Faithful Political Rhetoric

With the reelection of George W. Bush in 2004, it seemed that evangelical Christians had arrived as a political force. When exit poll data showed a correlation between voters’ concern over “moral values” and their preference for George W. Bush and the Republican Party, journalists had a framework for interpreting the election: all credit for Bush’s reelection was due to the “values voters.”¹ If Bush owed his political fortunes to the evangelical Christians, this narrative held, we could expect to see their policy demands—including a federal same-sex marriage amendment and strict constructionists appointed to the Supreme Court—realized in his second term. Evangelical Christians’ political reign may have been short-lived, however. Less than three years later, with the passing of Jerry Falwell, the same journalists seized upon a narrative of a movement in transition.² No longer will evangelical Christians maintain their single-minded focus on the personal morality issues, nor will they be devoted to the Republican Party, journalists predicted. Instead, the movement’s new standard-bearers will be preachers like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, whose broader vision encourages evangelical Christians to attend to issues such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, and the environment.

Ubiquitous as these narratives became, they are overly simplistic. Too often, what has gone unquestioned in these journalistic treatments of the “values voters” and evangelical Christian politics are the assumptions that religious values should influence political and electoral decision making, that faith-based influence in politics is a phenomenon newly created by the Christian Right, and that Christian values necessarily translate into social conservatism. Given the popularity of these narratives and these assumptions, it may be time for scholars in rhetorical studies to revisit the relationship between religion and U.S. politics.

Roderick P. Hart brought this question to our attention more than 30 years ago with his publication of The Political Pulpit, in which he built upon Robert Bellah’s concept of civil religion to introduce the notion of a civic piety contract between church and state held stable by rhetorical practice.³ Steven R. Goldzwig then wrote of the significance of public theology, which he defined as “theologically-based discourse intentionally targeted for mass audiences in an attempt to influence the attitudes, beliefs and values of both religious and secular publics on public policy.”⁴ The reissue of Hart’s book in 2005 featured contemporary commentary on his original work, with Goldzwig and Martin J. Medhurst both suggesting that Hart’s thesis, although provocative, does not prove fully explanatory for the twenty-first-century context. As Medhurst argues, whereas Hart’s thesis may have described the symbolic, depoliticized practice of religion that defined postwar America, it cannot account for an era that has witnessed the emergence of groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition.⁵

Outside of rhetorical studies, a productive conversation about the influence of religion in contemporary politics is taking place in both scholarly and popular venues. At stake in this conversation, first, are legal issues: what role(s) do the First Amendment’s free exercise and establishment clauses allow for...