Are the Leading Republicans "Christians?"

CHRISTIANS AMONG THE DEMOCRATS. One of the interesting dimensions of the upcoming presidential campaign is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seem a lot more comfortable with religion than their likely Republican opponents. In fact, by some criteria, the two leading Democrats can be seen as the "Christian" candidates in the race while the Republicans seem like secularists.

THE DOBSON DEFINITION. The criteria I have in mind are those of James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, the most important Christian conservative political group. Dobson claimed that Fred Thompson is not a "Christian" because he does not give public testimony to his Christian faith. Thompson's long history as a skirt chaser doesn't help in this regard either. The same applies to the declared candidates as well. Romney, McCain, and Giuliani all appear to be less religious than Clinton and Obama. Compared to the Democrats, they're also much less comfortable with religiosity in public. There may be political reasons for this. McCain, Giuliani, or Romney are all seeking to appeal to an evangelical Republican "base" although none of them are evangelical Protestants themselves like President Bush. As a result, Republican candidates have reason to play down their religious beliefs even as they are pandering to evangelicals on abortion and gay rights. Still, by Dobson's criteria, the leading Republican contenders are not "Christians."

WORRIES OF THE BROTHER. The situation with religion and the Presidential race is causing discomfort among conservative pundits. David Limbaugh (brother of Rush) has a weak article on Townhall.com. Limbaugh documents efforts by current Democrats to highlight their religiosity and Ed Rendell's argument that there are few Biblical passages on homosexuals or abortion in the Bible compared to the enormous number of passages on aiding the poor. Here Limbaugh's in trouble. In fact, "Jesus talked tirelessly about the poor." As a result, Limbaugh's only reply is a "me-too" claiming that conservatives care about the poor but don't believe "the best way to eradicate poverty is through government-coerced redistributions of wealth." This is very weak. In fact, Jesus was highly suspicious of wealth in general ("Ye cannot serve God and mammon") and demanded that the wealthy voluntarily redistribute their wealth by giving all of it away to the poor. Wouldn't government sponsored redistribution accomplish the goals of Jesus, and have the added benefit of saving the wealthy from an eternity of damnation as well?

In the final analysis, Limbaugh is driven back to pointing the figure at secular liberals as the enemy.

This is mistaken on several levels. The biggest part of the Democratic base and the strongest constituency for political liberalism is the highly religious African-American population. The Democrats are also very strong with the Catholic Hispanic population (70% in 2006). Likewise, white liberals (the only liberals for Limbaugh) are comfortable with the Quakers, Unitarians, and mainline denominations. A lot of white liberals do "look down their nose" at fundamentalists and evangelicals and are wrong to do so. Although I'm an atheist myself, I still think that Jesus' demand that people "love your enemies" is a worthy principle for all the difficulty of putting it into practice. Knee-jerk hostility toward evangelicals also contradicts the important liberal value of multi-culturalism. To be fair of course, evangelicals like Limbaugh don't love liberals any more than white liberals love them.

Democratic evangelicals also fail to explain liberals' high comfort level with secular values and their unmistakable hostility toward Christians, mainstream Christian values and, sometimes, the very concept of absolute truth. You might recall Democratic Senator (and presidential candidate) Joe Biden confessing, "We have too many elites in our party who look down their nose on people of faith."

In the final analysis, it's hard to see how David Limbaugh would count the leading Republicans as Christians either. When he claims that liberals have an "unmistakable hostility toward Christians," he defines "Christians" as evangelical, publicly professing, Protestants in the same way as James Dobson. By that definition, the only Christians among the major candidates are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.