At Beliefnet's God-o-Meter blog, Dan Gilgoff misapprehends the connection between evangelical leader endorsements and Christian Right voter mobilization. He notes that at Christians United for Israel's (CUFI) "Night to Honor Israel," at the Washington Convention Center Tuesday night, John Hagee, to great applause, pledged to never again endorse a presidential candidate, and wonders whether that will squelch voter turnout:
So a ballroom full of some of the nation's most politically inclined evangelicals (this event was in Washington, sponsored by Hagee's Christians United for Israel, and featured Senator Joe Lieberman) applaud a major evangelical figure's vow to forego endorsing anymore presidential candidates? Isn't this the Christian Right's worst nightmare? After fighting for decades to get evangelicals to shed their political inhibitions, are folks like James Dobson going to abide a fellow leader urging them to take a few steps back from presidential politics? Hagee's message encapsulates one of McCain's greatest dangers: evangelicals getting the message that they might want to sit this election out.
I think Dan's got this wrong on a couple of counts. First, Hagee has never said that his followers should sit the election out. In fact, I'm sure they're terrified of an Obama presidency and will be motivated to do everything they can to prevent it. And Hagee's comment -- which his publisher and political ally Stephen Strang called a "humorous moment" in a post that hyperbolically called Hagee a "statesman" -- was in no way a call for political disengagement.
Second -- and I think Dan should know this given his expertise on the Dobson empire -- Hagee's political machine springs from a very different evangelical subculture than the Christian Right political apparatus as found in groups like Dobson's Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Alliance Defense Fund. They may agree on a lot of political issues, and may share many of the same political goals, but not all conservative evangelicals take take their cues from the Pentecostal Hagee.
To expand the reach of their movement, the religious right political leadership, including Dobson himself, has strived to bring more Pentecostal/charismatic figures into the religious right political infrastructure -- someone like Bishop Harry Jackson, who works closely with both the Family Research Council and CUFI, comes to mind, or Strang himself, who is a bridge of sorts between both cultures -- but they emerge from two different fundamentalist subcultures. It's true that the religious right generally was angry when McCain dumped Hagee and his pal Rod Parsley, but only because it fueled their resentments that politicians use evangelicals (wherever did they get that idea?). But Hagee's comments are hardly a cue to Dobson or to conservative evangelicals generally to start hating on McCain, or to sit out the election.
--Sarah Posner
