Posted on 06/19/2015 4:35:52 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Hopefully this will set up an interesting discussion on this issue and strategy for the 2016 election.
It's a long piece and I'm excepting a chunk of it to peak your interest for discussion (a full read is best). If you have trouble accessing Russell Moore's Wall Street Journal article linked in the piece - put this in "search" What Will Matter to Evangelicals in 2016 and that should give you access.
Evangelicals Looking for Walker to Do Nothing in 2016 Election
".......Emphasizing that ours is a Christian nation and pushing hot button issues as a style of campaigning has been detrimental to evangelicals, said Mary Jo Sharp, who teaches apologetics at Houston Baptist University and analyzes political campaigns as part of a class she teaches there. Its very difficult to hear that kind of rhetoric, she said. Christians are not supposed to be the dividers.
Over the course of his political career in Wisconsin, Walker hasnt presented as any kind of culture warrior, said Hunter Baker, Associate Professor of Political Science at Union University, a Southern Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee. One of the worst things that ever happened with conservative Christians, said Baker, was that they give in to a tribal impulse, by questioning are we getting the respect we perceive we once had, are we losing ground, we need to mobilize, we need to increase our force. That, he added, is a losing strategy. It gives people the sense youre working from resentment.
In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last month, Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Conventions Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, wrote that in 2016 evangelicals wont be looking to candidates to know the words to hymns, repeat clichés about appointing Supreme Court justices who will interpret the law, not make the law, or to use God and country talk borrowed from a 1980s-era television evangelist.
Moore has a good feel of the pulse of evangelicals and represents a wide segment of them, said Tobin Grant, a political scientist at Southern Illinois University and blogger on religion and politics for Religion News Service. Unlike his predecessor, Richard Land, known for inflaming the culture wars, Moores focus is more on religious and social concerns than directly political ones and has less interest in changing DC and more interest in keeping DC out of the way of the church, Grant said.
These evangelicals are listening for a candidate who can signal he is one of us without pandering. Both evangelical and Catholic candidates who have earned the culture warrior label for their strident pronouncementsTed Cruz, Rick Santorum, or Mike Huckabeeare seen as embarrassing embodiments of stereotypes these conservative Christians would like to shed.
Instead, they are looking at a candidate like Walker, or even Jeb Bush (a Catholic), who is personally religious and, crucially, gets evangelical culture. Bushs Right to Rise PAC recently signed Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, as a senior advisora move the Christian Broadcasting Networks David Brody called the move a big get for courting the evangelical vote. While Sekulow has been at the forefront of the culture wars, the ACLJ is also one of several religious right legal firms who, for example, brought legal challenges to the Affordable Care Acts contraception coverage requirement.
Walker hits the right evangelical notes without overplaying his handand thats exactly the way they want him to keep it. John Mark Reynolds, professor of philosophy and provost at Houston Baptist University, said that Walker would do well to do nothing to appeal to us. We get it. Hes one of us. He sounds like one of us. He leans forward like one of us. He answers questions like one of us..........
What will matter to evangelicals, Moore wrote in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, is how the candidate, if elected president, will articulate and defend religious-liberty rights.
The religious liberty issue is, for evangelicals, a four-alarm fire, said Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, part of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He said evangelicals expect the candidates to have the courage of their convictions to persuade people about whats going on......
Even worse was our own Governor in Indiana, Mike Pence. He was all staunch and supportive, Mr. Religious liberty, when pushing for the passage of RFRA. But as soon the national organized leftist extremists, along with the media, began their push back campaign he folded like a paper bag and went the completely opposite direction, supporting special rights for homos. He made it crystal clear that he never really cared one way or the other, he just does whatever he thinks is politically expedient, blowing with the wind. At least we now know we can't ever trust him to stand with us when the going gets tough.
I don't think it will be.
Ping!
“I think religious liberty should be the big campaign issue.
I don’t think it will be.”
I agree entirely, this nation died and is just going through the motions until the government runs out of our property...God was thrown out and now we will suffer from that.
Yes, Pence disappoints. It seemed like he was pushing RFRA in order to make a big political splash before jumping into the 2016 POTUS race. Then, when faced with gay-liberal-media mafia backlash, he failed miserably in his Stephanopoulos moment of truth. Now, 54% of Hoosiers say they want a new governor. Oh well, so much for conservative convictions!
Ping?
Thanks for the good article. I think that if we don’t put religious liberty first as did our fore fathers, every other issue is rendered meaningless.
It underpins everything.
I’m glad there is a candidate who respects our religious freedom...as they ALL should!
Were the so called educators in the government schools....forced to TEACH this most salient point. we’d be living in a far more sensible world, here in America.
So now you are taking on Evangelicals directly, to cover for Walker’s lack?
What brought that on?
LOL, settle down.
Or did you mean this thread to point out that we should be supporting Ted Cruz for being the best candidate for those Americans who are Christian, and support Christian values, and social conservatism?
I put it at the top - I was looking for discussion.
It would be nice for a change if you would stop taking “swings” when none are called for.
It would be nice if you would post something to me that makes sense, so far, two posts, and you haven’t said anything.
Did you mean this thread to point out that we should be supporting Ted Cruz for being the best candidate for those Americans who are Christian, and support Christian values, and social conservatism?
How do you think the topic should be handled?
Frontal assault or quiet, yet understood?
As your calling card or something you are well versed in and willing to espouse and defend?
There are a lot of opinions about this in both pieces. I posted both of them and explained why in Post #1.
Either be civil or don’t post to me.
What is with you?
Your posts don’t make sense, but I can make out that I seemed to have been spot on with post 13.
You’ve decided to try and start an argument over something that isn’t there.
I’m not going to take the bait.
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