Losing my religion

My mother is a black evangelical Christian -- and a staunch Democrat. The party failed her and millions of other religious folk, and that has to change.

By ZZ Packer

Nov 20, 2004 | In the aftermath of Bush's reelection, Democrats are doing a lot of soul-searching about how to break the Republican lock on the red states. They need to pay attention to a forgotten group: religious Democrats.

My fellow blue-staters may not understand evangelicals, but I do -- I was raised as one. My church's brand of evangelicalism was so strict women couldn't wear pants, makeup or jewelry. My church believed in speaking in tongues; believed that a good Christian went to Wednesday night prayer meeting and Thursday night Bible study, in addition to Sunday school, Sunday worship, Sunday dinner at the church and the two-hour Sunday fellowship that followed.

And I'm the bluest Democrat you ever saw.

Granted, I grew up in the black evangelical tradition, which differs from its white counterpart in one crucial respect: Black evangelicals have historically voted overwhelmingly Democratic because of civil rights, whereas white evangelicals in the South were often segregationists. For that reason, the Democrats will never win over all the white evangelicals -- nor, in the case of those who have remained unreconstructed racists, should they want to. But they should be trying to win over religious moderates, white, black and Latino. In fact, they have to.

Religious Democrats don't run the party. They don't tend to be high-profile strategists or spokespeople. But there are a lot more of them than the party elite realize -- and they are uniquely positioned to roll back the raging red sea. These people know how to talk to the folks in the red states and swing states for a simple reason: More often than not, they live in them.

They also have another major advantage over their conservative counterparts: They have the Bible on their side. Democrats of faith don't have to "cloak" their political message in religious metaphors, the way the right is fond of doing. Promoting peace and brotherhood over needless war and intolerance; understanding that we have an obligation to help poor children and their parents, not merely protecting those parents' rights to have children -- these are deeply Christian values. Any Christian can understand that the parable of the Good Samaritan not only urges us to help our fellow man, but cautions against xenophobia.

Yes, the GOP convinced many Christians that the Democrats were less "moral" than the Republicans, and issues like abortion, gun control and homosexuality played a large role. But people who take hard-line stands on these issues make up only a minority of Christians. Most red-state social conservatives voted the way they did not out of intolerance or bigotry, but simply because they feared change. Their discomfort with gay marriage and a pro-choice platform does not de facto equal homophobia and anti-choice; it is just that: discomfort. Republicans exploited that discomfort and fear the same way they exploited Americans' fears of terrorism. And liberals can fight back on the same moral ground: They can address that discomfort and fear without abandoning their core values.

Moderate religious-minded folk understand that claiming that the Democrats are "for abortion" is like saying every gun owner is "for homicide." By and large, they're for real solutions: Rather than foolhardily trying to legislate all sexual behavior, they advocate sex education, birth control and the morning-after pill to reduce unwanted pregnancies. They understand that when Jesus said, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone," he was explicitly rebuking the sanctimonious moralists not just of his day, but of ours.

Religious Democrats can talk about these issues in ways that moderate Christians, both in the heartland and on the coasts, understand. But if Democrats continue shipping in the Prada and Birkenstock crowd to talk about abortion, gay marriage and Iraq to small-town Main Streeters on their way to Home Depot, they're toast.

Next Page: Believers and secular Democrats alike have always based their decisions on a deep sense of morality

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