Evangelicals a key force in election

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Zarette Beard is starting a voter-registration drive at her church, follows politics via Fox News and sends an “encouragement e-mail” to President Bush once a week.

For Beard, being politically involved isn’t just a civic duty; it also is a Christian one. She says she thinks like-minded conservative Christians are waking up.

Christians as a whole have been too polite, sitting on the sidelines and letting fringe groups take over politics, she says.

Most people would not be surprised to learn that Beard is a Republican.

Statistically, the two go hand in hand.

A June study by the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, said 86 percent of self-described evangelicals plan to vote for Bush in November.

“The Republican Party this year wants (evangelical voters) to rise to new heights,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, of Washington, D.C. “In their view, this is the margin of victory.”

That is particularly critical in light of the tight race between Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, is more emphatic. “They (evangelicals) are going to determine the election,” he said.

“There’s no one place that’s a mecca for Christianity,” said Derek Packard, who heads Colorado Springs-based DV Studios, which is producing church-based simulcasts on the subject of same-sex marriage intended to rally the faithful. “But God is definitely up to something in Colorado Springs.”

Colorado Springs, home to a handful of influential religious leaders, more than 100 Christian organizations and a stalwart conservative base, will play a major role in this year’s presidential election.

Conservative Christians are arguably the nation’s most influential voting bloc. About 30 million Americans belong to National Association of Evangelicals member churches.

That number dwarfs other politically active organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters union and the National Rifle Association. Those groups combined would need another 10 million members to equal the evangelical association’s membership.

Tony Campolo, an evangelical who recently published a book titled “Speaking my Mind,” says the evangelical voting bloc is twice as important as the labor vote. “There’s no question in my mind – the ability of the labor movement to mobilize its people is nowhere near the evangelical community.”

Although evangelicals could decide who becomes the next president, some think the Republican Party is using conservative Christians.

“I think they have been seduced without getting much of anything from the (Republican) party,” Campolo said. “They are being emotionally manipulated.”

Campolo says that since the days of Ronald Reagan, conservative Christians have reliably voted Republican, hoping to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.

Largely because of evangelical support, both houses of Congress have Republican majorities and a conservative occupies the White House.

For 16 of the past 24 years, Supreme Court vacancies have been filled by Republican presidents. Yet, Roe v. Wade is still on the books.

That amounts to an unfulfilled promise to evangelicals, Campolo says.

Another disturbing sign for conservative Christians: the prominent roles that Republicans who back abortion rights, such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, played in the Republican National Convention.

Conservative Christian leaders, for the most part, were invisible, although their clout in trying to help the party win in November is enormous.

Evangelicals are trying to take more initiative to be the hammer rather than the nail. The National Association of Evangelicals’ “For the Health of the Nation” draft explicitly distances itself from the GOP, saying the Republican Party should not take evangelicals for granted.

“Evangelicals should join political parties and fully express their biblical values,” the draft says. “In doing so, they must be careful not to equate Christian faith with partisan politics.”

That’s good news for evangelicals such as Campolo.

“The reality is when the church gets aligned with any political party, … it has lost its soul,” he said.

Some, such as Zarette Beard, say they think conservative Christian activism is growing.

“I think people are finally waking up,” she said.

Others, such as Mary Lou Makepeace, former Colorado Springs mayor and current executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Fund, suggest religious activism is at the far end of a pendulum swing.

The Rev. James White, senior pastor of First Congregational Church-United Church of Christ, says that 30 years ago, conservative Christians were apathetic toward politics while liberal churchgoers were more politically active.

“It’s a real seismic shift,” he said.

David Weddle, professor of religion at Colorado College, says the change started with televangelist Pat Robertson’s 1988 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

“That campaign demonstrated there was a very large electorate that could, in fact, be mobilized in the national election,” Weddle said. “That demonstrated the electoral power of the evangelical community.”

Evangelicals in Colorado Springs, Haggard says, are doing what Christians everywhere have always done.

“Good Christians have always believed they need to be involved,” Haggard said.

Christians took the lead in abolishing slavery before the Civil War. Christian leaders such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were forerunners in the civil rights movement.

“I think it’s myopic and probably self-centered on our part to say that it’s big,” Haggard said.

“I don’t think that in 100 years they’ll look back and say this was a very big deal.”