Yesterday I heard this NPR story about the head of the Christian Coalition stepping down because he wanted to expand the agenda to include poverty and the environment. I don't want to turn this into a political or a religious blog, so I've been avoiding some of these issues here. But this deserves a link, and if it ends up on another blog, say The Rhetorical Situation, I might engage in some discussion as I have before (but I certainly don't intend to make Harrogate feel obligated to respond).
So, anyway, I've been talking about the movements of politically active evangelicals away from the stereotypical "religious right" for a long time, asserting that the beliefs of all evangelicals are not necessarily reflected by James Dobson and certainly not by Pat Robertson (granted many do agree with them but the consensus is not as uniform as it sometimes appears). This dissonance has been in my mind for a long time and when I first started expressing it aloud, meeting understandably skeptical responses from friends, it seemed to me to exist as a kind of silent majority. Now they are not silent, and mainstream media outlets like Newsweek and NPR are picking up on the stories.
I am certianly not denying that many evagelicals strongly believe in the principles of the religious right as it has been narrowly defined in the past. But many have other priorities and cannot be lumped in with those who have created the stereotypes we have today. And now those people are becoming politically active and visible. Many people are faithful evangelicals earnestly trying to do "what Jesus would do," and they believe that Jesus is leading them in different directions than the Christian political leaders have been leading them.
Edited to add: The paper I am writing is a discourse analysis of Focus on the Family's advice to mothers, specifically on work-family conflict. So this post is right along with academics and motherhood. So I'm not as off-topic as I originally thought (certainly more on-topic than posting a picture of my pecan pie). Now off to write.
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6 comments:
Sarah, I have been sorely disappointed with the Republicans as of late. I feel like they have taken advantage of and let down all of those faithful evangelicals who have voted according to their convictions or values. It is refreshing that there are some emerging who have not put themselves in the Republican box but who still value many of the principles the evangelicals believe in. I don't like to blog about this much either, but I am happy to comment.
Leann, I totally agree that Republicans have taken advantage of Christian voters, and I am glad to see people standing up to say that they are not going to take it.
Unfortunately in Arkansas this year, there were no candidates that ran Democrat but supported Christian objectives...so it was a "lesser of two evils" kinda thing. I just hope that the Dems who won all over Arkansas will turn everything around for the better and not focus on all the other controversial crap that I don't support...
Sarah,
Harrogate very much appreciates the shout-out, and the plug. Indeed, he grows giddy at the thought that some of your vaunted readership might, as a result of your links, assent to visit, and perhaps even post comments on, our blog.
As for the NPR link, Harrogate accepts the invitation to ventilate himself upon this subject, although he may not get to it until tomorrow.
Harrogate has, after all, only recently extricated himself from the mountains of research and reams of compositional drafts that conspired to produce his most recent analysis of Monday Night Raw. And then, he has still barely recovered from his slightly less intensive look at the relationships between old "Facts of Life" clips and our current sociopolitical situation on the North American Continent.
But Christian Coalition and thine allies--be ye warned, ye have fallen into Harrogate's purview, and shall soon withstand the brunt of all his analytical heft!
Ciao.
Sarah -
I can't wait to read your Focus on the Family paper. : )
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