Utility & Craft

Evangelicals and the EDM

So, you should be aware: I'm reading Bowling Alone, so for probably the next couple of weeks, I'll be reacting in large part to issues it raises and whatever little asides I find interesting. Falling into this latter category is my realization that I am really and utterly disconnected from what is probably one of the top five largest changes in the US for the past twenty years.

In 1974, an inversion occurred: prior to that year, evangelical Christians participated politically less than other Americans; after, they were more active. Not only is evangelical Christianity continuing to grow within the US, the nature of what it means to be an evangelical within the US is (according to Putnam) changing dramatically as well. Evangelicals are becoming more and more politically aware and active. Interestingly, I've written about what I took to be the opposite trend for The Toucan, when looking at the choice between maintaining ideological purity and interacting with (and, by extension, affecting) larger society. I would be interested in knowing if my examples—Paul Weyrich and Cal Thomas, who declared in 1996 that Christian conservatives should withdraw from the larger US society—kept true to their word, or if the ascendancy of Bush II has drawn them back out; if the latter, are they hopeful or do they feel duped for it? My presumption (Putnam doesn't really go into detail on this point) is that this increasing activity is largely a boon for the Republicans.

By extension, given the declining importance of labor unions, this new evangelicalism is bad for the Democrats. What's interesting, I think, is why it's bad for the Democrats. The main reason, I think, isn't simply more Republican voters. It's more that evangelicals have a deep supply of social capital at hand that makes mobilizing--ie, getting out the vote, as well as, say, organizing a letter-writing campaign--much simpler. The reason I mentioned the declining unions above is that previously unions played that role. And now with membership dropping, I think the natural question is: Where is the Democrats' social capital? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's "Emerging Democratic Majority," the current best hope, seems thin: socially moderate professionals, women, minorities, and the populations (especially the white working class) of "Ideopolises. I look at that and I see people who may be interested in voting Democratic, but I don't people who come pre-mobilized. None of those groupsMaybe with the exception of some parts of the working class in those Ideopolises, who are probably more likely to be highly unionized. seem organized in such a way as to put feet on the pavement for the Democratic party.

And I'm not just wondering this out of idle partisan politicking. This actually gets to something else I've been wondering about, even prior to picking up Bowling Alone: Where do I, being non-religious, go for, say, weekly infusions of social capital and togetherness? I mean, I'm not clear that's something I really want to pursue right now. But if it were, what would it be? I don't think that there's anything out there. And I'm not sure what it would look like. A mixer? A motivational speaker? Someone lecturing on different tenants of materialism or atheism each week? It seems like the first has too little structure and the rest have too much. I don't see, for instance, having a strong belief component to such a thing; and yet, how else could it function?

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