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Real Answers™
gjr86
Copyright: © 2008 Gregory J. Rummo
700 words

FEAR THE BIBLE BUT ONLY WHEN CONSERVATIVES QUOTE IT

By: Gregory J. Rummo

The biggest story in politics right now is the role of religion. More specifically, from the Republican side is the media’s focus on Evangelical Christian voters. Credit Mike Huckabee’s recent stratospheric rise from among the sea of mediocre cultural conservatives as the catalyst.

Huckabee may present a real threat to the Democrat’s chances of taking the White House in 2008. Forget about charges that he’s not qualified. He is just as qualified as that other man who also served as Arkansas’s governor before being elected to two terms in the Oval Office.

But there’s another reason why Democrats are worried. Evangelicals have huge political clout when they are not fighting each other. And Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, has what it takes to bring them all together.

There have been various attempts to paint this group as a bunch of right-wing extremists, Bible-thumping, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, or "largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command." But when researchers focused on ordinary evangelicals, “they [found] more diversity, complexity and ambivalence than conventional wisdom would lead us to expect.”

At least this is what was reported in a story that appeared in the December 8, 2003 issue of US News & World Report.  Entitled, “The New Evangelicals,” the article examined evangelical’s “bold take on Christianity” and concluded that it is “changing America.” Included in the article were statistics reported by a Gallup survey, that “roughly 4 out of 10 Americans identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians.” Get all of these people energized to vote next November and along with regular Republicans, we could have a landslide on our hands. 

Politicians using Christianity and speeches laced with quotes from the Bible to pass themselves off as great moralists is nothing new.  In fact it’s a centuries-old approach. A rich young politician approached Jesus and delivered your basic stump speech about how his life had been moral, obeying the Ten Commandments since his youth. But when Jesus told this wealthy politician, “Sell everything you have. Give the money to those who are poor…Then come and follow me," this was simply too much to take when confronted with the challenge of matching actions with world view.

Which former governor of Arkansas said the following: “I don't think I could do my job…much less continue to try to grow as a person in the absence of my faith in God and my attempt to learn more about what it should be and grow. It provides a solace and support in the face of all these problems that I am not smart enough to solve."

It was Bill Clinton, not Mike Huckabee and the former president was specifically referring to the importance of his faith in God that made it possible for him to do his job as the President of the United States.

His wife is now using the same strategy in her bid for the Oval Office. In November, the Associated Press reported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had “used an appearance at one of the nation's largest evangelical churches… to sketch a broad agenda to take on disease around the globe, calling it 'the right thing to do.' The centerpiece of a speech laced with Biblical references and reflections on her own faith was a call to spend billions of dollars to combat HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases at home and abroad. She said she would try to stamp out malaria deaths in Africa within eight years."

When a liberal speaks to a Christian group, no one in the mainstream media bats an eyelash. But when a conservative addresses a Christian audience, well that’s a different story. Why is this so? Is it because when a liberal speaks to Christians, their comments aren’t taken seriously because no one takes a liberal’s faith seriously?

Perhaps voters in Iowa accurately divined the signs of the times; as Democrats sent Mrs. Clinton packing for New Hampshire and Republicans chose Mr. Huckabee. Whether such prescience continues to the general elections next November remains to be seen.

Gregory J. Rummo is a businessman and writer. Contact him at GregRummo.com       

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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