What Do Americans Believe?

After Bush’s departure, many are hoping that religion will lose influence in politics. They could be mistaken: the road is open for Obama, the Messiah.

Religion is another victim of the Bush years in the United States. As much as he might otherwise wish, President Bush is not thought of as cleaving to Christian values such as care of the poor and renunciation of vengeance. Un-Christian values are more likely to be associated with him: conservative, militaristic and dangerous to liberal democracy.

It would perhaps be best to turn our backs on religion as well as the Bush administration and the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. And no variety of religion should be abandoned more quickly than the evangelical sort, in order to make way for the secular Messiah, Barack Obama.

Unfortunately for this scenario, Obama is also a devout Christian. He ends every speech with the benediction “God bless America.” His campaign employed a full-time member responsible solely for coordinating religious matters. Evangelical pastor Tony Campolo worked with the Democratic election campaign. Obama won percent more of the evangelical vote than John Kerry in 2004. Among those who attended church more than once a week, he won fully 8 percent more than Kerry.

Religious commitment brings in votes in the U.S. because the church, as an institution, has been seen for 350 years as a trustworthy institution. Europe of the Age of Enlightenment toppled a corrupt clergy from its pedestal while churches in America – especially the evangelical churches – were the provinces of ordinary people. The most deeply anchored network in the U.S. developed from this grass-roots movement.

Under Obama, America will not change into a laicist nation. Obama is a professor of constitutional law and the benefits of a secular state are clear to him. But he won his first political spurs in the arena of religious social work so he also realizes how important religion is to American civil society. The “people’s churches” are the bedrock of social life in America. The church, therefore, is regarded benevolently rather than with suspicion.

What role, then, will Obama’s and America’s religiosity play in the coming administration?

One central problem is government financing of social services organized by churches and religious organizations. In July, Obama announced his support for funding faith-based initiatives. These are similar to our social programs Diakonie and Caritas which support hospitals, youth programs, etc. But as soon as an American religious institution is given public funds, a strictly limited partnership is born because of the constitutional requirement that religion and state be strictly separated. Obama hopes to expand that partnership and use public funds to do so. That, however, creates a myriad of problems.

For example, may a religious institution choose to hire only members of that religion? May a confessed Baptist employee of a religious health clinic be fired because he is a homosexual? Nearly 75 percent of Americans reject such ideas. Still, when George Bush became President, some religious conservatives saw an opportunity to use this question to steer a new political course. They weren’t completely successful, but they unleashed a catastrophic cultural war – fought, of all places, on the backs of religious institutions that had been involved in social services for years. How Obama intends to deal with this cultural war is as yet unknown.

The fundamental decisions will be made by the American court system where, traditionally, all cultural conflicts are decided. That also applies, for example, to the question of whether public schools may teach creationist philosophy. Obama will indirectly affect such decisions when he is presented with the opportunity to select his first Supreme Court nominee.

Obama’s real challenge will have to be political compromise. It is certain that religious rights champions will oppose him. But which allies will he be able to find in the ensuing debate? Unless all indications are wrong, he might find many potential partners among the ranks of the evangelicals. They are increasingly leaving the old insistence on religious rights behind them; what remains is a fundamental change that could have far reaching consequences.

Most regular church-goers in America still reject abortion and homosexual marriage, but increasingly more of them are tending toward environmental protection and government welfare programs and many now favor diplomacy rather than military action in order to secure peace. At least one influential evangelical organization now wants to critically examine its rejection of Darwin’s theories of evolution. Scott McKnight, a prominent evangelical theologist, describes this as “the greatest change in the evangelical movement” and a “new form of Christian social awareness.”

Progressive and moderate evangelicals, meanwhile, are becoming just as powerful as the religious right and they are dispersed across the entire nation. The initiative “Matthew 25 Network” has set about winning evangelicals over to the Democratic Party. Between 2000 and 2005, the percentage of young evangelicals describing themselves as Republicans was constant at about 55 percent. By 2007, this group had shrunk to 37 percent, and at the time of the mid-term elections in 2006, 41 percent of them voted Democratic. While Obama garnered only 26 percent of that vote, the Democrats in general had gained 5 percent over 2004 and that came about despite the Republican Party’s selection of super-religious candidate Sarah Palin for Vice-President.

These new evangelicals hesitate to use their political power because they also advocate the separation of church and state. Their manifesto put forth this year declares: “We are firmly opposed to the imposition of theocracy on our pluralistic society.” Of significant importance to the new evangelicals, however, is their denominational integrity and commitment to charitable and social service. In these matters, they would be tough negotiating partners.

At the same time, they have accepted Obama’s overtures and have set a critical internal ecclesiastical movement in motion that is likely to change American politics. Should they be successful in working with Obama and coming up with compromises acceptable to many devout Americans, the religious right will quickly lose much of its previous attraction.

Next up: Rick Warren, one of the best-known “new” evangelicals has been invited to deliver the prayer at Obama’s inauguration on the Jan. 20.