I think that those who think that the Democrats can start winning
the votes of Christian conservatives by adopting more religion-talk
are wrong. (As a member of the religious left, I don't have that
much against religion-talk, I just don't think it will help that
much.)
I believe that for the overwhelming majority of evangelical
Christian conservatives in this country, it is their *conservatism*
that comes first, that shapes and guides their religion, rather
than the other way around. Their are not conservative because they
are evangelicals, but they adopt a certain variety of
evangelicalism because they are conservative. There are certainly
exceptions, and the Democrats may be able to pull some of them
away, but not all that many.
If it was really evangelicalism that was driving their
conservatism, then the Republicans would be more successful at
picking up evangelical black voters, who are religiously pretty
conservative. We could do a little better, I suspect, at keeping
pro-life Catholics voting for Democrats, perhaps by doing a better
job indicating how pro-choice public policies can reduce the number
of abortions. But overall, we're not going to win the votes of
religious conservatives without either secrificing our own values
or working to change theirs. I refuse to do the first, and I'm not
confident of how much luck we'll have with the second...
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