Posted by
CRB on Saturday, June 16, 2007 2:05:28 PM
David Campbell of Notre Dame last year published an essay on the character of the white evangelical voter and their apparent responses to perceived "religious threat".
It would be easy, and overly simplistic, to view his paper as proving that the motivation for the evangelical conservative is one of fear. There is a degree of truth to this, on the political side, and a degree of error to this, employing a correlation that does not necessarily result in cause. It would also be naive for the evangelical thinker to ignore some of the motivations that may affect him or the local church. An evaluation like this can assist in developing a more consistent, more well-considered, and more Biblical ministry.
Where most of my questions lie is in any link between the correlations and the perception of a causal relationship. While the correlation of voting preferences and "born again" are undeniable, other matters remain. Does this study convey any information that goes to cause? That is, can one conclude a cause, using only correlation, and still not specifically identify a cause and its place in that particular setting without providing evidence of its presence and affective behavior? Specifically, is correlation enough to establish a cause? In this area the paper seems weak.
Secondly, do these correlations express enough general information about any of the characteristics within the various distinctives of evangelical theology which might also contribute to the threat response? Whether one is of any one of the myriad of soteriological and eschatological positions will certainly have a significant effect on political response.
Third, cascading from the second, do they account for the changes in theology over the past decades? Because world view (in this case theology) is the primary driving force, a study of the theology over time would help account better for describing behavior.
As a matter of the detail, Mr. Campbell also makes an unfortunate and serious error in his characterization of evangelicals:
evangelicals are a self-aware, cohesive, politically-organized group (p. 16)
We can only wish! One real concern here is that readers will conclude there to be near-unanimity within the movement because of our commonalities. That would be unfortunate, but even so seems to be a common perception.
It might also be easy, no, it is easy, for some to draw this conclusion: Because Mr. Campbell employs similar discussions of race and voting, allowing the casual reader to conclude that conservative and specifically evangelical Christian racism is an established fact, it may be concluded by some that evangelicals are necessarily responders to some contrived culture war or other threatening social movement. That is not a necessary conclusion but one that is easily garnered from the general discussion.
A major obstacle here is that history is generally ignored. The question being: Have Christians, in this case evangelicals, presented a case for a legitimate response to social ills and societal threats? Has the political involvement of these evangelicals been detrimental, resulting in a "theocracy" of some sort, or has society benefited from their involvement? So, is the principle of evangelicals being merely responders to political and social stimuli a legitimate premise? History has show much positive evangelical influence, including the principle of religious tolerance, the ending of slavery in British empire and the U.S., educational advances, health care advances, charitable work, as well as the issues that currently surround the life ethic, and so much more.
Christianity thrives on challenges. Theology develops out of challenges, and so does the application of that theology.
Is the evangelical position always one of a defensive posture? Is it a response to a threat or a responst to an assertion, a challenge? Theologians have, for centuries, responded to challenges from a wide variety of sources. Whether it was Aquinas debating transcendency with the Islamic teachers or Augustus Strong confront the ideals of Kant and Darwin in his systematic theology in the early 20th century, the response mechanism of the evangelical, and a Christian trait in general, has been consistently present.
By looking only at sociological and recent political issues, Mr. Campbell has done an injustice to history. Unfortunately some cling to Mr. Campbell's thesis instead of reading it critically and asking to what degree the "threat" thesis may be considered legitimate.
I believe answering these questions, and perhaps others that have certainly arisen, can add more substance to the material and help provide a more thorough study of the place of evangelicalism in the voting constituency of the United States. So, while I believe that it is currently too broad in its scope to be of great analytical value, it's a suitable starting place for a more thorough analysis.