Right for America

At the Values Voter Summit in Washington in October, Southern Baptist ex-preacher Mike Huckabee made headlines by imploring evangelical voters to stay true to their Bible-believing faith rather than sell their souls for the good of the Republican Party. What he meant, of course, was that they should back true-believer Huckabee, despite his long odds in the race for the White House, over impure candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

"Let me say that it's important that people sing from their hearts and don't merely lip-sync the lyrics to our songs," Huckabee told the crowd, referring to the presidential contenders. "I think it's important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue and not a recently acquired second language." The speech was a hit, but in the weeks since, most A-list Christian right leaders and organizations have shrugged off his advice.

The National Right to Life Committee has endorsed Thompson, an admittedly infrequent churchgoer who once lobbied for a family-planning group. Bob Jones III and Moral Majority co-founder Paul Weyrich have gotten onboard with Romney, a formerly pro-choice and pro-gay-rights Mormon. And, in the biggest endorsement bombshell of the campaign, televangelist Pat Robertson announced his support for Giuliani, who is thrice-married and the GOP's most socially liberal candidate.

To many conservatives -- and even to some liberals and neutral observers -- the Robertson endorsement vindicated Huckabee's complaint that Christian right leaders "are more intoxicated with power than principle." The right-wing website World Net Daily reported "Pat Robertson's sell-out," while left-wing evangelical Jim Wallis quipped that "according to Pat Robertson's twisted moral logic, forgiving the social conservative shortcomings of Republicans is a Christian virtue."

But in a country founded firmly on religious pluralism, watching the Christian right pick and choose among candidates could be a positive development. It's a sure sign that many evangelical leaders have moved beyond mere identity politics and toward an overdue openness to compromise in a political system that's built on it.

Does a proudly pluralistic nation want candidates openly appealing to voters on sectarian grounds -- as Huckabee seemed to do at the Values Voter Summit -- so that evangelicals back only solidly evangelical candidates, Catholics support orthodox Catholics and Jews vote for faithful Jews?