Values and Worldviews

One of the more interesting developments in this campaign year is the extent to which Democrats have sought out the so-called "values" vote --- the mostly evangelical and catholic voters who have tended to vote Republican in the past. With the guidance of a newly formed Democratic religion lobby, the presidential campaigns all formulated a sophisticated outreach effort to appeal to voters who were open to Democrats by broadening the Christian agenda to include other issues, like poverty and the environment.

This came about partially because of a very savvy campaign on the part of the lobby itself to leverage influence within the party and a matching campaign by certain big name evangelical leaders like Rick Warren and Jim Wallis. All in all, it was a successful merging of the leadership of the Democratic party and elements of the new leadership of what was once the religious right (and might now be considered the religious swing vote. Catholics have long been in that group.)

This was a bold strategy. The religious right has been the bedrock of the modern conservative movement and if the Democrats were to cause even some minor earthquakes among them, it could seriously destabilize the Republicans while potentially enticing some voters into the Democratic column. However, it has also had the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the idea that these voters represent "American values" among the chattering classes to the enormous frustration among those who know that liberal values are entirely mainstream and as vital a part of American culture and politics as those of conservatives.

It is within that shifting and sometimes contentious milieu that we watched Barack Obama take questions from evangelical pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange Country California last week-end. And in that conversation, along with the one with John McCain, the fault lines in this religious outreach were visible for all to see.

Obama is a serious Christian. He worships in a liberal denomination, but it has many of the same cultural signifiers and style of a fire and brimstone southern baptist church. McCain, on the other hand, has been famously ambivalent (and sometimes outwardly hostile) toward the religious right and his own beliefs have never been emphasized in his campaigns. Only recently did we learn that he has changed denominations from the staid mainline Episcopalian to the more populist Southern Baptist church. Based on that, one might have imagined that Obama would be the one with the connection to the evangelist congregation whereas McCain would have trouble.

As it happened, Obama, with his patented erudition and calm demeanor, answered the complicated moral questions posed to him as any thoughtful, liberal person of faith would do. He was openly religious and respectful. McCain answered them with boilerplate social conservatism and stirring appeals to patriotism. The audience was polite to Obama but nearly ecstatic to McCain. It turned out he was the one who spoke their language.

Rick Warren gave an interesting interview to Beliefnet about the event that helps explain why this happened. He uses a particular word to describe the beliefs of evangelicals, and it isn't religious dogma or theology or even Christianity. He uses the word "worldview" which by its very etymology suggests worldliness --- of the world. It includes faith, of course, but it is something more akin to tribalism than shared theology. He was surprisingly honest about whether or not you can expect evangelicals to vote for those who do not hold their worldview:

Before last night, McCain had been widely criticized by Christian activists for keeping mum about his faith and about values issues like abortion and marriage Last night seemed to change that. How much headway did McCain make among skeptical evangelicals?

I'm a pastor, I'm not a prophet, so I would not predict how evangelicals are going to vote. I will tell you they're not monolith. That's a big myth. They're going to make up their minds based on the hierarchy of their values. For many evangelicals, of course, if they believe that life begins at conception, that's a deal breaker for a lot of people. If they think that life begins at conception, then that means that there are 40 million Americans who are not here [because they were aborted] that could have voted. They would call that a holocaust and for them it would like if I'm Jewish and a Holocaust denier is running for office. I don't care how right he is on everything else, it's a deal breaker for me. I'm not going to vote for a Holocaust denier...

It all depends on the hierarchy of their worldview of what matters most to them. My gut reaction when it was over was that Obama will pick up probably some younger votes and McCain will probably pick up some older votes and it might come down to which group winds up showing up that the polls.

The Democrats recently added language to their party platform that they say is aimed at reducing demand for abortion. Do you think it represents a significant step toward a pro-life position?

It is a step, there's no doubt about that. I've been getting a lot of feedback on it. I was out of the country and people starting writing me about it. The general perception was 'Too little too late--window dressing". I'm not saying I would say this, because I haven't even read it, but what I was hearing form people was that [Democrats] were saying 'It's OK to be pro-life and be a Democrat now. In other words, 'You can join us. We're not changing our firm commitment to Roe v. Wade, but you can now join us.' Well, for a person who thinks that abortion is taking a life, I'm sure that's not going to be very satisfactory to most of those people. And to put it in right at the last minute at the end of a campaign, there was some question about that: Why are they doing this?

When you asked Obama about when life begins, he punted, saying 'it's above my pay grade.' Should someone running for the highest office in the land have a clear answer to that, or is that kind of ambivalence acceptable?

No. I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that. Like I said, he's a friend. But to me, I would not want to die and get before God one day and go, 'Oh, sorry, I didn't take the time to figure out' because if I was wrong then it had severe implications to my leadership if I had the ability to do something about it. He should either say, 'No scientifically, I do not believe it's a human being until X' or whatever it is or to say, 'Yes, I believe it is a human being at X point,' whether it's conception or anything else. But to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me.

That's why to say that evangelicals are a monolith is a myth, but the other thing is that you've been hearing a lot of the press talk about 'Well, evangelicals are changing, they're now interested in poverty and disease and illiteracy, and all the stuff I've been talking about for five years now. And I have been seeding that into the evangelical movement and it's getting picked up and a lot of people are talking about doing humanitarian efforts. But I really think it's wishful thinking on a lot of people who think they're going to drop the other issues. They're not leaving pro-life, I'm just trying to expand the agenda....

If an evangelical really believes that the Bible is literal--in other word in Psalm 139 God says 'I formed you in your mother's womb and before you were born I planned every day of your life,' if they believe that's literally true, then they can't just walk away from that. They can add other issues, but they can't walk away from the belief that at conception God planned that child and to abort it would be to short circuit the purpose.

Then it sounds like it would be unconscionable for an evangelical to vote for a pro-choice candidate like Obama.

Well, we're going to see what happens. All I can say is you'll see what happens. This is why there's a difference between simply talking the lingo... after the 2004 election the Democratic pundits were saying 'The Democrats lost in '04 because they didn't talk the language of faith.' And actually that's kind of, not paternalistic, but it's talking down. It's basically saying 'If you just get the right words, then they'll think you've got the lingo.' And just because a person can say 'God' and 'Jesus' and 'salvation' and whatever doesn't mean they have a worldview. And people want to know what do they believe, not just their personal faith. It's just like how many different beliefs do Jews and Christians have and still call themselves Christians or Jews? It's all over the spectrum.

Rick Warren has pretty much laid out the agenda there. Some evangelicals agree with the Democratic party on issues of poverty and the environment (although the screams of delight when McCain talked about offshore drilling made me wonder just how much.) But on the whole, they are adamant that the government must ban abortion. (Warren even describes support for abortion in terms of a "holocaust" a particularly noxious right wing trope.)

But that trope is exceedingly important to the "evangelical worldview" which, as defined by David Gibson at Beliefnet's Progressive Revival blog this way:

How is it that Barack Obama--baptized, confirmed and communicated--is not a Christian and John McCain is? At The Immanent Frame, evangelical Christian and Calvin College philosophy prof James K.A. Smith supplies part of the answer when he argues that evangelicals are defined theologically by their sociology--that is, evangelicalism would be better understood as "a sort of ethos, a sensibility, a contingent set of practices and institutions within which one lives and moves and has her being. 'Evangelical' is an identity forged at a level more visceral than doctrinal." In his reading (which is worth spending time on to fully digest), "it takes one to know one" when it comes to evangelicalism--not baptism or other sacraments.

From that point of view, McCain carried the day, with folks as diverse as Michael Gerson and William Kristol. And beyond. As Mark Silk of SpiritualPolitics put it, "McCain said enough in the way of magic words to enable pro-lifers to profess themselves satisfied that he's one of them."

Well, yes. That worldview --- that "sort of ethos, the sensibility, the contingent set of practices and institutions within which one lives and moves" even has a name here in America. It's called --- conservatism. And Obama and his followers have a similar "sort of ethos, the sensibility, the contingent set of practices and institutions within which one lives and moves" and in America it's called liberalism. Both of these are political ideologies which are sometimes informed by religious or spiritual beliefs. But they are, at their cores, competing worldviews.

Obama and the Democrats are making a stab at bridging some of the differences. Lord knows that they have made many concessions, both rhetorical and substantive, to social conservatism over the past few years with very limited political results. But something that Warren says rather perfunctorily in passing suggests that it may not always be so:

My gut reaction when it was over was that Obama will pick up probably some younger votes and McCain will probably pick up some older votes and it might come down to which group winds up showing up that the polls.

The true promise of this Obama Moment may be, ironically, the future. Young people of all faiths who sign on to the liberal worldview today are likely to stay with it. Obama may have gone before that audience on a quixotic bid for evangelical votes in this election, but by setting forth reasoned and moral arguments for social justice, civil liberties and civil rights based upon our liberal worldview in that setting, he issued an invitation to the young, idealistic religious believers who already see the world in broader terms than their parents.

There's little reason to believe that there will be a sea change among conservative Christians --- Rick Warren's comments above make it quite clear that the fundamental liberal commitment to women's personal autonomy is a deal breaker for a great many of his followers. (Those who think they can whittle away at abortion rights from within the party will find that the Democrats' enduring habit of ruthlessly fighting among themselves has prepared them well for that epic battle and they will be in for the fight of their lives if they try it.) But if young people in that church and elsewhere heard the distant dogwhistle of Obama's liberal worldview, then today's Obama Moment could be an important step in the building of a Progressive Movement of tomorrow. God willing.