Evangelical Democrats?

This one comes via Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars, from Faith in Public Life:

They did it again! Just as in Iowa, yesterday’s media-sponsored Election Day poll failed to ask Democrats in New Hampshire if they were evangelical. Voters from both parties were asked about their church attendance and if they were Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Other Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Something else, or None. But only Republicans were asked if they were born-again or evangelical Christian.

This is something that has sort of bothered me subliminally for some time -- the idea, pushed by the Republican Christianists, that the only people of faith in this country are on the far right. On its face, that's ridiculous, but it permeates the discourse at this point, not least, as the writer here points out, because of the press.

It would be informative to know the percentage of evangelicals who voted for Democrats yesterday. It would be informative to know which Democratic candidates were helped or hurt last night by Democratic evangelical turnout.

It certainly would, and I would guess there would be some surprises. However, don't look for any such reports from the MSM, unless it turns out the Britney Spears is a left-wing evangelical.

However, there is a bit of overreaching here:

No party can own any faith. Evangelicals have broadened their agenda to include care for the planet, the poor and the stranger, and as a result are increasingly independent politically. Exit polls need to abandon the hidebound frames of the culture war -- evangelicals already have.

Well, not exactly. I don't know if you remember, but I certainly do, that when one of the leaders of the American Evangelical Association (I believe that's the name -- having a small senior moment here) recommended that the Association broaden its agenda along just those lines, the Dobson Gang immediately wrote his superiors demanding that he be relieved of his duties and his recommendations ignored, lest the shift in emphasis take resources away from fighting the real enemy -- gay men and lesbians. I haven't heard that Dobson has become a tree-hugger of a sudden.

So, it's not a done deal, and I'm not going to greet evangelicals as a whole with open arms to the ranks of social progressives. They still need to demonstrate that they are willing to listen as well as to talk.

Footnote: As an illustration on how the conservative/evangelical Christian agenda has not changed appreciably, see this post at Pam's House Blend.