Epilogue
Interviewer: Do politicians take evangelicals seriously these days?
Doug Wead: I think they kind of treat the evangelical movement like a seven-foot tall high schooler who can't play basketball. If he ever learns how to play, he's going to be awesome. In the meantime, they'll do everything they can to take advantage of his awkwardness . . .
Evangelicals can generate more mail, more phone calls, than any other group. We've always known that. Our predecessors told us that. Evangelicals have the numbers. But . . .1
In my judgment, Doug Wead was on target with his off-the-cuff but candid response. Who should know better? An evangelical himself, Doug was an advisor to presidential candidate George Bush, a member of his White House transition team, and then for almost two years, special assistant to the president in public liaison.
We must admit that evangelicals have been awkward. The sole political act of literally millions of individual Christians — aside from voting — has been to sign a certain anonymous petition and mail it to the FCC to protest Madalyn Murray O'Hair's efforts "to get all religious broadcasting off the air." Now, there are a few small problems with that petition. First, O'Hair was never involved
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in it. Second, it was never designed to remove religious broadcasting from the airwaves. Third, the petition was resolved satisfactorily by the FCC in August 1975. That's not a typo — 1975 is the correct year.
Those sincere Christians were misinformed. Somebody lied to them. The FCC never has been able to turn off the spigot from which the petitions flowed. The total is climbing beyond 25 million, taxpayers' dollars are being wasted in handling the mail, and the useless petitions are becoming landfill.
On the other hand, evangelicals in the '80s gave promise of becoming awesome. Serious candidates for public office were emerging from prayer meetings rather than smoke-filled rooms. Telephones rang off the hook on Capitol Hill when critical issues were being debated in Congress. Church governmental concerns committees were providing dependable educational materials, so that their people could determine how to vote intelligently. If certain members of Congress voted against funding for religious child care while voting for funding of homoerotic art )as actually happened in the 101st Congress), evangelicals were learning about it before election day, when the information was particularly valuable. In many states and localities, evangelical volunteers flooded the political parties and influenced their policies.
One of these days, that evangelical seven-footer will become coordinated and fulfill his potential. The elections of 1980, 1984, and 1988 felt the impact of an identifiable evangelical vote. No longer could the media treat evangelicals like the Rodney Dangerfield ("I don't get no respect") of American politics.
Suppose knowledgeable evangelicals, given a clear choice in an off-year Senate election, turn out a significantly larger vote than the rest of the population? Assuming Gallup's figure that 33 percent of the people are evangelical, suppose half of evangelicals voted while only 35 percent of non-evangelicals did. Then evangelicals would cast 40 percent of the total votes, rather than their
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usual 33 percent if all groups voted at the same rate. With such an advantage, "their" challenger could unseat an incumbent and become a United States Senator.
Consider a future presidential election where one candidate genuinely supports culturally conservative values while the other turns his back on evangelical concerns. Let's assume more modest statistics than Gallup's suggesting that evangelicals represent only 20 percent of the electorate. If 75 percent of evangelicals cast ballots while only half of the non-evangelicals did, evangelicals would control over 27 percent of the total vote, not just their usual 20 percent.
Once more, cutting the margin even more finely, project the impact of a 60 percent evangelical vote against 50 percent for the rest. Then evangelicals would own 23 percent of the total, not just 20 percent. That extra 3 percent may not seem like much, but if most of it were cast for the loser, in 1960, it would have given Richard Nixon the victory over John F. Kennedy; in 1968 it would have pushed Hubert Humphrey past Richard Nixon; and in 1976 it would have returned Gerald Ford to the Oval Office over Jimmy Carter.
There is no doubt that evangelical Christians can win the culture war, by the sheer weight of their vote. Whether they will win depends upon their spiritual leaders, for "if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?"2 For those leaders, Carl Henry has the final word:
Can Western civilization escape inner chaos and self-destruction if it faces the future without a significant role for transcendent justice and the revealed will of God? If you think not — as I think not — then your Christian commitment imposes upon you a heavy duty to share in the present effort to preserve the American republic and to warn and instruct all the modern powers that are marching off the map to join once-great nations of antiquity in their oblivion.3
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Notes
1. Stephen Strang, interview in Charisma and Christian Life, July 1990, 80. [BACK]
3. Quoted in Steve Halliday and Al Janssen, eds., Carl Henry at His Best (Portland: Multnomah Press, 1990), 46. [BACK]
Table of Contents || Appendix I
