Speaker discusses religion's role
in American politics
By Tony Staley
Compass Correspondent
DE PERE -- Conservative religious groups that don't represent America as a whole have too much power in the Republican Party and in U.S. domestic and foreign policies, warned the man whose ideas formed the blueprint for today's GOP.
Because of that, the role of religion in U.S. politics has, in ways, made it more of a problem than a solution, Kevin Phillips said Oct. 16 at St. Norbert College.
What has happened in the United States parallels 4th century Rome and 17th century Spain when those two economic powers were entering the declining years, Phillips said in the annual Norman and Louis Miller Lecture in Public Understanding.
Historically, whenever the church and state were linked it led to a "series of problems, including a state church that is intolerant, Inquisition-minded and essentially committed to
using its force to spread the faith," said Phillips, a political analyst, former GOP strategist and author of several books.
In Rome, Constantine used the power of the state to spread Christianity. In 17th century Spain, the government backed the Catholic Church to advance the Counter-Reformation, he said.
In the United States the same thing appears to be happening through the religious right's strong control over the Republican Party, said Phillips.
Religion has always played a strong role in the U.S., Phillips said, but traditionally one religion balanced another, keeping any one religion's influence in check. For example, in the
Revolutionary War, Anglicans tended to support the British while Congregationalists backed the Colonists, he said.
In the last several years, several factors have converged so that regular church-goers, especially among the more conservative churches, strongly support the Republicans, Phillips said.
The shift started, he said, with the 1968 election when President Richard Nixon employed the Southern Strategy that Phillips had proposed.
That led to the Republican Party's gradual realignment from a mainly Protestant party in the North and West, to a national party that has attracted believers from various churches, but especially Evangelical Protestants, he said. Meanwhile, the Democrats became more of a secular party and lost both their ethnic base in the North and white Protestants in the South.
For example, in the 2004 presidential elections, 90 percent of Mormons and Pentecostals, 70 percent of white Southern Baptists, 68 percent of Missouri Synod Lutheran, 83 percent of Orthodox Jews and 93 percent of Ultra-Orthodox Jews voted for President George W. Bush.
The Republican transformation to a party of regular church-goers was not planned, Phillips said, but was an unforeseen consequence of national and world events.
During the 1990s and into the 21st century, issues of concern to religious voters, such as abortion, equal rights, gay marriage, life support systems, Islam and Saddam Hussein, as well as the coming of the new millennium, spurred growth in the Republican Party, Phillips said.
He said that the "Left Behind" series of end-time novels, especially popular among Evangelicals, fed many fears. For example, the anti-Christ in the books comes out of the United Nations and has a French advisor.
President Bush tapped into such fears after the Sept. 11 attacks by portraying the battle as good vs. evil, Phillips said. That appealed to "Left Behind" fans - many of whom considered Saddam Hussein the anti-Christ, Phillips said. Some 50 percent of Republican voters in the 2000 election had read the "Left Behind" books, he said.
There were a lot of reasons why President Bush led the country into the war in Iraq, but most of them were not discussed, Phillips said.
The religious right seems to be losing some influence on domestic issues, Phillips said, because they seem to have overplayed their hands on policy issues.
As proof, he pointed to the 2006 elections and losses - in part because of high turnout by people who don't normally vote - in key races in Ohio and Pennsylvania; overturning of a law to ban abortion in South Dakota; and the defeat in Kansas of the state attorney general who had subpoenaed the sealed medical records of 90 women and girls in an investigation related to abortion and alleged child rape.
It's too early to tell how much impact the religious right may continue to have on foreign policy, Phillips said, because President Bush, an Evangelical Protestant, drives foreign policy, rather than Congress.
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