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Messages (Like Lawn Signs) Don't Vote
The Christian Right has been as successful as it has been, because it has a vision for obtaining sufficient political power to advance it's agenda. The principal way it has advanced it's vision has been via the Republican Party and electoral politics. Therefore it stands to reason that any rejoinder to the Christian Right must include a broadly based engagement of citizens in electoral life. If one accepts this, it then follows that everything else is subsidiary to this focus. Does that mean that everything written or thought about the religious right needs to be processed through a filter of electoral politics? Of course not. However, in developing a political strategy, in my view, there is no substitute. I will discuss more details of this in subsequent essays. But for today, I want to underscore the way that the Christian Right is first, an electoral movement, not a "values" or even a "religious" movement. If we are going to be able to have coherent and appropriate conversations about what to do, we have to have some rough common understandings of what we are up against. Here are a few excerpts from my original expose of the Christian Coalition's electoral plans that I learned when I attended the founding national strategy conference, undercover, in 1989. The article appeared in Church and State magazine, and is archived at Theocracy Watch, along with many other articles documenting the electoral strategy and activities of the Christian Coalition.
When I slipped into the national leadership meeting of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, I thought I knew what to expect. I'd written many stories about the Religious Right. But I was unprepared for what I saw, heard and felt inside Robertson's Virginia Beach, Va., headquarters for two days in November during the "Road to Victory" Conference and Strategy Briefing. ... The focus on "values" on the part of Democrats and mainstream and progressive religious leaders is fine, but probably based on a faulty understanding of the Christian Right's rise to power. There is no question that theological issues and what we call "values" are important. So is framing. I wrote about these things extensively in Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy. However, as my original report from inside the founding national strategy conference of the Christian Coalition makes clear: the Christian Right rose to power because it was focused on gaining political power via the Republican Party and through electoral politics. Any analysis framing an action plan that does not take this into account, is misguided at best. However, as one who was there; who wrote the original expose; and as one who has written and spoken extensively about this aspect all this time, I am less inclined to be so generously understated about it. One particularly virulent error, endemic to most conventional wisdom about the religious right is that "message" is so important that one need not think of much else. We see this error manifested in many ways. We see it every time people indulge in a discussion of: "what shall we call "them?" (Answer: There is no one term that fits all occasions.) The exercise is radically reductionist on its face, and usually leads to highly counterproductive forms of labeling and demonization. But we also see this in operation when we hear about framing mainstream religious values in terms of social concerns with public policy consequences, such as poverty and environmental degradation. These alone will never change electoral outcomes. It is fine to be able to seamlessly connect and articulate Christian values with the urgent issues of the day. But again, as useful as this is, it is usually still only about articulating a message. It is not about envisioning a path to power to make one's values real in public policy. Messages, like lawn signs, don't vote.
Messages (Like Lawn Signs) Don't Vote | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
Messages (Like Lawn Signs) Don't Vote | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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