Black and White Evangelical Voters: A Teachable Moment

by Lisa Sharon Harper 11-06-2008 Reposted from God's Politics Blog

In the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, November 5, Wolf Blitzer listed “The Losers” in Tuesday’s historic election on CNN. Evangelicals were at the top of his list, joined by trickle-downers and social conservatives.

I wouldn’t have known I was a loser if Wolf hadn’t informed me. I am an evangelical—a black one.

Standing in the voting booth, I was overcome as I scanned pictures of my ancestors and wept before casting my vote.

Grandpop Lawrence stood at attention in his World War II uniform. When Grandpop came home from the war, he couldn’t get a job that matched his skills. So he worked as a door man at an upscale hotel in Philadelphia. Though doors were closed to him, he opened doors day and night for Philadelphia’s white elite.

Six years old, Uncle Richie posed for the camera in his Sunday best about 20 years before his lifeless body would flop to the ground. Richie’s future was swallowed whole by the newly drug-infested ghettos of the 1970s.

Grand-Aunt Martha stood with her back against a wall. She stared past the camera, no smile. She was the one who could pass for white. She died in an alcoholic stupor of hopelessness as the power of color politics pushed her from a third story window in the city of brotherly love.

Martin Luther King Jr. said the arch of history bends toward justice. Their memories were with me and this was their poetic justice.

Then, because of my faith, which aligns with Jesus –- who aligns himself with the ones whose backs are against the wall -– I put my hand to the ballot and said, “This is for you.”

I watched the election results with a diverse array of partners and leaders of New York Faith & Justice that night. When CNN announced “Barack Obama is President-elect of the United States of America!” I was not the only one overcome. There were tears and screams and jumping on furniture, then hugs and more tears, and hands lifted in the air.

Flags waved across America – in Chicago’s Grant Park, in Harlem, in San Francisco, in front of the White House in Washington D.C., and it felt like America was emancipated a second time—this time from the strangle-hold of racism itself.

Then we flipped channels to see how the Christian Broadcast Network (CBN) was reporting the win. Two somber men sat in a quiet newsroom with one small silent graphic in the background. They talked about how “they” (liberals) won because of ”their” ground game. There was no connection to the justice of the moment. No acknowledgement that Obama, too, stood for biblical values.

Evangelicals did not lose on November 4. Evangelicals gained a teachable moment. The majority of the country celebrated, but 74 percent of white evangelicals mourned. Why?

According to Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s landmark study of race and religion in the U.S., these evangelicals likely emphasize individual responsibility, see most things through the lens of relationships and, most important, they see little significance in history and cannot or will not recognize the impact of systems on the plight of whole people groups—systems such as the education, health care, real-estate, or penal systems.

So, when McCain proclaimed in his Convention Speech that individuals can thrive if only government would get out of the way, 74 percent of white evangelicals believed him. It didn’t occur to them that in a democracy, the people are the government.

And when the forwards flew about Obama, the champion of infanticide, 74 percent of white evangelicals believed it, without question, because the forward came from a friend (a relational connection). They valued it because it touched on the most valuable relationship—the family. Righteous indignation replaced reason. It didn’t matter that Obama refused to vote for the law in Illinois because there was already a law on the books protecting viable third-term babies.

And when Obama told “Joe the Plumber” he wanted to “spread the wealth,” 74 percent of white evangelicals believed this meant government wanted to fly in the face of personal responsibility and give their hard earned money to people who didn’t work for it. There was no connection to the reality that it’s not necessary to ask “Joe” for more taxes when ending a war will release billions of dollars with the swipe of a pen.

Black evangelicals, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama, share the values for personal responsibility and relationships, but they live under the weight of broken systems. So, they seek to fix broken systems, changing them into systems that bless.

Emerson and Smith say the deepest divide in U.S. worldview is not between whites and blacks; it is between white and black evangelicals. The isolated evangelical church structure perpetuates the problem of race in America, but white evangelicals immersed in networks-of-color tend to acquire a worldview that includes systems and history.

Here is my hope: the number of white evangelicals immersed in networks of color—who have a value for history and an appreciation for the impact of systems—is growing. Steve Waldman, editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, estimates Obama won 2 million more evangelicals than Kerry. Only 21 percent of white protestant evangelicals voted for Kerry in 2004, but 26 percent voted for Obama this year. That signals a five point increase in evangelicals who value personal and systemic redemption.

Now, imagine the election year 2020. At this rate, by then, 41 percent of evangelicals will have enough contact with people of color to embrace the political needs for both personal and structural redemption.

Evangelicals did not lose on Tuesday night. We gained a teachable moment. And with God’s grace we shall all be overcome … one day.

Lisa Sharon Harper is the executive director of New York Faith & Justice and author of Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican … or Democrat.

Abortion Reduction Key to Common Ground

by Richard Land 11-06-2008 Reposted from Gods Politics Blog at http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/

Dear President-elect Obama,

First, congratulations on your election as our 44^th president. I hope you know that there are tens of millions of Americans who did not vote for you who are still very, very pleased that an African American has been elected President of the United States.

That fact that this could happen in a country with as tragic a racial past as America’s says something noble and fine about the American experiment. We as a nation have chosen together to live up to the promises of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

We covenant to pray for you, your family, and your administration. We will pray that God will grant you godly wisdom in all your decision-making.

Mr. President-elect, Southern Baptists remain unalterably committed to the protection of unborn human life. The vast majority of Southern Baptists believe that a pre-born baby is a distinct human life, according to both science and the Bible.

You have said you want to unite us as a nation. An excellent place to work for such unity would be for you to put your full support behind the Democrats for Life initiative known as the Pregnant Women Support Act (its goal is to reduce abortion by 95 percent over a 10-year period).

This bill would:

• Establish a toll-free number to direct women to places that will provide support during and following their pregnancy.

• Provide child care to low-income and student parents.

• Provide parenting education in maternity group homes.

• Make the Adoption Tax Credits permanent.

• Ensure that pregnant women are not denied health care by insurance companies and that coverage is continued for newborns.

• Codify the regulation that extends coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to low-income pregnant women and unborn children.

• Increase funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Nutrition Program.

• Provide grants to institutions of higher education to fund pregnant and parenting student services.

• Provide new mothers with free home visits by registered nurses.

All of these measures would help fulfill the pledge made in the 2008 Democratic Party platform, which “strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs.”

Dr. Richard Land is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and author of The Divided States of America?: What Liberals AND Conservatives are missing in the God-and-country shouting match!

What Would Jesus Do: Review of God's Politics: Why the Right gets it Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get it. By Jim Wallis

Ok, I'll go right out and say it, if you are a Christian, or a Jew, or a Liberal, or a Conservative, or a Human, this could quite possibly be the best political book you will ever read. If you are not political, this book could make you political, but the best thing about it is this: It will make you Political in the best way.

I first became familiar with Jim Wallis while watching some videos on the Veritas Forum. What he said just struck a chord with me. I had been listening to conservative talk radio, and I did not like all that I heard, you see, I like listening to Christians, and when you listen to talk radio, you get not Christians, but conservatives. Republicans are not necessarily Christians, though they have courted the Christian vote for decades. The rhetoric of the "Christian Right" has become quite pervasive in our culture, seemingly only concerned about issues of abortion and gay marriage on the moral front while giving tax breaks for the rich and slowly dismantling the safety nets under the poor. This is the "How the Right gets it Wrong" part of the subtitle.

But then, the Democrats have often steered me the wrong way as well. They support the poor, but seem determined to remove God from public life. I've heard politicians say things like "I believe in God, but it won't affect my political stance." What do you think about a person like that? Do I really want to vote for someone who does not always act according to their beliefs? Do I want to support someone who wants people to be able to legally kill their babies? Do I want to support someone who would like to remove any representation of Christianity from the public view? This is how "the Left doesn't get it." The answer to bad religion is not no religion, it's good religion.

The politics that Jim Wallis offers us is what he calls prophetic. Not prophetic in the sense of the prediction of the future, but prophetic in the sense of what the Biblical prophets did the most often, and that was to tell God's truth. To tell the people to shape up, to not take advantage of the poor, not to defraud widows and orphans (pronounced single mothers and children without fathers.) Prophets insisted on justice, and that the blessings of God be spread around more or less evenly. This is the kind of politics that Rev. Wallis wants us to believe in. The the belief that says we've had enough of trying to clean up the trash of the world without trying to figure out who's dumping the crap here to begin with.

Also Rev. Wallis asks us what Jesus would do. The Right would like us to believe that Jesus is pro rich, pro war, and only pro American. Over 30,000 children around the world die of starvation each day, and we are supposed to be concerned about capital gains tax? You see, it's not that there is any shortage of food or water in the world, it's that there is a shortage of people who care enough to give it to someone who needs it. Millions of women still die of complications in child birth, the vast majority could be prevented by modern medicine. Wars still rage in the poorest countries in the world because of stupid things like diamonds and money. And there is still the epidemic of HIV/AIDS.

Wallis tells us that the monologue of the Right wing is over. I think it is close, but not quite there yet. Our current presidential situation is a bad one, and hopefully it will be over soon, but it seems that on so many fronts, we have lost ground instead of gained it, not only as a country in a world, but as a faith. I want to see Prophetic Politics gain some ground, not a politics of complaining about problems and passing the blame to the other party, but a politics of solutions, of ideas to fix problems, not just to throw money at problems, but to guide passionate people into their life work of helping other people. Because I think it's what Jesus came to do, help people, and not the rich ones, but the ones who really need it. The poor.

In conclusion, I'd recommend this book to anyone, especially if you have become discouraged by the current political climate. It is a pretty long book, it took me quite a while to read, much longer than normal and you can tell just by the last time I did a book review, but it is well worth it. It's a great book written by a man fully qualified to write it. It will change your view of things.

WiredForStereo