While shopping for classes at the beginning of this term, I found myself sitting in on the first meeting of Professor Clarence Hardy's Religion and Society in America class. He won the hearts and minds of his students with his eloquent turns-of-phrase delivered in a gravelly baritone, making it clear that he was the clear-headed captain needed to navigate the murky waters of American religion.
Hardy had us go around the room, introducing ourselves and explaining our reasons for wanting to take the class. There was a fair number of the token response, "I want to see how religion has played a role in American history." A few mentioned their own faith and an interest in studying its history in America. What was striking, however, was the majority of students who mentioned the decisive role of religion in the presidential election as their reason for taking the class, speaking of it as if it were a new cultural force, while acknowledging fearfully that it had somehow passed them by, that they had yet to understand this awoken political beast. Hardy jovially responded that it was nice to know that President Bush was keeping him employed.
Hardy found this overwhelming response intriguing and kept returning to it. He said roughly, "Now, I'm going to get a little nasty. I'm going to take my gloves off here. I think the American media would lead you to believe that the evangelical movement is some new development. I would argue that what we are seeing is not particularly a reflection of some new movement but rather a reflection of a, dare I say, cultural elite's recent realization of that movement." Equally powerful as his statement was the following realization that I, too, was a part of that cultural elite (whether we like that questionable title, we all are, in a basic sense), that I, too, had mistaken my own awakening to evangelism's existence for evangelism's actual awakening.
Having said that, I do think that something different happened this fall, but not in the way that the students in Hardy's class meant it and without the near-apocalyptic manner in which they seemed to view it. In this election, CNN's national exit poll showed 23 percent of the American population identified themselves as white evangelists, of which 78 percent voted for Bush and 21 percent for Kerry. That is quite a noticeable chunk of the population to have 78 percent of and understandably alarming for Kerry supporters. In 2000, only 14 percent of the population exiting the polls identified themselves as evangelist (the divide between Bush and Gore was effectively the same at around 80/20). In 1996, 17 percent did. Of that 17 percent, 26 percent went to Clinton, but, as we all know, Kerry is a poor man's Clinton and Dole was just as much a poor man's Bush, explaining that five percent discrepancy from the norm.
What I think is important is to ask what this discrepancy between 2000 and 2004 signifies. Has the hype of Bush's own faith in the last four years afforded the evangelical movement a wave of conversions? Anything is possible, but I think much more likely is the possibility that Bush very skillfully mobilized an already existent base enough so that eight percent more of the population (a very politically and religiously opinionated eight percent, I might add) showed up at the polling stations.
So does this mean that religion played a decisive role in this year's election? I guess you could say that, but we need to work the zoom button a little bit. I think underlying this crisis-laden liberal mindset, there is a mad quest for that still burning (like searing coals!) liberal question: how could the American people favor the ornery and periodically deceptive administration of President Bush over Senator Kerry, who while not particularly compelling, seemed to have a sound, intelligent head on his shoulders? And you could say that it was Bush's religion or his "tough stance" on terrorism, but I think that this would be a cop out.
Now I'm going to take my gloves off. The answer lies in my descriptions of the two candidates above: Kerry was that much worse (and Bush that much better) at getting the people who were receptive to the cult of his personality out to the polls. I don't think there's some man behind the curtain, some single hidden force or specter, and the sooner that the Democrats start seeing what happened for what it was -- a lost political game, nothing less, nothing more -- the sooner they'll have a shot at getting back into it.
