Eight Years Is Plenty of Time
While catching up on e-mails today (my inbox was full), I finally got around to reading the e-mail from Barna concerning the 2008 election…
As I read Barna’s article, I was surprised at what I read concerning the latest voting trends Barna ‘discovered’ in his latest survey. I had also read some comments at other Christian blogs and forums and saw ‘opinions’ ranging in everything from “Barna hates the church and the religious right so bad that his questions are uniquely designed to produce skewed results to make them look bad” to ‘Barna needs to get his definition of ‘evangelical’ correct to ‘Barna knows who to call to get the results he desires’. In other words, Barna must rig surveys. A most unfair accusation.
Basically, Barna’s survey revealed that most born again voters no longer favor republican candidates and that
…if the election were held today, most born again voters would select the Democratic Party nominee for president, whoever that might be.
Even though Barna contributes his findings to the fact of:
Today we have a greater proportion of faith-driven voters who are concerned about issues that are often thought of as ‘liberal’ social policy concerns, such as poverty and health care. Abortion and family protection remain significant issues to the faith constituency, but they are not the only issues that matter to the group - or even the driving issues.
I wonder if there may be another reason why this ’shift’ is taking place. I am now wondering if the real reason why we are seeing this ’shift’ take place is because eight years is a more than appropriate time span to have seen the ‘changes’ promised by Religious Right leaders to have taken place.
In other words, God’s Only Party failed to bring the ‘changes’ that the Religious Right leaders promised. These changes included:
Ending legalized Abortion
School vouchers
The end of political correctiveness, ‘tolerance’, ‘diversity’ (the new word for Affirmative Action according to the Religious Right), ‘hate crimes’, branding disagreers as ‘hate’ and ‘racist’ and squashing the gay rights movement.
We’ll win the war on drugs.
Christianity as the official religion in America and the ‘persecution’ by liberal DEMONcrat hippy college professors will stop.
Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance back in the public schools at the start of the day
Restoration of the Leave It To Beaver lifestyle of the 1950’s
Overtax the singles and eliminate taxes on married couples with homeschooled kids.
I clearly remember hearing this stuff on Religious Right Radio (preaching RIGHT wing conservatism from the LEFT end of the dial) about how America was in danger of doom if we didn’t vote against Al Gore and your salvation was at stake based on who you voted for. I remember a church in my town where the local Christian Coalition group stood the Sunday before the election outside the property lines with long poles with voter guides attached to them trying to pass them out to church goers as they came and left the parking lot. I remember getting e-mails from friends whose pastors received prepared statements of how to tell the congregation which candidate to vote for that would loophole (defined by me as the intentional means of justifying breaking the law by eliminating the guilt of breaking the law) around the 501c3 laws.
It’s been eight years later and Abortion is still lawful. Roe vs. Wade is still not overturned. Political Correctiveness still abounds. Osama Bin Laden (the original terrorist) is still on the loose and Iraq is in shambles. The gay lobbyists are more influential than they were when Clinton was in office and same-sex marriage is more of an issue now than when Clinton was in office. Instead of calling disagreers ‘racists’, we now call them ‘terrorists’. The economy stagnated and many people in 2002-2004 went through job losses (told by the church that it was ‘Job Loss For Jesus’ or ‘God must hate you’ and Burger King has career opportunities, get off your lazy duff and go to work) and the trend appears to be starting again. Islam is rapidly becoming popular. The mega fasts, shofar blowing, Purpose-Driven Lives, and Lou Engle Call rallies did not change the tide. The government could not respond in a timely manner to the tragedy called Hurricane Katrina. Televangelists quit the DEMONcrat gospel and went prosperity gospel buying Rolls Royces and mansions telling their viewers that not sending them money would bring sickness and poverty……
We saw Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy die never to see the utopia they wanted become reality.
In other words, the Christian utopia that was promised never happened and American Christians are determining that eight years was more than enough time to bring this forth. Also, many American Christians have finally come to the conclusion that no matter how many laws we pass, that human sinfulness and depravity will not be effectively dealt with through legislating nationwide laws but only through genuine repentance of the individual one soul at a time. Many American Christians have now realized that we are going into perilous times and that God, not government will be their source and that the church of Acts did amazing things when the government opposed them. No matter which party wins in November, things are gonna get worse and Christians will become more persecuted.
I think that many American Christians are now realizing that the ‘one night stand’ (turned into an Apostolic Affair of Adultery) of churches to politicians in a lust for power was a bonding of a holy and pure institution to a profane and prostituted profession. This act created a soul tie that will be grueling and painful to break while leaving the ravaged church diseased, unholy, profane, and unclean thinking that they had taken protective measures to ensure their survival. Over time, the church became the whore who would perform tricks for politicians in exchange for ‘favors’ selling themselves out by turning from a house of prayer to a den of thieves.
However, the seed sown has produced a child of anger and wrath that believes that God can not be sovereign, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient unless they ‘repent’, vote in certain candidates, or do ‘works’ that will allow God to even look at them.
Maybe that is why Barna’s survey yielded the results it got. American Christians have gotten tired of hearing the paranoia, hysteria, and ‘death threats’ if they did not vote for God’s Only Party to have voted them in and now feel disillusioned because the promises of paradise never came to pass and the struggle to survive still remains.
I believe deep down, that is why Barna got the answers he got.
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Comments
The only problem I had with Barna’s report is his definition of evangelical as a subset of born again. I think it should be reversed, shouldn’t it?
However, your post was correct in pointing out that the Christian Right Leaders’ god (little “g”) was to get a foot into the White House and Congress. I have never heard any of them complain about the former Republican Congress and Republican President (Bush) and now majority Republican-type Justices on the Supreme Court NOT even bringing up an abortion and/or marriage amendment. That is because this is their true colors. “Our” political leaders could care less….they just want to “pimp” the Christian leaders for votes.
And mark my word–this exact thing will happen on the Christian Left in the future too where liberal politicians will “pimp” people like Wallis, Sider and Compolo for votes but won’t deliver the “goods.”
Oh, by the way, I am not nuts about an abortion and/or marriage amendment(s) as you really cannot legislate morals very well as we’ve already seen in the (alcohol) Prohibition amendment. We must transform people through the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Diane:
*****
And mark my word–this exact thing will happen on the Christian Left in the future too where liberal politicians will “pimp” people like Wallis, Sider and Compolo for votes but won’t deliver the “goods.”
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I believe that it is happening as we speak.
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