Why the faith factor is vital to US politics

In the New York Timeson Sunday last, writer Nicholas Kristof made an interesting point. Few, he said, "at a New York or Los Angeles cocktail party would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with deriding Mike Huckabee's religious faith".

He goes on to talk about the blind spot that liberals, who traditionally preach tolerance, have about Christian evangelicals. He then suggests that bleeding-heart liberals probably have more in common with bleeding-heart conservatives than they realise.

It was a good piece, and would have been a great piece if he had stuck his neck out and predicted the astonishing wins that Mike Huckabee, working on a minuscule budget, was about to make on Super Tuesday.

Huckabee is, of course, still trailing John McCain by miles, but his success was still amazing - amazing, that is, to those who have not been watching a significant shift among US evangelicals. Among those not watching are those conducting exit polls.

Most voters are asked in exit polls if they are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish or other, and how often they attend church. Republican voters have been asked an additional question in many states, that is, whether they are "born again" or Christian evangelicals.

The question is not being asked of Democrats in most states, because, well, duh, the Republicans have the evangelical vote sewn up, right? Wrong. Certainly, many, many evangelicals fit the stereotype of thinking of tax as an invention of the devil, and the right to bear arms as fitting snugly alongside the right to profess a religion.

However, many evangelicals no longer fit that particular box. For example, Barack Obama is attracting evangelical votes, because of his stance on poverty. As Kristof points out, a recent CBS poll found that the single issue that mattered most to evangelicals was eradicating poverty. Abortion came a distant second.

Kristof mentions one of the most significant figures in the "new" evangelical mode, that is, if a man who has been preaching the same message for 30 years can be accused of being a "new" anything.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, an international peace and justice network, and author of God's Politics, has both witnessed and influenced change at a profound level.

He and others objected to politics being hijacked by the religious right, and set out to form networks that would cut across traditional divides in order to unite on the issues that matter most. His approach is summed up in this passage from his latest book, The Great Awakening. Speaking about poverty, he declares: "We have been paralysed by the debate between liberals and conservatives on which solutions to pursue, with the right favouring cultural changes and the left endorsing policy changes. But new relationships with the poor could change that impasse, too. Who can credibly say that family breakdown, out-of-wedlock births, substance abuse, bad individual choices and the eroding of both personal responsibility and strong moral values are not factors that further entrench poverty? And who can honestly say that the lack of decent wages, quality healthcare, affordable housing, educational opportunity and safe neighbourhoods are not factors that erode family values and imprison poor children in poverty? It will take a renewal of both social and personal responsibility to overcome poverty. Biblically, that responsibility begins with those 'to whom much has been given'."

Mike Huckabee is a Baptist minister. Once an Irish person (or indeed, many Americans) hears that he does not subscribe to the theory of evolution, it is enough to write him off as a troglodyte. However, he has been deeply influenced by those who believe that there is a biblical mandate to care about issues like climate change, poverty, and a just end to the war in Iraq.

Ironically, Huckabee does not just have to worry about liberal intolerance, but the intolerance of those within both evangelical and Republican ranks who see him as some kind of left-wing nut because he is "soft" on say, immigration. On the other hand, his readiness to see the hand of God in his electoral successes (but not apparently in his failures) is enough to scare the wits out of an electorate who have just had two terms of a president who seems uncomfortably confident of God's approval of his daily plans.

I wrote recently that there is too much of a good thing when it comes to religion in American politics. Yet, despite the fact that potential candidates are virtually forced to take a position on a religious continuum that ranges only from believer to really staunch believer, pundits still often read the religious question badly.

Perhaps it is because in the US, as here, most of the people who work in the media broadly subscribe to the idea that as society makes progress, religion gradually fades in importance, and will eventually disappear.

Those who do not subscribe to that position often feel that they must build an impervious barrier between their personal beliefs and their profession as journalists. Still others just are not interested enough to research the question. Basically, that means that many pundits miss many of the nuances of the American political system, because Americans are among the most religious people in the world.

It is too easy to write off all evangelicals as a monolith - easy, and lazy. Given that evangelicals are such an important force, all the candidates, Democratic and Republican, will be chasing their votes. As Huckabee has demonstrated, the greater diversity among that group makes it a far from easy task.

How do you appeal to such a diverse group? Perhaps by doing something that Mitt Romney failed to do - by being as authentic as it is possible for a politician to be.

Romney was not accused of being a flip-flopper, just more of a flipper. He flipped his views on everything from guns to abortion towards a stance that he thought might win him more conservative voters.

It did not work, despite throwing squillions of dollars at the campaign.

In contrast, Huckabee and John McCain both have the enormous virtue of standing for something. In both cases, it may be something that annoys the heck out of fiscal conservatives, but at least the voters know what it is.