I hope that my recent diaries have made two things clear:
1) Christians who call themselves “Evangelical” or “Bible-believing” should be voting Democratic already, because the Democratic platform is more Christian than the Republican platform.
2) Democrats should start getting smart by reaching out to those potential new Democratic voters.
If Democratic candidates would start doing this, I believe that a small but significant percentage of the current Evangelical Republican bloc can be won over, with immediate rewards at election time.
Now, how would Democrats start doing this? How can they overcome the Evangelicals’ visceral fear of “liberalism”?
Let’s begin by considering that Evangelicals are truly and thoroughly afraid. You may think that they should be, after all the harm they have caused others. Revenge is sweet. Or you may think that they have no cause to be afraid (which is what I mostly believe). But the fact is that they are afraid, and a person who is afraid is going to react defensively and strongly. So if you want to win over somebody who is afraid of you, how do you go about it? I think everybody understands that you overcome fear with kindness and patience, not superior force.
Imagine a white police officer (and a man, to make it scarier) who is truly a good guy in every sense of the word, newly-assigned to what happens to be an inner city, mostly black, high-crime neighborhood. What should he do? I’ve never been a policeman so I would welcome input from anybody who is, but I’m pretty sure that this ideal officer would first look for ways to build trust rather than fear. The baton, gun, and handcuffs are there for when all else fails, but they should not be the first thing he reaches for. I’m guessing that making friends with the locals would be where he would start, and he might have to work a bit at overcoming the very understandable mistrust that those locals would have toward anybody with white skin and a badge.
But being Evangelical is nothing like being black, you might say, and of course you are right. And Evangelicals have no reason to be afraid, you add, and in that you show a lack of understanding of the Evangelical mindset. Their fear may not be realistic, but it is very real to them, which is all that matters. Now it’s decision time; should a Democratic office-seeker just respond with a dismissive “Well, that’s their problems, not ours” or should there be a willingness to take the initiative to bridge the trust gap? Should the candidate be willing to take a look at what things Evangelicals are afraid of and then try to build bridges, or just insist that they learn to look at things the same way as all the other Democrats do? That’s one of the things Evangelical Christians are afraid of, by the way—that Democrats all wish that they would just stop being Christians. They fear a “boogeyman” who mostly doesn’t exist, but that fear is very real to them, and Democratic candidates could help their cause a lot by facing the issue.
Let’s take just one concrete example to illustrate this point: most Evangelical Christians (along with most Muslims, let us not forget) believe that same-sex marriage is wrong. And they are positively terrified that Christian clergy are soon going to be forced by law to perform same-sex marriages if requested. This is a bias that many Democrats find very hard to overcome. Some Democrats (not all, but some) believe so strongly in marriage equality that they are perfectly willing to force conformity upon those who disagree with them (which, remember, would include Muslim clergy as well as Christian). But a wise Democratic candidate would assure Evangelicals and others that he/she neither desires, nor would support, any such forced conformity. A huge increase in trust can be had by a Democrat who can balance this issue properly, assuring Christians that they aren’t going to be forced to do anything against their religious convictions, while reassuring the base Democratic constituency that their interests are safe.
This example may be a hard one for some, because seeing things from the other person’s point of view is difficult for a lot of people. But a good politician must be able to view issues from a range of constituent standpoints, or else there’s no chance of winning the election.
Some of the other fears of Evangelicals are even more unrealistic, but fear does not have to be reasonable to be real. Communism, for example. Evangelicals will cry out that the Democrat is really a Communist seeking to undermine America. Now, not much can be done about the demagogue who knows full well that he is lying, but for the naïve Evangelical who believes this charge to be true, a bit of education about where the Democratic party stands in relation to actual Communism will go a long way. I can easily visualize a Democratic campaign leaflet including something like “About that silly accusation that I’m a communist. . .” It is a silly accusation, and I think facing it squarely and laughing at it would be more effective than ignoring it.
Then there is the Evangelical fear that our country is abandoning its Christian roots. This one is a bit more complicated, but the simple version is that, yes, the country was established by people who considered themselves Christian, but even in the beginning there has never been a majority of people who were “true believers” (as opposed to “nominal” Christians or outright skeptics) and even the most fundamentalist organizations have long taught that government interference with religion is a bad thing. Early leaders did explicitly say that America was not a Christian nation. And today, people who follow Christ must do so because they choose to, not because the law forces them to. This is hard for some Evangelicals because, just like everybody else, they often have a hard time seeing things from the other person’s point of view, and they often don’t “get” the wrongness of demanding freedom for oneself but not wanting to give the same freedom to others. But here again the wise Democratic candidate will stake out a position by knowing what it is that Evangelicals are supposed to believe, and then leaning on that support rather than on arguments that other Democrats might prefer.
More could be said, especially about the positive reasons for voting Democratic (which I have covered elsewhere), but let’s just say that the reasons are already there for Bible-believing Christians to vote Democratic, and allaying their fears to get just a few more Evangelical votes could make all the difference. I am convinced that a 5 percentage point shift among Evangelicals would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, which would have equaled a 311-227 electoral victory for Hillary Clinton. Would that have been worth the effort to win those Evangelical votes?