The vanishing values voters ?
That’s what the drivebys — awfully butt-hurt about the impending Roy Moore victory in Alabama –-want you to believe:
From a distance, Alabama’s special election can seem like a liberal caricature of conservative Christians brought to life. The Republican candidate is a gun-toting, Bible-quoting, cowboy-hat-wearing ex-judge who has been accused of sexually abusing multiple teenage girls. Rather than recoil at the credibility and multiplicity of the accusations against him, his God-fearing supporters have rallied valiantly to his defense.
“This is a spiritual battle we’re fighting,” they say.
“As Christians, we believe in second chances,” they say.
There’s Biblical precedent, they say—just look at Mary and Joseph!
To many on the secular left, the race has only confirmed all the worst things they’ve long assumed about social conservatives. But what’s taking place in Alabama is actually the product of a dramatic, and relatively recent, shift in the political ethics of the religious right—a shift that could have far-reaching consequences in American politics.
For decades, the belief that private morality was essential to assessing the worthiness of politicians and public figures was an animating ideal at the core of the Christian right’s credo. As with most ideals, the movement did not always live up to its own standards. So-called “values voters” pursued a polarizing, multi-faceted agenda that was often tangled up in prejudice and partisanship. They fiercely defended Clarence Thomas when he was accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, for example, and then excoriated Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky. […]
First, Clarence Thomas was besieged by a gossip-laden tidal wave seeking to smear him for the unpardonable sin of being conservative while black. There was no evidence. There was evidence all over Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. She and Bill also desecrated a place of respect in American government and history — The Oval Office.
MORE:
[…] But even when they were failing to hold their own side accountable, they still clung to the idea that “character counts.” As recently as 2011, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that only 30 percent of white evangelicals believed “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” But by the time Donald Trump was running for president in 2016, that number had risen sharply to 72 percent. White evangelicals are now more tolerant of immoral behavior by elected officials than the average American. “This is really a sea change in evangelical ethics,” Robert P. Jones, the head of the institute and the author of The End of White Christian America, recently told me.
Really? Anybody ever notice all of the black preachers standing up and defending “saints” like Marion Barry, Jesse Jackson, Louisiana’s Bill Jefferson and his freezer full of cash, and Al Sharpton? Smoking crack and cheating on your wife and taking bribes will STILL get you reelected overwhelmingly if you are black and running in a black-majority district.
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[…] Conservative values voters seem to have largely abandoned their search for moral exemplars in the political arena—as my colleague Yoni Appelbaum wrote last year—and are now content to settle for any candidate who will fight abortion and protect their religious freedom.
Most good, decent people don’t have the stomach to withstand the environment that comes with elected office. Most people simply try to work with what they can get.
“In an ideal world, you would have both character and [the right policy positions], but we don’t live an ideal world—we live in a fallen world,” Robert Jeffress, a pastor of First Baptist Dallas and a Trump adviser, told me. “That’s not to say character isn’t important. It’s certainly important. But it’s one of many factors you have to look at … character, competence, policy. Depending on where the country is at the time, you have to determine which of those is most important.”
Character still counts, in other words, but its market value has plummeted.
At a time when sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men are rocking many of America’s institutions, some Christians lament this deemphasizing of morality. “This really is a moment in which we ought to be having a conversation about how much character counts in all walks of life,” said David P. Gushee, a Baptist pastor and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Georgia. “Instead, it is mainly a moment in which our side points to the character flaws of their side, and so on.”
Why did the values voters surrender on the character question? Gushee blames “hyper-partisanship”—and, indeed, it’s hard not to see Trump-era tribalism at work here. But leading conservative Christians told me the reasons extend beyond the latest election.
How is there a surrender? You have baseless allegations hurled against the Republican president and a Republican nominee for US Senate.
[…] Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that many of his fellow evangelicals have simply lost faith in the caliber of America’s political leaders. “In the 1960 presidential election, the voters basically assumed the basic moral probity of both Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy,” he told me. “Forty years later, voters came to understand that one was a serial philanderer and the other was a paranoid leader who was a habitual liar … We live in an entirely different information environment, and I do think that changes a lot.”[…]
[…] With modern technology and media making it more common than ever for politicians’ private transgressions to be exposed, Mohler said, conservative Christians are adjusting their expectations accordingly. And while Mohler couldn’t bring himself to support Trump in 2016—he’d been an outspoken critic of Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal, and felt it would be hypocritical to give Trump a pass—he says he understands how other evangelicals justified their vote for the Republican nominee. “I’m not going to throw them under the bus,” he told me. “They’re not wrong that important issues are at stake.”
David Brody, a correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network who has co-authored a forthcoming “spiritual biography” of Trump, said many outside observers fail to grasp the desperation and urgency felt throughout much of conservative Christianity.
“The way evangelicals see the world, the culture is not only slipping away—it’s slipping away in all caps, with four exclamation points after that. It’s going to you-know-what in a handbasket,” Brody told me. “Where does that leave evangelicals? It leaves them with a choice. Do they sacrifice a little bit of that ethical guideline they’ve used in the past in exchange for what they believe is saving the culture?”
Of course, it could be argued that the culture suffers when a man of unbridled appetites and unimpressive impulse control is placed in the Oval Office. (In fact, many on the religious right advanced this very argument when Clinton was president.) But Brody says that encroaching secularism, combined with a perceived liberal hostility toward people of faith, has prompted many conservative Christians to support any politician who will protect their traditions. “Donald Trump always talks about bringing back ‘Merry Christmas’ and everybody laughs. But it’s not just about saying ‘Merry Christmas’—it’s about the idea behind it,” Brody said. “They are voting for a person who will be a placeholder for their values. They’re not voting for a person who is going to be Mother Teresa.” […]
The values vote hasn’t gone anywhere. It sent Dan Forest to Raleigh. It has saved Walter Jones during many a tough election. And it will likely send Robert Pittenger HOME and Mark Harris to DC in 2018.
People don’t like being patronized. Values voters stood strong with the twice-married Ronald Reagan and the thrice-married Donald Trump because those two made promises and fought to keep them.
…just remember mr H is no small part of Thom T being where he is, and even probably got pwittenger elected over the much better union county candidate last go-around. hard for me to have unbridled enthusiasm or not be at least a wee bit leery.
An article from “The Atlantic”, which is for all practical purposes the ideological successor to the old Daily Worker? I wouldn’t give their Marxist ideologues much credibility.
As to the values voters, from the ones I know, the GOP in our state is going to have to work hard to get them to the polls in 2018. Many are still fuming over the sellout on the HB2 repeal..
For most values voters the most important thing is how a candidate will vote on the issues, and the liberal Democrat candidate in Alabama is just plain horrible on issues, while Judge Moore is right on the money on all the key issues.
This article and its ideas are a great beginning in critical (Christian) thinking, something the left works hard to keep our people from doing. Deciding who to vote for based on a single issue allows the drama queen left to control a lot of votes.
Really this all comes down to a couple of things.
1. The democrat party has fully abandoned anything that resembles a good moral or values stand so by default voting for dems means you are voting to have poor morals and values. While there are bad people in both parties, it is hard to vote for baby killing and keeping people in slavery to the government.
2. Voting for the Republican at least means there is at least a chance that there is a good moral or values foundation there and we all know that people are not without their faults…oh and the media will always lie about the Republican and believe people who fake documents to support their fake claims of things like chasing after 14 year olds.