The claims that the Religious Right is dead and that the Culture Wars are over are as ubiquitous as they are poorly unsupported. We have debunked such claims many times at Talk to Action. (Most recently, Frank Cocozzelli took on one such prominent claim -- but don't peek at the link just yet, unless you want to cheat on the quiz!) But the thinking that drives such claims seems to enjoy a life of its own.
Over at Religion Dispatches, I have an essay about all this. Here is a sample.
One of the strangest phenomena in American politics is the persistence of claims, based on scanty or dubious evidence, proclaiming the death of the Religious Right or that the end of the culture wars is at hand. Having written about the ever-evolving Religious Right for more than 25 years I have found myself often perplexed and sometimes gobsmacked by such claims.
These claims play a significant role in the discourse but they’ve received far less scrutiny than they merit.
it was unsuccessful Republican presidential contender Pat Buchanan’s demagogic speech at the 1992 Republican Convention that really launched the term into our political lexicon. Although it is now generally referred to as "the culture war speech," Buchanan never actually used the term...
"There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be—as was the Cold War itself."
He makes it clear that this religious war is being waged on cultural fronts—but that culture is not the war itself. This is not a distinction without a difference. The religious war of which he speaks is not merely a collection of "social issues" over which people disagree, like abortion, homosexuality, and separation of church and state. It is, rather, a clash of profoundly different worldviews which are then played out in battles over specific issues.
The fascinating problem with the method of those who declare that the culture war is over, or about to be, is that they rarely if ever actually take the metaphor a step further. They do not name any of the belligerents, only the "issues" over which unnamed groups are said to be at war.
Facts are stubborn things—especially when one finds oneself without any. Some of those who make the claims we are discussing here, when they bother to cite any evidence at all, tend to rely on interpretations of convenience of public opinion polls or election outcomes. Chip Berlet has done a good job of debunking misuses of polling data of this sort, so I will not repeat all of that here.
That said, both liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, often display a lack of appreciation of the seriousness of purpose as well as the considerable resources, ideological rigidity, and ongoing political clout of the Religious Right. Sometimes spectacularly so.
For example, Religious Right leaders objected when Governor Mitch Daniels (R-IN) called for a "truce" on contentious social issues—apparently without consulting those whom he expected to join in the truce. They declared that such a truce is the equivalent of "surrender." Daniels, a possible 2012 GOP presidential contender, backed right off. Rob Boston, who has written about the Religious Right for two decades concluded that "Daniels’ quick retreat" indicates "that the Religious Right has lost none of its political punch."
Here are ten notable examples from the last few years right up to the present -- with links. Test your knowledge of the pronouncements of those who have told us that The End is Near. Take the quiz!
The ten statements below were made by some of the following ten prominent people. (Hint: Not everyone listed below is quoted in the quiz.)
Bill Clinton, former President of the U.S.
E. J. Dionne, columnist, The Washington Post
Ted Haggard, former President, National Association of Evangelicals
Robert P. Jones, pollster, consultant to Faith and Public Life and Third Way
Rachel Laser, Director of the Culture Program, Third Way
Barack Obama, President of the U.S.
Bill Press, nationally syndicated columnist
Frank Rich, columnist, The New York Times
Cal Thomas, nationally syndicated columnist
Jim Wallis, President, Sojourners
2006: "In this election, both the Religious Right and the secular Left were defeated, and the voice of the moral center was heard."
Bill Clinton
Robert P. Jones
Barack Obama
Jim Wallis
2007: "E.J. Dionne wrote a strong column today about our paper, "A Treaty in the Culture Wars: Requiem for the Religious Right?", where he calls this effort an "important sign that religious conservatives are facing the disintegration of their movement."
Bill Clinton
Robert P. Jones
Barack Obama
Jim Wallis
2007: "The era of the Religious Right is now past, and it's up to all of us to create a new day."
Ted Haggard
Rachel Laser
Bill Press
Jim Wallis
2007: "No matter who becomes the next president of the United States, the American people have already won a great victory - with the total disintegration of the once all-powerful religious right."
Bill Clinton
E.J. Dionne
Robert P. Jones
Bill Press
2008: "I've got some good news... the dominance of the religious right over our politics is finally finished."
Rachel Laser
Barack Obama
Cal Thomas
Jim Wallis
2008: "RELIGIOUS RIGHT R.I.P.... Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content and transform culture into the conservative Evangelical image has failed.
Bill Clinton
Ted Haggard
Frank Rich
Cal Thomas
2008: "The era of the religious right is over. Even absent the rise of urgent new problems, Americans had already reached a point of exhaustion with a religious style of politics that was dogmatic, partisan and ideological."
E.J. Dionne
Ted Haggard
Rachel Laser
Barack Obama
2010: "These dying gasps of our culture wars, like [George] Rekers's farcical pratfall, might be funnier if millions of gay Americans and their families were not still denied their full civil rights."
Bill Clinton
E.J. Dionne
Bill Press
Frank Rich
2010: "I believe we are also nearing the end of the "Religious Right" representing Evangelicalism."
Bill Clinton
Ted Haggard
Rachel Laser
Cal Thomas
2010: "In 2010, the American ayatollahs’ ranks have been depleted by death (Falwell), retirement (James Dobson) and rent boys (too many to name). What remains of that old guard is stigmatized by its identification with poisonous crusades, from the potentially lethal antihomosexuality laws in Uganda to the rehabilitation campaign for the "born again" serial killer David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") in America. ... The death throes of Mel Gibson’s career feel less like another Hollywood scandal than the last gasps of an American era.
Bill Clinton
E. J. Dionne
Bill Press
Frank Rich