WHO’S RIGHT? WHOSE RIGHT?

by Charles Bierbauer

Sunday school was challenging this week. When a pastor/priest/minister in a South Carolina congregation says “Jesus would be opposed to the death penalty,” he’s likely to encounter mixed opinions. “I know there may be different views in this class,” ours said, nodding toward one individual filling the role of class barometer.

A second challenge: “Jesus denounced the use of military action. No matter where we are in Iraq, Jesus would have opposed it.” Murmurs. Not all in agreement.

These were not political statements so much as an assertion that in a post-modernist 21^st century, we may not find absolute truths. That in wrestling with religion, many—though certainly not all individuals or denominations—wrestle with a lot of subjectivity.

Consider what the so-called “religious right” is wrestling with in seeking a presidential candidate to back in the 2008 elections. Once a bastion of faith-driven Republican conservatism, the right has turned downright pragmatic.

Pat Robertson, who himself ran for president in 1988, endorsed Rudy Giuliani this past week,

Despite the former New York mayor’s anything but conservative views on abortion and gays, Robertson said “Rudy Giuliani is, without question, an acceptable candidate.”

Dr. Bob Jones, III, who heads the fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, says he is “completely opposed to the doctrines of Mormonism.” Yet Jones endorsed a Mormon candidate, Mitt Romney, last month, because “this is all about beating Hillary.”

The Rev. Jerry Falwell and Senator John McCain made peace last year, before Falwell’s death. They found more in common in their support of the war in Iraq than in the spat that had divided them for years.

Without belaboring the semantics—worth a whole column in itself—the religious right, or religious conservatives or religious conservative Republican right, is not showing the clout it wielded in support of George W. Bush or the strength it derived from Ronald Reagan. Its former heavy hitters are diminished in relevance. Falwell is dead. Robertson is 77. Jones has matters to deal with on his oft-beleaguered campus.

There is an apparent desperation carried in the baggage of the current Bush administration and the strong possibility of a Democratic victory a year from now. The prospect of spending the next eight years in a political wilderness has made some religious conservatives remarkably ecumenical.

Not that we should take as a matter of faith the existence of a monolithic religion-inspired vote. That would mean we have turned a blind eye to the world around us. There are relatively few single issue voters, those who consider a candidate’s position on only one issue, such as abortion.

As evidence, Giuliani comes out ahead of other Republican candidates, according to a recent survey of religious constituencies by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Overall, Pew found 32 percent support for Giuliani, a Catholic; 19 percent for Fred Thompson, a member of the Church of Christ; 17 percent for McCain, a Baptist; 10 percent for Romney, a Mormon. Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, drew seven percent.

Giuliani held a sizeable lead over Thompson and McCain among “white Catholics” and “white mainline Protestants.” Among “white evangelical Protestants,” Thompson led Giuliani, but only by 24 percent to 23 percent. The poll was taken prior to Robertson’s endorsement of Giuliani.

For the record, the Pew survey found Hillary Clinton well ahead of all Democratic candidates in all categories, including “black Protestants” and those “religiously unaffiliated.”

In many ways, political votes are acts of faith. We only know what a candidate promises to do, not what decision will be made in a time of challenge and crisis. Absent a clear choice for that religious right, some conservative voters may go to the polls in this election glancing at a wristband they wear that poses the question: What would Jesus do?

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Charles Bierbauer covered presidential campaigns from 1984 through 2000 for CNN. Bierbauer is currently dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina, though the opinions here are his and not those of the university. He is senior contributing editor and a consultant to SCHotline.com.