A new survey on religion and politics provides important background on the dynamics at work among religious voters in 2008. The “National Survey on Religion and Public Life” published by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College was based on a large sample of 3,002 interviews, … Read more
“Evangelicals feel like they have been served their divorce papers,” said one major Evangelical leader in an interview on Saturday. “They don’t know exactly what they are going to do,” he told me, adding, “There are going to be meetings all over the country in the next few weeks to decide our strategy.” Events of … Read more
Next week, my defense of religion in politics — Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States — will be published by Simon & Schuster. This book is both a history and apologia of religious conservatives in politics over the past 30 years. But this primary season has … Read more
Something is happening to the word “conservative” — it’s becoming, for lack of a better word, unfriendly. It started with the immigration debate back in 2005, when, for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t identify with the conservative movement. I couldn’t get on board with what I found to be mean-spirited hysteria … Read more
On Super Tuesday, exit polling on the Catholic vote was done in only 10 of the 22 GOP primary states. Senator John McCain won the Catholic vote in 8 out of 10 of those states. Gov. Mitt Romney won Catholics in Massachusetts and Georgia, while Gov. Mike Huckabee continued to attract little significant Catholic support. … Read more
Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is the leading pro-life Catholic in the Senate. After withdrawing from the race for the GOP presidential nomination, he endorsed Senator John McCain (R-AZ). His choice of McCain surprised some of Brownback’s supporters, so I asked him about his endorsement. ♦ ♦ ♦ Deal W. Hudson: Some people were surprised when … Read more
There was once a young American college student whose love for his faith led him to devote two years of his life as an overseas missionary, embracing loneliness and relative poverty in his zeal to convert unbelievers. He’d even left behind his high school sweetheart, to whom he was faithfully and chastely devoted. He didn’t … Read more
To win the White House in 2008, the Democrats have to win back the Catholic voters they lost to the GOP in 2000 and 2004. A previous Window forecast that if the Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton, she would win the Catholic vote. However, with his commanding victory in the Iowa caucus, Barack Obama may be … Read more
Two dramas are unfolding this political season. First, can Barak Obama defeat Hillary Clinton? Now that Oprah Winfrey is on his stage, evidently he can. Second, will the pro-life party nominate Rudy Giuliani and break its promise to the religious and social conservatives who came into the party over the last thirty years? The plotlines … Read more
“If Giuliani and Clinton are the nominees, then Hillary Clinton will certainly win the Catholic vote in 2008.” This is the opinion of a chief strategist behind George W. Bush’s success with Catholic voters in 2000 and 2004. Steve Wagner, president of QEV Analytics in Washington, D.C., isn’t happy in reaching this conclusion. “Hillary Clinton, … Read more
Back in the day, before the Republicans had made complete clowns of themselves, Rush Limbaugh was fond of observing that the Democrats had so prostituted FDR’s legacy that now their message was, “The only thing we have to offer is . . . fear itself!” That used to be funny. But now Rudy Giuliani has … Read more
Mitt Romney is seizing the opportunity created by Dr. James Dobson’s threat of a third party candidacy. The Massachusetts pol is positioning himself as the GOP candidate of choice for religious conservatives. How? In a Boston Globe story from October 5, Eric Fehrnstrom, a spokesman for the Romney campaign, said, “Dr. Dobson is keeping an … Read more
Dr. James Dobson is the founder of the largest, most influential, Evangelical organization in America, Focus on the Family. His radio show reaches two million listeners every day, and he’s easily the most important Evangelical leader in the country. As a result, Dobson’s political pronouncements carry a lot of weight among Christian voters. But these … Read more
I’m not a Republican because I think Republicans are fun or especially good company. If I were looking for sociality or cordiality in my political party, I would look elsewhere. I would also look elsewhere if the GOP ever turned its back on the issues that brought me into its fold in the first place: … Read more
These days of Inside Catholic’s nascence find us debating the merits of political parties and ideologies in light of both Catholic teaching and historical tradition. Which party, which corresponding set of philosophies, is the one to which good Catholics ought to hitch their wagon? Does such a party even exist? I don’t want to give … Read more
A recent New York Times article reported a Pew Forum poll showing that significantly fewer people view the Republican Party as "friendly" to religion. "The survey found that the proportion of Americans who say the Republican Party is friendly to religion fell 8 percentage points in the last year, to 47 percent from … Read more