The Right Take On Religion And Republicanism
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Conservatism, Democrats, Religion
Kristen Soltis pens a great post over at The Next Right that’s definitely worth a read. Because by talking about refocusing what religion means to the Republican party, she’s helping drive the conversation for a new generation of conservatives…and that’s long overdue…
The notion that every human life is sacred is an important one, and not one that should be cast out of the party, I’ll readily agree. But the dignity of human life is important for the unborn as well as those born and living among us as our neighbors – the alone, the sick, the needy. We need advocates for the unborn in our party, but so too do we need an agenda that focuses on the dignity of human life and mutual respect in our inner cities, in the third world, in our schools. We can’t focus on one and ignore the other without essentially cherry picking when we decide we care about human life. [...]Do our candidates and leaders need to wear their religion on their sleeve? No. Religion itself is a very personal matter to many Americans, and the blend of religion and politics that is intended to demagogue and divide will hopefully find its way out the door. A focus on religion as a litmus test for our leaders, as an exclusionary aspect of partisanship, is doomed to failure.
But many Americans have a place for spirituality in their lives, whatever shape or form that comes in, and there is something important driving millions of Americans to go to church tonight. God matters to America, and matters in politics – just maybe not in the way we’ve been lead to believe. The season of hope, happiness and love isn’t just a Christian phenomenon; it’s something everyone can take part in, and it’s a spirit I hope won’t be forgotten as soon as the presents are all opened.
This debate will go on and on and on in the coming weeks as we prepare to select our RNC chair and to set our party on a course to bounce back in 2010. The role that religion, and in particular Christianity, will play in the party will hopefully receive a healthy amount of attention and discussion.
Here’s the thing…I honestly don’t think that Republicans will get their act together with regards to wedge issues for quite some time. In fact, it may take another 20 years for what Kristen is talking about to really gain a foothold because an entire generation of politicians has to come of age and start running with these new values.
But what younger Christians can start doing immediately is creating grassroots buzz via social media channels to let the older folks now that this is where they’re going and they can start to adopt their policy positions or risk losing an entire generation of conservative voters.
After all, with Obama inviting Rick Warren to give his invocation, Dems are starting to make inroads with issues that matter to many younger religious “conservatives.”
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 and is filed under Conservatism, Democrats, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 25th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Good Lord, don’t you realize what you are saying? Asking conservative Christians to care about the poor and needy will make them….liberals.
December 26th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Forget “conservatism,” please. It has been Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
December 30th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
You have the worst captchas on the internet. I give up.
January 4th, 2009 at 11:35 am
The GOP is lost, it will never gain any sort of ethical value system, not that it ever had any.
Conservativism has always been about ME ME ME, damn the world, and how much money can I make.