Democrats have no interest in appealing to conservative Christians

By Tom Quiner

I’m a white, male, conservative Roman Catholic.

Michael Wear, author of "Reclaiming Hope"

Michael Wear, author of “Reclaiming Hope”

The Democratic Party loathes me and my ilk. This is not just my perception, this is reality based on Hillary Clinton campaign rhetoric in 2016.

She lumps us into a ‘basket’ of irredeemable deplorables.

Even Michael Wear admits that my perception of the Democratic Party is spot on.

Mr. Wear is the former director of Barack Obama’s 2012 faith-outreach efforts. He’s a very rare political bird: a theologically conservative evangelical Christian … who is a Democrat.

He admits in his new book, “Reclaiming Hope,” that Democrats don’t get us, and definitely don’t like us.

He wrote an outreach fact sheet for Obama titled, “Economic Fairness and the Least of These.” Christians get the language, since ‘least of these’ comes from a famous teaching from Jesus. A staffer deleted the phrase, complaining it didn’t make sense, convinced it was a typo. She inquired, who/what are ‘these’?

Eighty-one percent of white, evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump. Mr. Wear pretty much acknowledges that it is “no wonder:”

“It shows not just ineptitude, but the ignorance of Democrats in not even pretending to give these voters a reason to vote for them. We also need to have a robust conversation about the support or allowance for racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia in the evangelical tradition.

Many of those 81 percent are accommodating cultural changes in America that are deeply problematic. Liberals have been trying to convince Americans, and evangelicals in particular, that America is not a Christian nation. The 2016 election was evangelicals saying, “Yeah, you’re right! We can’t expect to have someone who is Christian like us. We can’t expect to have someone with a perfect family life. What we can expect is someone who can look out for us, just like every other group in this country is looking for a candidate who will look out for them.”

Emma Green has a great interview with Mr. Wear in The Atlantic. You can read it here.

 

4 Comments

  1. wpdavidd on January 2, 2017 at 7:22 pm

    Racism? Misogyny? Islamophobia?



    • quinersdiner on January 2, 2017 at 9:39 pm

      Yowsa! That’s a bunch of isms and ogynys, and phobias, isn’t it? Thanks for writing.



  2. d. knapp on January 4, 2017 at 10:53 am

    Do these folks not realize that ( in America) the majority of black Christians ARE evangelical? My experience of attending churches w/ friends was that people mostly attend church w/ those that look like them. We have Catholic churches here that are all Latino, and lets talk about The A.M.E churches all over my community. I went to a Catholic service once where it looked like everyone there (but me) was Puerto Rican. My own church is predominantly white, but several of the few non white attendees hold very prominent places in our programs. Maybe I’m willfully obtuse, but I just dont see what they’re talking about. The rest is just the exclusivity of believing that Christianity is the true faith in in the one true God. Our book tells us that others are not worshiping the one true God and that some behaviors are sins. There’s no ism,ogyny or obia. The truth is these people want us w/o religion and amoral. They want us to not determine right/wrong. THEY want that job. I wish they were as concerned for the teachings and practices of the religion of peace. I wish they were as concerned for the practice of nonassimilation of a lot of that religion of peace. It wasnt a Ramadan event shot up by Christian evangelicals in San Bernadino, now was it?



    • quinersdiner on January 4, 2017 at 11:31 am

      No it wasn’t a Christian doing the killing in San Bernadino, nor in Istanbul, nor in Aleppo, nor in Berlin, nor in Miami, nor in Yemen, nor in Cairo, nor in … well you get the picture. I don’t know why the left doesn’t apply the same standard to the ‘religion of peace’ as they do to Christianity. Strange, isn’t it?