National Journal is out today with a profile of the new kinder, gentler Religious Right, looking at the downfall of Richard Land’s career as a sign that the movement is turning away from aggressive culture wars and instead finding a less threatening political approach.
Reporter Tiffany Stanley interviewed Land, a former top Southern Baptist Convention official, who waxed nostalgic for the days when President Bush was in office…and especially for Bush’s commitment to nominating ultra-conservative federal judges.
“Alito and Roberts are the gifts that keep on giving, and we would have gotten neither one of those without our involvement,” Land said, predicting that Roe v. Wade will soon be “thrown onto the ash heap of history.”
The Religious Right has found great success in rallying its supporters against the menace of “activist judges” while stressing the importance of putting “strict constructionists” on the bench. Even during Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, many far-right activists told voters not to mind Romney’s apparent attempts to move to the center since he promised to appoint hard-line conservative judges.
The Supreme Court’s ruling this year in the Hobby Lobby case shows the Religious Right’s strong focus on the judiciary is paying off. And Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told Stanley that conservatives will continue to use the courts as part of their strategy to keep “the barbarians at bay.”
“I love the guy!” Land says. In his office, he gets up from the conference table, goes searching for his cell phone, and pulls up a photo of W. and members of the Land family—his wife, two daughters, and son-in-law—at the Bush Library, which they visited while they were in Dallas for a wedding.
Land proved a valuable presidential ally. When Bush called for preemptive action against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he was one of the few religious leaders to provide cover, writing a letter supporting the president’s plan with his version of just-war theory. In 2003, after Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act into law, Land joined Falwell and other ministers in the Oval Office, where they prayed with the president. In 2004, Land launched the “I Vote Values” campaign, a mammoth get-out-the-vote operation, which distributed half a million voter guides to churches and included a cross-country tour in an 18-wheeler. According to exit polls, Bush won voters who said their top concern was “moral values” by 80 percent to 18 percent.
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By his account, the alignment of religious conservatives and the GOP happened when Republicans more readily took on the antiabortion mantle: “What I’ve always said is … we’re going to be values voters, we’re going to vote our values and our beliefs and our convictions, and if that makes abortion a partisan issue, then shame on the Democrats.” He pushed for a commitment from the GOP so evangelicals would not just be another voting bloc but a constituency whose concerns were a priority. “One of my goals was to make certain that evangelicals weren’t used by the GOP in the way blacks were used by the Democratic Party,” he says.
And it’s undeniable that the alliance with George W. Bush carried benefits for evangelicals. Look no further than the Supreme Court, Land points out. “Alito and Roberts are the gifts that keep on giving, and we would have gotten neither one of those without our involvement,” he says. Land predicts that, if he lives out a natural lifespan, he will see Roe v. Wade “thrown onto the ash heap of history.”
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The Hobby Lobby case is in many ways a model for the new strategy being pursued by the Religious Right. It represents a way to engage in politics that is less aggressive than the tactics of the previous generation of believers. Back then, the key phrase was “family values”; now, it is “religious liberty.” You see it everywhere—from contraception court cases to legislation to think-tank conferences.
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“We’re not unrealistic,” says Perkins of the Family Research Council. “Our focus is more keeping the barbarians at bay, really.” His organization has started working more at the state level on freedom-of-expression laws. “We kind of saw that coming about three years ago and began shifting a lot of our emphasis on religious liberty.”
