January 29th 2008
Archive for January, 2008
January 29th 2008
The Florida Religious Landscape, Canadian Silliness, and more…
Florida and Religion . . .
Everybody, and I mean everybody, seems to be flustered that there is no singular narrative they can tell about religion and today’s Florida primary. The Miami Herald simply says it’s not working like it used to.
The lack of so many Republican candidates campaigning on social issues or sitting in church is a sign, strategists say, of the importance of the economy — and the fractured and potentially weakening influence of evangelical voters, who have comprised anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent of the GOP primary electorate.
The Orlando Sentinel says “young” evangelicals are the key.
They’re members of Northland, A Church Distributed, and committed evangelical Christians. But like many other Central Florida evangelicals, they haven’t figured out how they’ll vote in Tuesday’s presidential primary. [Emphasis added.]
First of all, evangelicals have never been quite as monolithic as the press imagined; however, that emphasized phrase is terribly important. I will not bother you with the details, but evangelicalism itself is shifting radically. The mega-church phenomena, which concentrated the evangelical voice, is passing and being replaced by something called the “emerging church.” As blogging has changed information distribution from a rifle to a shotgun, so is this phenomenon changing evangelical churches. The voice is spreading out.
January 28th 2008
Quick Links 1/29/08
Time
Is Dobson’s Political Clout Fading?
Miami Herald
Religion falls off the GOP Trail
Religion News Service
January 28th 2008
RIP, Gordon B. Hinckley; The Voter Guide Dust-up; Romney’s “Humanity;” and more….
Gordon B. Hinckley, 1910-2008
Gordon B. Hinckley, who had served as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since March 1995, died Sunday evening. Many readers of this blog know of President Hinckley, either because they are Mormons themselves or because they simply know about the Church. Obituaries for President Hinckley are here and here.
Gordon B. Hinckley was a remarkable man. His greatest legacy, so far as the non-Mormon world is concerned, may be his work in reaching out to the world as an ambassador for the Church. He was a frequent guest on Larry King Live, for example, and appeared on “60 Minutes,” the first Church president to do so. The word is a lesser place without him and he will be mourned by Mormons worldwide.
For purposes of this blog, Pres. Hinckley’s death may cause an uptick in news coverage of the Church, and Romney may either be asked about the church leader’s passing or issue a statement about it. We hope the news media coverage is responsible, and that President Hinckley’s passing does not even arise in the context of the presidential campaign. –Lowell
John comments: Romney has commented, as told by the AP and the Miami Herald. So far, nothing out-of-bounds here trying to connect dots in any way. What is fascinating is that the Metropolitan of the Greek Orthodox Church also died. Now, admittedly there are far fewer Greek Orthodox in this country than Mormons, but this is a huge deal in ecclesiastical circles, you’d think it would garner a bit more coverage. I guess in a rather perverse sense, “Mormon is in.”
About that Value Voters Guide . . .
Remember the wondering about a stealth Dobson endorsement of Romney? Lowell quickly picked up on the assertion by some evangelical leadership ha Romney “admitted” Mormons were not “Christian.” Well, so did the AP and a North Dakota TV station. Things are pretty much what we thought they were. From the AP story:
January 26th 2008
The Absurdity of Mormon-Focused Reporting: Missionaries Show Up at A Romney Rally!
Oh, the horror!
Jonathan Martin has taken religion-focused political reporting to an absurd level. He actually took the time to report this:
For the second time in three days, a pair of Mormon missionaries came out for a Mitt Romney rally in Florida.
Apparently a couple of those young men in white shirts and ties dropped by a Romney rally to watch. Will the Republic survive?
Martin apparently decided this was so important that he should ask Romney about it:
Asked if he was comfortable with the presence of missionaries at his campaign events, Romney curtly dismissed the question.
“This is America, I guess people can go wherever they’d like to go,” he said at a press conference earlier this evening in St. Petersburg. “I don’t have any comment on that.”
It is remarkable, as always, that Romney must be subjected to this utter nonsense. I wonder if any pastors showed up at Huckabee rallies? Or if a rabbi ever came to a Joe Lieberman rally? Would that be something to ask the candidates about?
Give us a break, Jonathan.
Sphere: Related Content
January 26th 2008
Huckabee, the Evangelical Vote, and The GOP
This blog is about the intersection between politics and religion, and when Michael Barone in NRO starts talking about that subject I think we need to pay attention. Barone says South Carolina is not as critical to determining the nominee as it once was, but that the state did “set the stage” for the remainder of the campaign. Barone fleshes that theory out in the context of Huckabee and his attempt to run an Evangelical-based campaign:
Huckabee’s defeat in South Carolina seems to remove him as a major contender. He has won many votes from evangelical and born-again Christians, but except in the Iowa caucuses he has not won big majorities in the group and has won only about ten percent of the votes of other Republicans.
He doesn’t have the money to run much in the way of ads in Florida. This means that we’re unlikely to see a confrontation between Huckabee and one other candidate, between someone closely identified with evangelicals and one who is not. The result: The winner of the primary will not be seen as having disrespected a core constituency of the party.
(Emphasis added.)
