in the 2004 election is only an "urban myth."

His reason is based on the way in which exit polling questions were framed. Krauthammer said that, because the phrase "moral values" included a "class" of issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, the influence of Hollywood, etc., it should have been compared to a similar class like "economic issues" or "war issues."

When that is done – for example, combining questions and answers dealing with taxes, the economy and jobs – "moral values" came in dead last: behind war issues (34%) and economic issues (33%).

Krauthammer probably goes too far in dismissing the existence of values voters. The fact that respondents, when given the opportunity, chose "moral values" more often from the list of options may indicate that they really did mean to select that as their top concern, other aggregate totals notwithstanding.

But others saw things in the same way as Krauthammer. According to The Economist, for example, the 22% in 2004 that said they voted primarily based on moral issues represented a decline from the election of 2000 (35%) and 1996 (40%).

Perhaps the truth will wind up being somewhere in the middle, between the values voters explanation and the "well-not-really" interpretation of Krauthammer, The Economist and others. But this latter, alternative explanation should cause celebratory Christians to pause. The fact is that the majority of the American people appear to be quite soft when it comes to morality, eschewing firm commitments to moral principle and preferring "live and let live" as a guiding philosophy.

Only one issue is needed to prove the point, and, ironically, it is the very issue that may have brought conservative voters out in droves in 2004: homosexuality.

On the one hand, supporters of traditional marriage won overwhelming victories in all 13 states that had ballot initiatives that limited marriage to one man and one woman. Public opinion on this issue has remained firmly opposed to same-sex marriage.

On the other hand, however, surveys show that the general public is trending toward increased sympathy for many of the other demands of the homosexual movement. Polls reveal that a majority of people favor "gays" in the military (80%), legalized civil unions for homosexual couples (54%), domestic partner benefits for "gay" and lesbian employees (62%), and allowing homosexuals to teach children, even in elementary schools  (68%). In each of these areas, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of "gay" rights over the last 25 years.

If there is a soft "moral middle" within the nation, who will undertake the task of convincing it to firm up in support of traditional morality?

A religious reservoir
As the election results began to sink in, one of the conclusions being drawn by Christians was that there is a large number of religious Americans who have come to reject the secularism that is rampant in the Democratic Party and its affiliate henchmen like Hollywood, liberal professors on university campuses and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way.

Perhaps nothing symbolized this ideological divide better than the now infamous red-blue U.S. map following the 2000 election, when Al Gore primarily won the "blue" states in the northeast, west coast, and around the Great Lakes, and George Bush won everything in between – the "red" states.

Jay Tolson in U.S. News & World Report said, "To many pundits, scholars and activists, red and blue unquestionably delineate the two sides of a deep chasm running through the middle of American society, a geopolitical fault line created, most say, by differences in cultural and religious values."

The differences are frequently listed in amusing stereotypes. Tolson is typical in his description: "Red folks are NASCAR-lovin’, gun-totin’, God-fearin’ Republicans who mostly inhabit the rural, suburban and small-town heartland stretching from the Deep South through the Great Plains and into the mountain states. Blue types, by contrast, are highly secular, latte-sipping, diversity-embracing Democrats concentrated in the urban areas on the two coasts and around the Great Lakes."

Probably more than any other Western nation, the U.S. still contains a reservoir of religious belief. Numerous surveys seem to indicate that, loosely speaking, Americans see religion as somehow necessary to help cure what ails their country morally. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showed a large majority in favor of keeping the inscription "In God We Trust" on our money (90%), allowing non-denominational prayers at public school ceremonies (78%), and allowing the display of Ten Commandment monuments (70%).

After the election, liberal columnist Joe Klein said in Time magazine that faith remains important to many Americans. The truth was "that overworked parents are scared to death that their unsupervised kids are taking life lessons from the sex, drugs and weirdness spewing from their televisions and computers," he said. "Liberals scoff, but the balm that comes with being part of a religious community – the Bible study, youth groups, choirs and, yes, the moral absolutes that often accompany such communion – is real and comforting, unlike the promise of complicated and expensive government programs."

No religious preference
While such information might hearten conservative Christians, there is also evidence of a dangerous trend away from religion in general and Christianity in particular.

In 2002, the American Sociological Review published the results of a study that found that, from 1990 to 2000, the proportion of Americans who said they had "no religious preference" doubled – from 7% of the population to 14%. 

Another study, released by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and based on data from the American Religious Identification Survey 2001, found similar numbers. From 1990 to 2001, the number of people in the U.S. who did not identify with any specific religion jumped from 14.3 million to 29.4 million. To put that in perspective, according to USA Today, that latter number is larger than all U.S. Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians combined. And proportionately, that represented an increase from 8% to 14.1% of the population.

Americans, while still holding to a form of religion – seemingly unwilling to go the more thoroughly secular route of Europe – are trending away from organized church attendance to more personal and more nebulous forms of New Age spirituality. According to one study, between 1976 and 1998, the percentage of Americans who said they believed "somewhat" in spiritualism skyrocketed from 12% to 52%. Belief in astrology grew from 17% to 37%, as did belief in reincarnation (9% to 25%) and fortune-telling (4% to 14%).

The challenge for the church
In many ways our country is like the "double-minded man" in James 1:8, who cannot decide whether to live according to God’s Word or according to his own passions. He is "unstable in all his ways."

So which America will prevail? The part that comprehends the danger of the cultural shock waves that threaten to topple the institutions of marriage and family – and society with it? That rejects secularism as a solution, but chooses to cling to the remaining vestiges of a religious tradition that honors God, the Ten Commandments and the Bible?

Or will another side of America triumph – the part that rejects the Christian religion in favor of a privatized New Age spirituality and a thoroughly secular public square?

The experience of Christian leaders who battled in 2004 against the threat of same-sex marriage suggests that churches must lead on important moral issues and not rely on sometimes vacillating, finger-to-the-wind politicians.

Yet, rather than trusting in politics and activism to change the heart of America, the church should concentrate on reaching the masses with the transforming power of the gospel.

The church must win this culture war by convincing more and more people that traditional morality, anchored in the Bible and the Christian faith, is the best of all possible political and social foundations.

Voting patterns won’t produce that change but will merely reflect the changes that have already transpired in the hearts of voters. In other words, the foundational beliefs of the majority of Americans will be altered neighbor-to-neighbor, over one cup of coffee at a time.

As columnist and radio talk-show host Matt Friedeman said, "[I]t is the everyday ‘voting’ with our jobs, and our parenting, and our involvement in our communities, and our efforts in and through our local parishes to be positive influences in our culture that matters even more than voting. We must now serve as Christian witnesses in the dark places of humanity. We must evangelize, confront, write our political letters, preach in the community prisons, run for the school boards, pen guest commentaries for the secular papers. We must act. If we don’t, we lose – and should."

Of the 2004 election, Focus On the Family founder Dr. James Dobson insisted that "through prayer and the involvement of millions of evangelicals, and mainline Protestants and Catholics, God has given us a reprieve. But I believe it is a short reprieve."

What the church does in this window of opportunity may determine the fate of our nation.