aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Closely Divided or Deeply Divided on religion?

More from Paul Bloom’s Atlantic essay, Is God an Accident? From part 1, God Is Not dead:

In the United States some liberal scholars posit...that belief in the supernatural is found mostly in Christian conservatives-those infamously described by the Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf in 1993 as “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” Many people saw the 2004 presidential election as pitting Americans who are religious against those who are not.

An article by Steven Waldman in the online magazine Slate provides some perspective on the divide:

“As you may already know, one of America’s two political parties is extremely religious. Sixty-one percent of this party’s voters say they pray daily or more often. An astounding 92 percent of them believe in life after death. And there’s a hard-core subgroup in this party of super-religious Christian zealots. Very conservative on gay marriage, half of the members of this subgroup believe Bush uses too little religious rhetoric, and 51 percent of them believe God gave Israel to the Jews and that its existence fulfills the prophecy about the second coming of Jesus.”

The group that Waldman is talking about is Democrats; the hard-core subgroup is African-American Democrats.

Here’s the Slate link. I couldn’t find the original Washington Post article, “Energized by Pulpit or Passion, the Public Is Calling; `Gospel Grapevine’ Displays Strength In Controversy Over Military Gay Ban,” anywhere online so I’ve put excerpts in the extended entry.

See also, Closely Divided or Deeply Divided.

The article was published February 1, 1993. This statement was published February 2:

An article yesterday characterized followers of television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “largely poor, undeducated and easy to command.” There is no factual basis for that statement.

From the article:

Politics from the pulpit may be the stock in trade for television evangelist Jerry Falwell, but it took the current controversy over homosexuals in the military to inspire his dial-a-lobby.

Warning darkly of a “new, radical homosexual rights agenda,” Falwell urged viewers of “Old Time Gospel Hour” on Jan. 24 to dial a “900” number and add their names to a petition urging President Clinton not to lift the military gay ban.

Within hours, 24,000 people had called to support the petition.

That response demonstrated the power of the religious right to mobilize its masses for the kind of political action that shook official Washington and helped Clinton’s opponents in Congress delay and dilute the president’s plan to lift the prohibition. Telephone lines to Congress and the White House were swamped by calls running 100 to 1 against ending the ban in some offices.

Dial-a-lobby was one facet of an extraordinary communications network - a gospel grapevine - that fundamentalist leaders can tap to ignite a grass-roots firestorm as fast and forcefully as any special- interest group in U.S. politics.

With an electronic empire that comprises more than 1,200 radio stations, the nation’s largest cable television network and hundreds of satellite and cable stations, these preachers reach directly into millions of homes with their potent blend of evangelical politics. Last week’s appeals to lobby Washington were broadcast in hourly news and commentary programs, daily talk shows and interviews.

And the media were just the most visible part of a lobbying machine that spread “the word” through phone banks, electronic press release services, faxes and “Action Alerts” slipped into the bulletins of more than 25,000 churches nationwide. [...]

Unlike other powerful interests, it does not lavish campaign funds on candidates for Congress nor does it entertain them. The strength of fundamentalist leaders lies in their flocks. Corporations pay public relations firms millions of dollars to contrive the kind of grass-roots response that Falwell or Pat Robertson can galvanize in a televised sermon. Their followers are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.

“The thing that makes them powerful is they’re mobilizable,” said Seymour Martin Lipset, professor of public policy at George Mason University. “You can activate them to vote, and that’s particularly important in congressional primaries where the turnout is usually low.”

Phew. I had no idea it would be about my own hot-button issue, gays in the military. My reaction is to think we’ve got to take much more seriously the question, where’s our James Dobson?

Here’s a July 2005 Michael Kinsley column that mentions the quotation, erroneously so says Amy Ridenour. (Amy, he also said “millions of years ago.")