wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Triumphant evangelicals seek passage of

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8559 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04489
November 4, 2004

Triumphant evangelicals seek passage of conservative social agenda

by Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON - After a generation of involvement on the political scene,
religious conservatives say they may finally have come into their own.

	With the re-election of President Bush and a galvanized grass-roots
movement, evangelical Christian leaders are confidently predicting the
advance of their social agenda.

	"I think before there was a perception problem," said Paul Weyrich,
who co-founded the now-defunct Moral Majority in 1979 and now chairs the
Washington-based Free Congress Foundation. "The view was that we really
didn't have the troops to make a difference."

	But Bush was returned to office Tuesday on the wings of evangelicals.
Three out of four white voters who described themselves as evangelicals or
born-again Christians voted for Bush, according to an exit poll of more than
13,000 voters conducted for the Associated Press and the television networks.
That represented about one-fifth of all voters.

	"Before our strength was a question mark," said Weyrich. "Now it's an
exclamation point."

	Religious conservatives have a wish list of items they hope Bush and
a Republican-dominated Congress will address, including legislative bans on
same-sex marriage, continuing efforts to limit abortion and appointment of
judges who do not meet their definition of "activist."

	Overcoming past stages of political apathy, evangelicals are now
energized, their leaders say - not just at the voting booth, but for future
action to let the political powers know they have certain expectations.

	"I think that the voters spoke with a clear voice yesterday on ...
the issue of marriage, which speaks more broadly to the issue of judicial
activism," said Tony Perkins, president of the Washington-based Family
Research Council, in a Nov. 3 interview.

	"I think if they do not hear that voice on the Hill, they're deaf."

	Corwin Smidt, director of the Henry Institute for the Study of
Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, said
evangelicals already have the ear of Republicans but now Democrats may begin
to pay more attention to them.

	"There's going to be some listening done," said Smidt, a political
science professor. "Evangelicals probably have greater access now to decision
makers."

	Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics
and Religious Liberty Commission, said the influence demonstrated by "people
of faith" at the polls goes beyond white evangelicals to black evangelicals,
Roman Catholics and observant Jews.

	"There is a cultural struggle going on for the moral high ground in
this culture, and we conservative, traditional-values people of faith - in
all of our denominational manifestations - made a significant, strategic
advance in this election," said Land.

	While many pundits predicted high voter turnout would benefit
Democrats, evangelicals showed they, too, could mobilize. For his part, Land
traveled along with an "iVoteValues.com" tractor-trailer as part of his
ministry's nationwide voter education campaign.

	He said he hopes Bush will now give some issues of religious
conservatives - namely passage of the proposed Marriage Protection Amendment
- the same level of attention in his second term that the president gave
prescription drug benefits in his first.

	Evangelicals may even expand to issues beyond questions of life and
marriage, said the Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs
for the National Association of Evangelicals. He cited climate change as a
growing concern.

	"It's an important way in which the Republican Party could reach out
across the political divide and say, 'We care about the environment,'" Cizik
said.

	The Rev. Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University in
Lynchburg, VA, and co-founder of the Moral Majority, wouldn't predict demands
for political payback from the Bush administration. He did say complacency is
not an option.

	"I know after eight years of Ronald Reagan that many seemed to become
apathetic and fell asleep; I don't think that's happening now," he told
Religion News Service. "I just do not think for a moment anybody ... from our
camp (is) going to rush the president and say, 'We did this. Now you do
that.' It just doesn't work that way."

	Carrie Gordon Earll, a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family, based in
Colorado Springs, CO, said the gay marriage issue renewed energy that had
dissipated in the evangelical movement. Evangelicals are now determined to
work for passage of the marriage amendment and election of "a true
conservative" as the next justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, she said.

	"This is a spike in the chart of evangelical passion and
involvement," she said.

	Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life project
at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said evangelicals
may not win every political battle ahead, but there is no question they will
loom large in the Republican Party for years to come.

	"They're not taking over the party," he said, "but they are major
players in the party. They're major players at the table of Republican
discourse."
(RNS Correspondents Itir Yakar and Wangui Njuguna contributed to this
report.)

To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to
pcusanews-subscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org or
pcusanews-unsubscribe-request@halak.pcusa.org

To contact the owner of the list, please send an email to
pcusanews-request@halak.pcusa.org