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Vocal Majority
"God is My Running Mate." "No Mine!" "No Mine!"
By Phillip Hampton
February 7, 2005

Hallelujah and God bless America.  The American political aristocracy has found religion, and they are letting the world know about it.

President George W. Bush seemed to initiate this latest infusion of religious fervor into the political realm back in 1999 when he was running for his first term in office.  In a Republican primary debate, the candidates were asked to name their favorite philosopher.  Then Governor Bush stunned the political world when his quick answer was "Jesus Christ…because he changed my life."  Without even hearing the first words of analysis from the assembled media horde, one could just sense the collective furrowed brows and wagging heads from the political establishment.  This was a Sunday school answer—certainly not worthy of a political debate for the highest office of the land.  Predictably, the withering coverage and criticism of Bush's "gaffe" rained down mercilessly upon the Texas governor's campaign.  Despite the unflattering portrayals of his intellect and simplistic ideals in the press, Governor Bush never shied away from his faith in God and continued to elevate this faith as a guiding force in his life, both public and private.

Religious McCarthyism
Governor Bush became President Bush, and because of the controversy of the 2000 election, it is no secret that many left-leaning politicos felt that Bush's election was tainted, or worse, illegitimate.  Certainly America did not intend to elect a Bible-thumping, simplistic, God-fearing Texan to the presidency, they must have thought.  It's fine to pay lip service to the religious majority in this country upon whose vote one must depend to get elected.  But to say overtly religious things and then actually mean them, or even act upon them, is really going too far.  One must be scrupulous in observing Thomas Jefferson's impenetrable wall of separation between church and state.

Even as America faced the darkest day of this young century on September 11, 2001, and President Bush implored Americans to pray and seek God's face, the President won precious few converts to his more open embrace of God and religion in the public square.

Bush's faith-based initiative was met with intense criticism.  Pundits wondered aloud if Bush's reliance on faith was dangerous, making him unbalanced with a warped worldview.  His choice for Attorney General of the United States was a tongue-talking son of an Assembly of God preacher.  John Ashcroft was subjected to blistering attacks from the press, while a whispering campaign about the Attorney General's religious fervor rumbled just beneath the surface.

As the last year of Bush's first term dawned, the era of religious McCarthyism began to lose its steam.  Far from running away from God in his re-election bid, Bush and his advisors charted a course to put faith and moral values front and center during the fall 2004 campaign.  At the same time, the election year saw an explosion in interest in religion, God, and moral values.  Hollywood was dumbfounded at the chart-busting reception of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in the heartland.  A nationally televised incident at the Super Bowl and activist judges' rulings regarding gay marriage shocked average Americans, awakening them out of a media-induced cultural stupor.  The full effect of these and other cultural paradigm shifts was not fully appreciated until Election Day 2004.  Bush easily won a second term.  The inside scoop on the election returns showed that moral values played a huge and probably decisive role in the election.

Post-Election Religion
Now today we are feeling the aftershocks of 2004’s political earthquake.  The politically astute sense the shift and are moving quickly to take advantage.  God is no longer the pariah of national politics.  Democrats wring their hands and ponder aloud how to get God back into their party.  Prominent politicians from both parties are beginning to sound more like evangelists than politicians.  There's a mad rush for the pulpit.

New York Senator Hillary Clinton, the odds-on early favorite for the Democratic presidential nod in 2008, recently raised eyebrows in the press when she described herself as a “praying person” and publicly acknowledged that abortion “represents a sad, even tragic, choice to many, many women.”  In a speech last month in Boston she urged Americans to “live out their faith in the public square.”  Senator Clinton, the more liberal half of the Clinton & Clinton team, surely recognizes that God may be the most important running mate a politician can have.  Whether she is just being opportunistic or she is a genuine believer, the Senator is getting her religious bona fides polished well in advance of the next campaign.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has a new book, Winning the Future, in which he proposes some bold policy initiatives in a thesis he calls “A 21st Century Contract With America.”  Gingrich, rumored also to be considering a 2008 presidential run, devotes an entire chapter in his book to the idea of embracing the centrality of God in our country's foundation and institutions.  Instead of running away from our Judeo-Christian heritage, Gingrich claims that it is precisely our collective belief in God that has made us great and thus should be celebrated openly in the public square.

In yet another example of religion advocacy from the political class, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, whom some court observers believe will become the next Chief Justice, recently lauded Christianity in a public speech in Louisiana and said that Christians should be willing to endure “the contempt of the sophisticated world” and to become “fools for Christ.”

The lasting legacy of the 2004 election, underscored by the prominence of religious references in Bush’s second inaugural address, may be that our nation’s Christian heritage is embraced as an asset, not a liability.

It’s no wonder that James Dobson is hitting the airwaves with his campaign against cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.  With the likes of Hillary and Newt sounding more like televangelists than policy wonks, what’s a right-wing religious advocate to do to reclaim the spotlight?  And everybody said….Amen.

ninetyandnine.com

© 2005, Phillip Hampton

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Phillip Hampton is an executive editor of ninetyandnine.com. This new monthly column will discuss and dissect issues of the public square. To contact him, email general@ninetyandnine.com.