The Evangelical Campaign: Hitting Below The Belt

The Republicans try to vilify Obama as a Muslim. Evangelical voters will presumably vote pragmatically and then put pressure on the victor.

What’s the most important subject in the American election campaign? “American values,” Elaine Dougherty confidently answers. “Our belief in God, our Christianity.” The 64-year old woman works in the small town of Clarksville, West Virginia, as a volunteer for the Republican campaign. Obama took his oath of office on the Koran, she says – an old claim, long since disproved, that was put forth for one reason and one reason only – to discredit the Democratic presidential candidate among Christian fundamentalists.

Cultural questions played a great role in this area, says Jennifer Banko, who works a few doors down as a volunteer for the Democratic campaign. The 37-year old woman believes Obama will be elected and will even carry West Virginia. “The war and the economy have taken on such important meaning lately that questions like abortion or gun rights have lost ground. Four years ago, values conservatives had no reason not to vote Republican. It’s a lot different today.”

It may not stay that way. The basic prohibition against abortion, the right to keep and bear arms and godliness in the Christian sense: this triumvirate forms the framework of the conservative worldview that propelled George W. Bush into the White House. In Europe, many Obama supporters believe the election will be a battle of cultures. But many U.S. voters will pragmatically make their decision based on other, more pressing priorities – without having to toss their basic beliefs overboard.

The separation of church and state is becoming more and more blurred in the USA. When John McCain and Barack Obama first met face to face on television, the questions were largely oriented around ethical and religious subjects. The moderator of that debate was a preacher. The main objection to another candidate, the already eliminated Mitt Romney, was that he was a Mormon.

The influence of evangelical Christians in the United States has grown constantly in recent years. During the 2004 election, the evangelical vote accounted for more than 40 percent of the Republican total. The central tenet of these Christians – that the Bible must be taken literally and not interpreted for modern times – has worldwide political consequences from stem cell research to Middle Eastern policy. Evangelicals reject the theory of evolution and believe mankind was divinely created according to the biblical account. Serious surveys in the United States show that a majority believes man was created no more than 10,000 years ago.

It would be naïve to assume that people with such fundamental beliefs will be re-oriented toward more up-to-the-minute questions. But one likely scenario is this: the bigger Obama’s margin of victory, the more evident it will be that evangelical voters played a large part in that victory – and the greater the probability that he will have to address their concerns. A presidential election will happen on November 4th, not a cultural war.