Republicans rallying behind 'religious liberty' as evangelical summit begins

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Published September 26, 2014

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks at the fourth annual Texas Tribune Festival held at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas, on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014. (AP Photo/Austin American-Statesman, Rodolfo Gonzalez)(The Associated Press)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks at the California GOP convention on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, in Los Angeles. Paul has sought a broader audience this year as he has aggressively traveled the country ahead of a potential presidential bid in 2016. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)(The Associated Press)

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks at the 2014 Values Voter Summit in Washington, Friday, Sept. 26, 2014. Prospective Republican presidential candidates are expected to promote religious liberty at home and abroad at a gathering of evangelical conservatives, rebuking an unpopular President Barack Obama while skirting divisive social issues that have tripped up the GOP. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)(The Associated Press)

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas speaks at the 2014 Values Voter Summit in Washington, Friday, Sept. 26, 2014. Prospective Republican presidential candidates are expected to promote religious liberty at home and abroad at a gathering of evangelical conservatives, rebuking an unpopular President Barack Obama while skirting divisive social issues that have tripped up the GOP. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)(The Associated Press)

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. speaks at the 2014 Values Voter Summit in Washington, Friday, Sept. 26, 2014. Prospective Republican presidential candidates are expected to promote religious liberty at home and abroad at a gathering of evangelical conservatives, rebuking an unpopular President Barack Obama while skirting divisive social issues that have tripped up the GOP. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)(The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON Prospective Republican presidential candidates are expected to promote "religious liberty" at home and abroad at a gathering of religious conservatives, rebuking an unpopular President Barack Obama while skirting divisive social issues that have tripped up the GOP.

The annual Voters Value Summit opens Friday in Washington with speeches from several potential presidential candidates, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The speaking program features ambitious Republicans with positions on social issues across the spectrum from the libertarian-leaning Paul, who favors less emphasis on abortion and gay marriage, to Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor whose conservative social values define his brand.

But evangelical organizers of the event largely expect participants to unite around what they call Obama's attack on religious liberty, according to Tony Perkins, president of the host organization, the Family Research Council. Perkins cited an Obama administration rule that compels health insurers to cover female contraception in addition to a foreign policy he says doesn't do enough to protect Christian values around the world.

"Without religious freedom we lose the ability to even address those other issues," Perkins said of social issues, declaring that "a fundamental shift" is underway toward religious freedom but that evangelical voters would not forget conservative values such as traditional marriage come Election Day.

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Republicans rallying behind 'religious liberty' as evangelical summit begins

Introspection time for evangelicals

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Christian conservatives are often the subject of study by academics, who seem to find their culture as foreign as that of Borneo tribesmen. And this is a particularly interesting time for brave social scientists to put on their pith helmets and head to Wheaton, Ill., Colorado Springs or unexplored regions of the South. They will find a community under external and internal cultural stress.

It is fair to say that some cultural views traditionally held by evangelicals are in retreat. Whatever the (likely dim) future of political libertarianism, moral libertarianism has been on the rise. This is perhaps the natural outworking of an enlightenment political philosophy that puts individual rights at its center. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy described this view as the right to define ones own concept of existence.

Whatever else traditional religious views may entail, they involve a belief that existence comes pre-defined. Purpose is discovered, not exerted. And scripture and institutions a community of believers extended back in time are essential to that discovery. This is not, to put it mildly, the spirit of the age.

It was not, as far as I can tell, really the spirit of any age. But many evangelicals believe it was, subscribing to the myth of a lost American Eden. There has certainly been a cultural shift in the United States on religion and public life. But it has largely been from congenial contradiction to less-sympathetic contradiction. There is more criticism of the (thin) veneer of Protestant spirituality in public places. There is also a growing belief that individual rights need to be protected, not only from the state but also from religious institutions that dont share public values. In the extreme case, this means that nuns who dont want to participate in the provision of contraceptives are interfering with conceptual self-definition.

The reaction of evangelicals to these trends can (and does) vary widely. They can accommodate to the prevailing culture, as many evangelicals have already done on issues such as contraception, divorce and the role of women (without talking much about it). Or they can try to fight for their political and cultural place at the table, as other interest groups do.

A recent study, Sowing the Seeds of Discord, by a group of scholars associated with the Public Religion Research Institute, describes a mix of reactions. There is some evidence that younger evangelicals are more socially accepting of social outgroups, including gays and lesbians. A higher proportion of evangelical millennials (more than 40 percent) support gay marriage than do evangelicals overall. But there is no evidence this shift is changing political allegiances. White evangelicals remain reliably and monolithically Republican.

My interpretation: Even as some evangelical cultural views change along with broader norms, the Democratic Party is still viewed as a hostile instrument of secularization a perception reinforced by the health-care mandates of the Obama era.

But the most interesting finding of the study concerns where disaffection with conservative politics is developing among evangelicals. On a number of questions Should under God be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance? Does religion solve more social problems than it creates? evangelical millennials expressed more negative views on the social role of religion according to an unexpected pattern. Those who lack friends and ties outside evangelicalism are more critical of traditional evangelical views. Millennials, according to the study, react more negatively and see less value in religious socialization when they have more homogenous networks . The authors believe this small but significant shift represents a rejection of the embattled, political subculture of their parents.

My interpretation: A desperate, angry, apocalyptic tone of social engagement alienates many people, including some of the children of those who practice it.

Conservative evangelicals, like other religious people before them, are responding to a culture that does not always share their values. But a purely reactive model of politics is not attractive, even internally. And the problem is not only strategic but theological. A Christian vision of social engagement that is defined by resentment for lost social position and a scramble for group advantage is not particularly Christian.

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Introspection time for evangelicals

Gerson: Introspection time for evangelicals

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Christian conservatives are often the subject of study by academics, who seem to find their culture as foreign as that of Borneo tribesmen. And this is a particularly interesting time for brave social scientists to put on their pith helmets and head to Wheaton, Ill., Colorado Springs or unexplored regions of the South. They will find a community under external and internal cultural stress.

It is fair to say that some cultural views traditionally held by evangelicals are in retreat. Whatever the (likely dim) future of political libertarianism, moral libertarianism has been on the rise. This is perhaps the natural outworking of an enlightenment political philosophy that puts individual rights at its center. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy described this view as the right to define ones own concept of existence.

Whatever else traditional religious views may entail, they involve a belief that existence comes pre-defined. Purpose is discovered, not exerted. And scripture and institutions a community of believers extended back in time are essential to that discovery. This is not, to put it mildly, the spirit of the age.

It was not, as far as I can tell, really the spirit of any age. But many evangelicals believe it was, subscribing to the myth of a lost American Eden. There has certainly been a cultural shift in the United States on religion and public life. But it has largely been from congenial contradiction to less-sympathetic contradiction. There is more criticism of the (thin) veneer of Protestant spirituality in public places. There is also a growing belief that individual rights need to be protected, not only from the state but also from religious institutions that dont share public values. In the extreme case, this means that nuns who dont want to participate in the provision of contraceptives are interfering with conceptual self-definition.

The reaction of evangelicals to these trends can (and does) vary widely. They can accommodate to the prevailing culture, as many evangelicals have already done on issues such as contraception, divorce and the role of women (without talking much about it). Or they can try to fight for their political and cultural place at the table, as other interest groups do.

A recent study, Sowing the Seeds of Discord, by a group of scholars associated with the Public Religion Research Institute, describes a mix of reactions. There is some evidence that younger evangelicals are more socially accepting of social outgroups, including gays and lesbians. A higher proportion of evangelical millennials (more than 40 percent) support gay marriage than do evangelicals overall. But there is no evidence this shift is changing political allegiances. White evangelicals remain reliably and monolithically Republican.

My interpretation: Even as some evangelical cultural views change along with broader norms, the Democratic Party is still viewed as a hostile instrument of secularization a perception reinforced by the health-care mandates of the Obama era.

But the most interesting finding of the study concerns where disaffection with conservative politics is developing among evangelicals. On a number of questions Should under God be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance? Does religion solve more social problems than it creates? evangelical millennials expressed more negative views on the social role of religion according to an unexpected pattern. Those who lack friends and ties outside evangelicalism are more critical of traditional evangelical views. Millennials, according to the study, react more negatively and see less value in religious socialization when they have more homogenous networks . The authors believe this small but significant shift represents a rejection of the embattled, political subculture of their parents.

My interpretation: A desperate, angry, apocalyptic tone of social engagement alienates many people, including some of the children of those who practice it.

Conservative evangelicals, like other religious people before them, are responding to a culture that does not always share their values. But a purely reactive model of politics is not attractive, even internally. And the problem is not only strategic but theological. A Christian vision of social engagement that is defined by resentment for lost social position and a scramble for group advantage is not particularly Christian.

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Gerson: Introspection time for evangelicals

Libertarian pizza delivery driver could decide U.S. Senate election

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RALEIGH - The man who might determine the outcome of North Carolina's U.S. Senate race this year makes his living delivering pizza, conducts most of his campaigning via YouTube videos and is considering whether to become a driver for Uber, the taxi-like car service.

Political experts and polls say Libertarian Sean Haugh of Durham isn't likely to win, although he says he can.

But the polls say Haugh appears to be pulling some voters who otherwise would pick lawyer and former bank executive Kay Hagan, the incumbent Democrat, and many more voters from the Republican candidate, state House speaker and former business executive Thom Tillis.

In the face of the tens of millions of dollars being spent by the mainline campaigns and their outside supporters and detractors to flood North Carolina's airwaves, computer screens and mailboxes, low budget may be a generous term to describe the Haugh campaign.

Haugh, whose name rhymes with "saw," estimates he has spent $7,000. "I'll be surprised if I get over ($10,000)," he said.

Social media outlets - Facebook, Twitter and, especially, YouTube - have been Haugh's primary tools to reach out to the voters.

He has made 30 videos since March in the basement rec room of campaign manager Rachel Mills' home. Next to a poker table covered with Hot Wheels tracks, and a few feet from an overflowing toy box (Mills has two young children whose nap times affect the shooting schedule), Haugh sits at a bar and talks to the camera. He has a craft beer close at hand, opens with a friendly "howdy" and quickly outlines his positions.

The video titles include "Stop the War on Drugs," "Delete the NSA," "Term Limits for Reporters" and "Pollution is a Crime."

The channel has about 235 subscribers. The viewership runs from 125 on the most recent missive, posted Monday, to 13,850 for his opening statement, issued six months ago.

Haugh's campaign page on Facebook has about 1,125 likes. On Twitter, he has about 400 followers.

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Libertarian pizza delivery driver could decide U.S. Senate election