I neglected to link to yesterday’s big stories about the Values Voters summit. Well, here they are, including this weird bit of self-conscious cultural anthropology.
Here’s an article based on an interview with Mike Huckabee that ought to make a lot of people angry and others interested, especially in the light of all the reports (including this one, overblown though it is) that evangelicals are "evolving" politically.
Finally, here’s a story about a document to be considered by U.S. Catholic bishops at their upcoming meeting. Intended to guide Catholic participation in our current political season, "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility From the Catholic Bishops of the United States" offers a nuanced response to efforts to nuance into diminished significance the "human life" issues that have been at the core of traditional Catholic and Protestant stances in the current poltiical debate. I suspect that the bishops’ Protestant brethren would also profit from reading the document, though I haven’t seen the whole thing.
Update: Here’s Byron York, arguing that there are five plausibly top tier Republican contenders in a wide-open race. Our friend the Friar, who has his doubts about Huckabee (and seems to lean toward Giuliani), calls our attention to this post by Evangelical Outpost’s Joe Carter (an employee of summit host Family research Council). The post is not calculated to leave feathers unruffled. And Carter answers our friend RC2’s plaintive request for speech transcripts.
This article simply reconfirms my earlier impressions of Huckabee. Not a team player, not much of a conservative. It also adds a new perception: Self-righteous.
My experience is that after years of hard work for little gain, evangelicals are growing disinterested in politics. But I think the idea that they are "evolving" in a leftist direction (anymore so than the country is moving to the left generally is liberal wishful thinking.
But that they are "in play" meaning a minority but significant portion of them might vote for Hillary is again, wishful thinking. Maybe I need to broaden my circle, but I haven't met very many of these politically liberal evangelicals, and the ones that I have have sort of conscientiously shed their identification as evangelicals. Meaning their liberal politics followed a liberal theology.
What this might mean is that the GOP will be less able to whip them up in a frenzy of anybody but Hillary, but that is not the same thing as saying they are evolving leftward.
For discussion: Is Jim Wallis really an evangelical in any way other than style? Don't you lose the right to call yourself an evangelical if you embrace universalistic notions of salvation? Fundamentalists would argue that evangelicals have always been guilty of theological indifferentism. Whether this is true is a matter of debate. But evangelicals have always at least rhetorically upheld certain "fundamentals" even if they don’t always talk about them. You can't outright reject those fundamentals and still be part of the club, can you?
If we expect perfection from our political leaders, we’re just asking to be disappointed.
I don't expect perfection from our political leaders. I do expect a modicum of conservatism, and Giuliani lacks that. The man is to the left of the center of the Democratic Party.