evangelicals

Today is the big day. Hopefully the last day of the primary season. I'll have some overall thoughts up on the nomination process later today.

• Current TV tackles the Millennial generation and the coming political realignment:

• Why have anti-war protests proven so unsuccessful? David Sirota has some answers in The Protest Industry vs. The Players
• Kevin Bondelli follows up on his post here yesterday and outlines why Vote Pledges are important even in heavily Democratic districts.
• Banks are cutting down on loans and leaving community colleges and two-year college students out in the cold.
• A veteran runs the numbers and debunks McCain's fears about the Webb GI Bill.
• Wired runs a mini-profile of Josh Levy, formerly of Tech President but now an editor at Change.org. The story hits on the power of social networking to mobilize change, and Youth to Power merits a mention.
• The New York Times gets hip to the new face of evangelical community, and how young people are redefining the role of politics in their faith.
• Finally, episode one of This Brave Nation is live. In it, Carl Pope and Van Jones provide insight into the development of the progressive movement over the last half century and discuss how and why they became progressive activists. In particular, I found fascinating their discussion (2/3 through the video) about the role of culture in social change and why artists today seem less involved than in the 60s:

I finally finished reading UnChristian: What a New Generation Thinks About Christianity . . . And Why It matters. It was a difficult read. In the past I’ve reported on the exodus of young evangelicals away from Bush and the Republican Party, and the shift in focus of young evangelicals from culture war topics like abortion and gay marriage, and towards more community and social justice oriented work on issues of poverty and climate change. I picked up the book hoping for a glimpse into how young people are changing the church along these lines. These issues were only addressed tangentially in the book.

Instead, I got a full-throated defense of the most rigid interpretations of Evangelical Christianity and a market research-based attempt to rebrand Christianity among the general US populace, with a strong focus on capturing Millennials and Gen Xers (what the authors calls “mosaics” and “busters’).

In essence, the authors, after extensive quantitative and qualitative research, identify six negative qualities most commonly associated with Christianity. These are: that evangelicals are hypocrites who do not practice what they preach, they are only focused on a superficial “saving” of others souls rather than real connection, empathy and communication, they are anti-homosexual, they are sheltered and ignorant of the real world, they are too political, and they are judgmental. In most instances, the authors assume that evangelicals themselves must accept responsibility for these negative “perceptions,” which are due to their own failure to practice what they preach and live up to the teachings of Jesus. This failure is the meaning of the books title, UnChristian.

It was extremely disorienting, being in the head of someone holding religious and social views so at odds with my own, even more so in that I’m a Millennial and the research and tactics the authors discuss are designed to make their brand of Christianity more appealing to me. In particular, this manifested itself in two ways – or two tensions – that are present throughout the book

The first is between altering the general public’s perceptions of Christians and altering the lives of Christians themselves to more accurately reflect the values they preach and the teachings of Jesus. At times the authors seem to be arguing for a fundamental revolution in how Christians live the Word and use themselves as examples of what they preach. At other times they seem to be arguing for cosmetic or tactical changes - slicker PR to revitalize a dying brand.

The second tension is between that lived, altered, Christian life and the actual values of those they are trying to convert. In some ways, these are fundamentally at odds no matter how much those in the church change their own lifestyle. Gay marriage and homosexuality as a “lifestyle” are the two most prominent examples of this in the text. No matter how much young people’s values change, the Church’s don’t. The authors may argue for greater compassion and empathy for the GLBT community – essentially hate the sin, love the sinner – but at the end of the day the church and its practitioners are splitting hairs. The sinner and the sin are one and the same and the GLBT community, and its friends, peers, supporters in the younger generations don’t see any sin at all. Until the Church comes to that recognition, all their attempts at empathy really will be just so much PR.

Despite my fundamental disagreements with much of the author’s world view, the book is a wealth of demographic and opinion data, and contains a number of smart tactical ideas that could be applied to any persuasion campaign.

Among the findings:

Perceptions of Christianity among 18 – 29 year olds

Belief	Outsiders	Churchgoers
antihomosexual	91%	80%
judgmental	87%	52%
hypocrtical	85%	47%
too political	75%	50%
Out of touch	72%	32%

Outsiders vs. Churchgoers on Homosexuality (% Who Believe the following to be a “major” problem in America)

Demographic	Homosexual Lifestyles	Political Efforts of Homosexual Activists
All Adults	35%	35%
Mosaic and Buster Outsiders	17%	18%
Mosaic and Buster Churchgoers	29%	33%
Boomer Churchgoers	46%	44%
Elder Churchgoers	58%	52%

Young Adults Are Concerned about Conservative Christians in Politics

	Mosaic/Busters	Boomers/Elders
Outsiders	62%	48%
Born-Again	47%	40%

Mosaics and Busters - More Skeptical that Churches are Loving Environments

	Mosaics and Busters	Boomers
Outsiders	51%	41%
Church-goers	38%	23%

Percent Who Agree that the Bible Should Determine the Laws Of Our Country

Age	Percent
18 - 29	22%
30 - 49	33%
50 - 64	32%
Over 64	44%

These numbers are extraordinary. And while the authors see them as a sign that Christianity is in trouble and needs a serious shot in the arm to revitalize itself, I see a chance - offered by Millennials and Gen Xers, or Mosaics and Busters as the author calls them - to move beyond the culture wars that have entangled our politics for so long. There is clear movement among the younger generations away from the christian conservative politics of the past.

By about 20 percentage points, young born-again Christians (21 – 44) are more accepting of cohabitation, sex outside of a marriage and a variety of other “cultural” issues. The evangelical movement seems to be fighting a losing battle. Look at the charts; more young people perceive Christian conservative activism to be a greater problem than GLBT activism. According to the authors, for every 100 young people who are not born-again by the time they are 18, only 6 will make the conversion later in their lifetime. Perhaps most significantly, the authors predict that an equal number of born-again Christians will vote for Democrats in 2008 as Republicans.

Ultimately, the authors and I fundamentally disagree on the meaning of these numbers. Where they see a problem to be solved, I see a trend in tolerance to be nurtured and encouraged. In one instance, though, we are united in our view. Where as they see it as incumbent upon believers to take the more tolerant, community oriented and diverse views of today's youth seriously in an attempt to engage them in a real conversation (that eventually leads back to the Church), I think that progressives must take the religious views of these more progressive churchgoers seriously and engage them in our own conversations. Their numbers may be shrinking but it is in their power to move the political activism of Christians in a direction that is more in line with progressive, social justice ideas. That's an encouraging thought and certainly a conversation worth having.

An op-ed by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post picks up on the shift in evangelical voters that Zack Exley has been following for months now.

Republicans should take note, because they have growing problems among the post-religious-right generation of evangelicals. An analysis by the Pew Research Center found that 55 percent of white evangelicals ages 18 to 29 identified themselves as Republican in 2001. By 2007, that figure had dropped to 40 percent. This generation is not turning into liberal Democrats -- it is more pro-life, for example, than an older generation of evangelicals -- but it has become more loosely moored to the GOP.

These trends highlight a simple fact: Many evangelicals are center-right voters who respond to a message of social justice and community values, not only to a message of rugged individualism and unrestricted markets. Over the years, religious conservatives have made common cause with movement conservatives within the Republican Party -- but they are not identical to movement conservatives.

That last paragraph is particularly important. We've let the media take away from the Left any claim to speak for religion or people of faith. It's gotten to the point where pollsters don't even ask Democratic voters whether or not they are evangelicals. But there are many intersections between the teachings of the Church and Democratic policies. Messaging around social justice issues and the common good is a strong way to create inroads and alliances with evangelicals - particularly young evangelicals - and work together to bring about positive change we all want to see on the environment, poverty, and a number of issues.

More on how evangelical youth are abandoning Republicans here.

Here's a video of Jim Wallis on the Daily Show talking about the demise of the Christian Right as a force in American Politics, and the emergence of an evangelical youth movement that is concerned with poverty and the environment over culture war issues: (h/t to Revolution in Jesusland)

• MTV and MySpace have announced that Barack Obama is the next candidate on tap in their Dialogue series. The Senator will appear live on MySpace and Think MTV on October 29th at 1:30pm. Supposedly all Republican and Democratic candidates will get their turn at the mic, though it's hard to see how that's possible at the current rate of production. Unless MTV and MySpace significantly speed things up, they won't get through more than three more candidates before both the Republican and Democratic nominees are selected.
• You may have heard that Stephen Colbert is running for President. Well here's his FaceBook Group. Help Stephen be the first candidate to actually achieve the "1 million strong" mark.
• Check out Vote Gopher, a comprehensive and slightly bizarro look at the Democratic and Republican candidates put together by students at Harvard.
• MySpace is mimicking FaceBook and opening up its platform to third party developers.
• Finally, Zack Exley recommends that we all read Everything Must Change, a book that is making the rounds and reframing the debate for young evangelicals.

Hat tip to Game Politics for alerting me to this New York Times piece about how churches are using Halo 3 to pull in young members:

Hundreds of churches use Halo games to connect with young people, said Lane Palmer, the youth ministry specialist at the Dare 2 Share Ministry, a nonprofit organization in Arvada, Colo., that helps churches on youth issues.

“It’s very pervasive,” Mr. Palmer said, more widespread on the coasts, less so in the South, where the Southern Baptist denomination takes a more cautious approach. The organization recently sent e-mail messages to 50,000 young people about how to share their faith using Halo 3. Among the tips: use the game’s themes as the basis for a discussion about good and evil.

At Sweetwater Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, Ga., Austin Brown, 16, said, “We play Halo, take a break and have something to eat, and have a lesson,” explaining that the pastor tried to draw parallels “between God and the devil.”

Players of Halo 3 control the fate of Master Chief, a tough marine armed to the teeth who battles opponents with missiles, lasers, guns that fire spikes, energy blasters and other fantastical weapons. They can also play in teams, something the churches say allows communication and fellowship opportunities.

There are two things happening here. The first is that churches are understanding that they can be more effective if they are culturally relevant to the lives of their constituency. They're using that realization to forge social capital between youth in their community and to tie that social capital back to the church. That's smart community building.

The second thing happening is that church leaders who are also active in politics may outflank progressives on this issue:

Focus on the Family, a large evangelical organization, said it was trying to balance the game’s violent nature with its popularity and the fact that churches are using it anyway. “Internally, we’re still trying to figure out what is our official view on it,” said Lisa Anderson, a spokeswoman for the group.

Focus on the Family is an ultra conservative organization headed by James Dobson. Dobson is the public figure who attacked bloggers on the John Edwards campaign back in the spring, and who just recently was rattling his saber about withdrawing his support from the GOP if they nominated pro-choice Rudy Giuliani. Yet here his group may embrace cultural outreach tactics that are at the cutting edge for reaching out to young people. Meanwhile, the Democratic frontrunner is on record as a scold who crusades against video games and their influence on the culture. That's not smart.

Zack Exley is devoting the next year to living on the road and blogging about the Christian Right on his blog, Revolution in Jesusland. He's already digging up some very interesting data on christian and evangelical youth:

HOWEVER, one thing really stood out, and subtly became the main focus of the evening forum. Apparently, all the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives and other anti-gay campaigning have really been ravaging the perception of Christianity among the general public, and even among young Christians. He showed one graph that showed favorability ratings over the past several decades for gays shooting up from low single digits to 33% today. (That might have been just among young people, I can’t remember.)

Meanwhile, right along with that, the favorability rating for “evangelicals” among the same group plummeted from high numbers to 3%! David didn’t argue for a direct correlation between those two numbers. But he talked about how today most young people know openly gay people, and they are having a hard time reconciling what their church says and their valued relationships.

He gave an anecdote from the research of one person who said he was sitting in church, with a gay friend who they had brought, and the pastor was preaching that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

This topic requires a long, in-depth article, not a blog post. But you could hear a pin drop at moments last night, as the audience (a couple thousand strong) wrestled with the results. Shane and Rick gently danced around a different—more loving—way of relating to gays. But they weren’t arguing that homosexuality was Biblical. Looking around the audience, some people looked thrilled and enthusiastic about what Shane and Rick were saying. Others looked troubled.

Acceptance of GLBT rights is up around 60% among 18-24 year olds, and this appears to be a generational acceptance that is occurring on the left and right (though to be sure it is happening more on the left than the right). Judging by his blogging, Exley is witnessing the effects of that shift his travels. He doesn't go so far as to say that these people are supporters of gay rights, but something is clearly happening.

Regardless of the reasons, Exley's piece also hits on another important point. It appears that this is a shift that does not sit well with a huge chunk of the evangelical community. This is important because it is just one of a number of potential schisms within the community that have made their way into the news this past week. The other two involved the abandonment of Bush and the Republican Party by young evangelicals, and grumblings among the leaders of the Christian Right about the 2008 candidates. Support for the President has dropped over 40% in the last 4 years, and a 15% decline in support for the Republican Party in general over that time period among young voters, and unhappiness with the GOP among the leadership spilled over into the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times this week when James Dobson, head of Focus on Family, penned an editorial threatening Republicans with the loss of support from his organization if Rudy Giuliani, a pro-choice Republican, was nominated to the GOP ticket.

Dobson's piece is likely little more than saber-rattling. The Christian Right, like all GOP coalition members, is pragmatic. When faced with a choice between a Democrat or Republican, they know where their bread is buttered and they fall into line. But it is another indication that all is not well in Jesusland. What was once regarded as a rock solid base - morally and as an organizing force - is showing some cracks. If the right pressure is applied, might it be possible to chip away parts of this core constituency?

A new report by the PEW Research Center shows that Bush's base among young voters - young, white evangelicals - is tanking hard. According to PEW, young, white evangelical support for Bush has plummeted 42%, from a high of 87% in 2002 to today's low of 45%. Consequently, this has also translated into declining support for the GOP, which has seen a 15% drop in party ID among this demographic. This decline in support is mirrored among older evangelicals, however the decline isn't nearly as dramatic among those over 30.

PEW is quick to note that this isn't necessarily translating into greater support for Democrats among this audience. Young evangelicals are still a much more conservative group than the rest of the Millennial generation. They are twice as likely to be Republican, 60% of them still support the war in Iraq, and on issues like abortion and capital punishment, they are also extremely conservative in their views.

PEW suggests that this dissatisfaction rests not so much with the party or conservative philosophy, but rather the execution of policy by this particular administration. This may well be the case, though I wonder how much Bush's stance on issues like global poverty and global warming have to do with it, as there has been a push in the evangelical community to support positions on these issues that are traditionally considered more liberal.

One issue that PEW doesn' address is what effect this might have on turnout and the election. These findings come just as The New York Times is reporting that Christian conservative leaders are considering a third-party candidate if pro-choice candidate Rudy Giuliani heads the Republican ticket. Could these young evangelicals be gearing up to have their own "Nader" moment? Are we going to see a not-insubstantial portion of the youth wing of the Republican party bolt for an independent bid as so many lefty youth did in 2000 when Nader was running on the Green Party ticket?

That would be an interesting scenario, and might even cripple the Republican candidate in a number of states as those young people, who would likely be footsoldiers in the Republican ground-game, put their efforts somewhere else (or, utterly disaffected, just sat it out at home).

• Rock the Vote blog has an excellent post on how anyone can do DIY voter analysis using Census data and some cheap software. The instructions are meticulous and slightly intimidating, but the writer makes it sound like something you could figure out in an afternoon. I've got to give that a try . . .
• YouTube announced that you will soon be able to sort candidate videos by issue, making a nice little tool for compare/contrast purposes.
• Three interesting things to check out for those interested in how the evangelicals (and other young people of faith) are doing it these days: Youthroots - a social networking site for people of faith; BattleCry - the online home of a (crazy/scary) hipster evangelical movement; and with young evangelicals worrying about poverty and global warming, the WireTap Blog asks "Is God now progressive?"
• The New America Foundation documents how our generation's GI's are getting the shaft when they return home from duty:
  

  Although military recruiting literature trumpets educational benefits of up to $72,900, for most recruits the benefit tops out at $38,700. That works out to $1,075 a month for 36 months. It might sound like a lot to a teenager looking for help with college, but it’s only 75 percent of the average cost of attendance at a public four-year-college or university. To be eligible for those benefits, servicemen and women have to contribute $1,200 up front, out of their own pockets, during their first two years of service. Virtually all do so, but nearly one-in-three never collect any educational benefits, and they don’t get a refund. Most important, GI Bill benefits are counted as student financial resources when veterans apply for federal student financial aid, making many veterans ineligible for Pell Grants or subsidized student loans that could fill the gap. For recruits from low-income backgrounds, that’s a huge loss.

• Barack Obama is scheduled to be on the Daily Show on Wednesday the 22nd.
• Check out this podcast of Anya Kamenetz of Generation Debt.

As part of a larger examination into young people and their split from one sect of the political world to the other, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the youth evangelical movement.

I am – as a Kansan, always curious about this ultra-right group of people, what they are up to, how they are organizing, and how they are essentially doing what What’s the Matter with Kansas claims the poor sell themselves out for values votes. I would argue that evangelicals do the same thing. While we have a community of people who believe that it is their holy destiny to vote in the interest of their God – I see so many who sell out their own beliefs for a narrow agenda.

I mention that but, honestly my post has nothing to do with that – the larger piece I’m working on for Wiretap will. I don’t even want to address the irony that I’m watching the X-Files episode Signs and Wonders which is all about a Pentecostal minister that uses snake handling in his church but it turns out he’s actually Satan…

So, I started reading Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement by Lauren Sandler as part of this bigger project. I’m honestly not very far into it but what I’ve read thus far, just of Sandler’s interviews and questions, exploration, and the like of those who are intensely involved in this movement – has given me more of an understanding of the type and structure of organization and political organizing that is going on.

This seems particularly fitting given Mark's stellar interview with The Dude yesterday.