Southern Politics and Christianity

Upon examination of American political discourse, it is apparent that religion plays a vital role in this sector of our society, particularly in South Carolina. What is the place of religion, and more specifically, Christianity, in southern politics? In South Carolina state politics? On a quest to answer these questions, I interviewed volunteers at both the Democratic and the Republican Headquarters of Spartanburg County. What I found were deep-rooted beliefs, opinions, and defenses of the role of Christianity in both the Democratic and the Republican landscapes of South Carolina.

Liz Patterson has been a volunteer at the Democratic Party Headquarters of Spartanburg County for many years. She answered my questions thoughtfully; making sure that she was fairly representing both her own views and those proponed by her party. The most poignant statement she made regarding Christianity and the Democratic Party pointed to the social stigma of a Democrat as being anti-Christian. “I regret that it has become that if you’re a Democrat you can’t be a Christian,” she said. Liz has a bumper sticker on her car that reads, “I am a Christian and a Democrat.” She feels the need to assert the confluence of her political views and her faith because many in her community seem to think that the two are mutually exclusive and that one can only be one or the other. Glenn Smith points out the Democratic Party’s recent efforts to repudiate this view that Democrats are without religious or moral views in his October 14, 2008 article entitled “How the Values Voter Myth Strengthened the Democrats.” In this article, Smith addresses the cultural assumption prevalent in 2004 that “red states have values, blue states don’t.” He observes that the Democratic Party “played into this label (of being amoral) by steering clear of talk about the values that underlie their policy proposals” in the past, but that recently the party has “reawakened progressive consciousness to the importance of wearing its moral worldview on its public sleeve.” Liz Patterson’s assertion of her Christian faith strengthening her Democratic political views is evidence of Smith’s argument playing out in Spartanburg: She is wearing her moral worldview on her public sleeve, or rather, the bumper of her car.

Mrs. Patterson also feels that “Religion has become too involved in the political process… People question whether or not you are born again” with the assumption that your answer significantly affects your political views. She seems frustrated that a religious label, such as that of a Born-Again Christian, has immediate political contexts for many in her community. However, she also feels that her experience growing up in the Christian church has significantly impacted her political views. “So much of what I learned in the church leads me in my political thoughts,” she states. She is eager to define the ways that her own Christian experience have shaped her political life, but quite hesitant to associate herself with Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christian groups. I assume this is largely due to the political views often associated with these groups. Liz Patterson’s position is not uncommon in South Carolina. It seems that there are many people who actively engage in a Christian faith, and feel that their faith is questioned because they do not hold conservative political views. I was quite eager to hear what my Republican interviewee might have to say about these topics.

To put it gently, my interview with Alice Armantrout was an enlightening experience. To foreword this analysis with a disclaimer, I do not feel that many of Mrs. Armantrout’s views reflect those of the Republican Party of South Carolina nor the National GOP. Nevertheless, her positions are valid and of consequence because she holds them firmly, and there are many others who share them. Alice agrees with Kansas Southern Baptist Pastor Terry Fox’s binding of Christianity and politics together. He states “One, we are religious. Two, we are right.” The conservative Christian Political movement is very much based on the idea that Evangelical Christian views are synonymous with conservative republican political views. Throughout the course of my interview, Mrs. Armantrout made statements reflecting this tight association of her Christian views with her conservative political views. She even went so far as to say that liberals are not Christians, validating Liz Patterson’s assertion that there are those who see the party split as a religious split as well. She asserted (incorrectly) that Barack Obama was inaugurated into congress with his hand on the Qur’an and implied that if he were Muslim, this would make him an incapable and untrustworthy senator. She further claimed that the moral convictions of Muslims “are based on killing and beheading anyone who is an infidel,” insinuated that Muslims lack a belief in a higher power, and that “Barack Obama is definitely a Muslim.” (He has repeatedly made public statements about his Christian faith.) Mrs. Armantrout’s primary reason for believing that Obama is not a Christian is his view on abortion. For her, his view on this one issue was important enough to define his entire religious identity. Let me say that I do not intend to imply that those who believe that the issue of abortion is of vital importance are also misinformed about the religious identity of Obama and the reality of what Islam and the Qur’an are about; I do however think it relevant that Mrs. Armantrout is so misinformed and does hold so firmly to her views. When I asked Mrs. Armantrout to articulate how her religious views informed the opinions she had just shared with me, she expressed a hesitancy to associate herself with the people who are traditionally pinned with the kind of misguided ideas about Islam and Democratic Politicians that she exemplified, those people being Evangelical Christians. She said, “I don’t consider myself Evangelical. I am not Born-Again.” She felt that the label ‘Evangelical’ implied someone whose views lay further to the right than hers, and though frankly I find it hard to imagine political ground further to the right than hers, her view of what it means politically to be Evangelical is certainly note-worthy. For Mrs. Armantrout, to be a Born-Again Evangelical Christian necessitates ultra-conservative political views.

What’s important here is that first, Mrs. Armantrout firmly believes that public policy and religion are synonymous entities and that Christian ideals should govern American public life; second, she embraces the platform of social morality that the Republican Party has so successfully used in South Carolina, and third, she associates Evangelicals with radically conservative political views. Her misinformation regarding Obama and Islam, while shocking and certainly cause for pause, are not the most relevant things she had to say. Far more relevant to my study are the aforementioned views that inextricably link Evangelical Christian ideals and the governing of American public life based on a social morality platform. Though it was very difficult for me to force myself to have perspective on Mrs. Armantrout’s views, once I did so I became enthralled by figuring out what led her to believe the things she believes, and why she holds to them so vehemently.

My interview with Mrs. Armantrout so engrossed me in the social and political roots and ramifications of her views that I sought a second interview with someone familiar with the Republican Party of South Carolina. I did not need to look far. A close friend of mine, Paige Hallen is a senior at Wofford College. Paige is a government major who will graduate with every concentration the Wofford government department offers. She has interned in Washington with the Family Research Council, interned in Columbia and Washington with Joe Wilson, Republican South Carolina congressman, and in 2008 Paige served as the second-youngest delegate at the South Carolina state Republican Convention. The role of the GOP in South Carolina is her life’s passion, and her views starkly contrast those of Mrs. Armantrout.

Paige explained South Carolina politics in political, rather than religious, terms. She explained the history of political conservatism in the South and helped me to understand why it is that the Republican Party is associated with Christianity in the south. It all began, she said, when the mid twentieth century saw the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 and Strom Thurmond’s political conversion in 1964. Previous to the 1950’s, the American South had been ‘solid blue.’ Southerners had held to the Democratic Party vehemently for as long as they could remember. The Civil Rights Bill threatened what many saw as ‘the southern way of life.’ Suddenly, there was a status quo to protect. Southerners sought to do this by converting to ‘Dixiecrats’ or ‘Southern Democrats.’ Strom Thurmond, South Carolina’s senator, spoke against the Civil Rights Bill for more than twenty-four hours on the Senate floor. Largely due to issues surrounding the Civil Rights Bill, Thurmond switched from the Democratic Party to the Republican party in 1964, and was instrumental in Richard Nixon’s White House victory of 1968. With Nixon as an ally, Thurmond passed much legislation that was very beneficial to the state of SC during Nixon’s presidency. This made South Carolinians far more amiable to the Republican Party. Thus we have the conversion of South Carolina from blue to red in the 1960’s. Now to account for the association of the GOP in SC with Christianity…

What Paige helped me to see here is that politics are political. This may sound like a given, but it is easy to see religion in politics, and as a result, it is easy to assume that politics can be religious. This is not the case, she said, for elected officials. Their agenda is for the most part political rather than religious. Thus the marketed and widely accepted association of the Republican Party with particular social justice issues that are involved in the Christian faith, i.e. abortion and gay marriage, is also political rather than religious. These issues brought voters to the polls on a larger scale than did issues of fiscal conservatism or small business. Once the GOP of SC recognized that these ‘buzz word’ issues caused Evangelical Christian voters to flock to the polls and support the GOP while believing, extremely in some cases, that they were the ‘party of God,’ the political landscape in SC changed dramatically. Those who held conservative Christian views were expected by society to vote Republican because the Republican Party spread propaganda along the lines of “a vote for a Democrat is a vote against God.” It is true that not all Republicans feel this way, especially outside of South Carolina, but the fact remains that the propaganda was issued and absorbed by most of the rural public of the state. However, many policy makers do not stand by these “buzz word” issues as vehemently as their voting public. This begs the question, are the Alice Armantrouts of the state of South Carolina having their votes bought by their religious convictions while the officials they elect see them as the means to an end?

It will certainly be interesting to watch the South Carolina results come in on November 7.