NEWS FEATURE: Beliefs of Evangelical Voters Don’t Fit Into Neat Box

c. 2004 Beliefnet (UNDATED) The mammoth Lancaster County Bible Church in Manheim, Pa., sits like a shopping mall alongside a four-lane highway that cuts across Pennsylvania’s green countryside. A megachurch with more than 4,000 members, it boasts its own Starbucks-style cafe, a bookstore and a gigantic parking lot overseen by volunteer traffic control monitors. The […]

c. 2004 Beliefnet

(UNDATED) The mammoth Lancaster County Bible Church in Manheim, Pa., sits like a shopping mall alongside a four-lane highway that cuts across Pennsylvania’s green countryside. A megachurch with more than 4,000 members, it boasts its own Starbucks-style cafe, a bookstore and a gigantic parking lot overseen by volunteer traffic control monitors.

The church’s senior pastor, David Ashcraft, is a graduate of the nondenominational Dallas Theological Seminary, perhaps the most conservative seminary in the nation. His flock takes Scripture seriously, describing the Bible in the church’s bylaws as “inerrant in the original writings.” Members believe Christ will return in the clouds at the Rapture, gather up all born-again Christians and condemn the unsaved to hell.


As one might expect, most evangelicals here plan to vote for President Bush. But interviews with believers and scholars make it clear that Northern evangelical voters are not a monolithic voting bloc. Their views don’t fit neatly into a box.

In fact, Protestants in much of the North and Midwest are old-fashioned cultural (as opposed to ideological) conservatives, who are swayed by the traditions of the “peace churches” of the Amish, Mennonites and Quakers, among others.

“If they’re not directly part of it, then they’re influenced by it,” said religion and politics expert John Green of the University of Akron in Ohio. “There are pockets like that in all the Midwestern swing states.”

Their votes are critical, especially in key battleground states like Pennsylvania.

Lancaster County Bible Church is the sort of place Bush counts as a bastion of support in his effort to make this blue state red. The task seems simple: The community surrounding the church is among the most Republican in the nation _ the GOP holds a 3-1 edge among Lancaster County’s 350,000 residents. If the Republicans can urge these voters to the polls, Pennsylvania, which went to Al Gore by 5 percent in 2000, will go back into the win column.

But if there is one issue that appears to be a wild card for evangelicals, it’s the war in Iraq.

“I’m a registered Republican, but I’m overwhelmingly against the war,” said Mary Steffy, 57. “America is responsible for killing far more people than were killed on 9/11. And my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to pay for this war.”

Steffy, a mother of two and grandmother of six who directs a mental health advocacy group, was recently joined in a political discussion by other churchgoers. Her strong misgivings about the war were answered by Don Hershey, 44, a systems analyst, who called it “totally necessary” to combat terrorism.


Others were less certain.

“I wasn’t an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion of Iraq, but I wasn’t against it,” said Jim Whiteman, 45, the church’s spiritual formation pastor. “If Bush knew then what he knows now, I don’t know whether he’d choose to do what he did.”

Brenda Coffin, 45, a “life coach,” said she believes Bush “did the right thing in protecting us,” though later in the conversation she added, “the war went a little out of control.”

Steffy talked of her frustration with “single issue” supporters who love the president solely for his Christianity. The week the war began, Steffy said, “I thought, `This is going to be my last Sunday at church because they’re all going to go rah-rah.”’

To her surprise, the church had invited four speakers, including a Muslim, to present differing perspectives on Iraq.

These views may not sort well with common notions of evangelical attitudes, but that image is often based on the group’s Southern wing, which is generally more politically engaged. According to a recent poll by U.S. News & World Report and “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly,” slightly fewer than a third of white evangelicals live in the South.

In the North and Midwest, “you have a lot of strong religious beliefs, but you don’t have a lot of `Let’s go convert people’ thinking,” says G. Terry Madonna, Pennsylvania’s top political guru, who directs the Keystone Poll at Franklin & Marshall College.


Northern evangelicals tend to focus on diverse political issues.

Members of the Reformed Church in America, strong in western Michigan, are concerned about the unbalanced federal budget, and emphasize traditionally Democratic social issues like poverty and workers’ rights, in addition to abortion. Members of the Holiness tradition, which includes some Methodist, Wesleyan and Nazarene churches, also care about these broader social issues.

And all these groups have a pro-environment streak, stemming from their belief that Christians should be good stewards of God’s creation. Bush’s early calls for drilling for oil in Alaska may have disenchanted them.

The Bush team, in extensive nightly national polls, has picked up nuanced views suggesting that simple declarations of faith may not be enough to secure evangelicals’ votes, said Green.

But on certain “values” issues, there appears to be strong evangelical support for Bush, even in liberal cities like New York.

Take, for example, Barry and Raquel Bullard, who attend Trinity Baptist Church in Manhattan and have a 4-year-old daughter, Danielle.

“Having a small child, we see the importance of good moral values and leadership,” said Raquel, 39. “Our kids are being exposed to such crap. We’re heading to Sodom and Gomorrah if we’re not careful.”


Of utmost concern is what Barry Bullard, 42, describes as “this homosexual agenda.” In part because Bush backs a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the Bullards say they will vote for him.

Back at Lancaster County Bible Church, Hershey, the systems analyst, said abortion and gay marriage _ issues that “have a biblical basis in terms of right or wrong” _ affect him strongly.

Whiteman, the spiritual formation pastor, said he usually bases his vote on abortion.

“That baby is a living being, and that’s the ultimate non-compassionate response to put that child to death,” he said. “I get annoyed sometimes that I’m sympathetic to the views of candidates that might be pro-choice.” Coffin, the life coach, also called herself pro-life, making exceptions only for incest, rape and the life of the mother.

But even on these core issues, says pollster Madonna, Northern evangelicals can exhibit “a live and let live attitude.” Abortion “is not a black and white thing in certain cases,” said Coffin, a view that was echoed by Steffy, who described herself as “in favor of life” but conflicted.

Steffy was also conflicted about gay marriage.

“I don’t believe generally speaking gay people choose to be gay,” she said. “Why would they choose that, given the price it’s going to cost them? I don’t like to call it marriage, but I think they have a right to civil liberties.”

MO/PH END CALDWELL

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