2008 and the decline of the Religious Right

About two weeks ago, Steven Thomma wrote an excellent piece for McClatchy Newspapers outlining the decline of the religious right's political influence.

After three decades of striking fear into the hearts of progressives everywhere -- and serving as the driving force behind the South's shift to the GOP since the 1960s -- Thomma found may signs of the religious right's decline. Some excerpts:

Today, their nearly three-decade-long ascendance in the Republican Party is over. Their loyalties and priorities are in flux, the organizations that gave them political muscle are in disarray, the high-profile preachers who led them to influence through the 1980s and 1990s are being replaced by a new generation that's less interested in their agenda and their hold on politics and the 2008 Republican presidential nomination is in doubt. [...]

In church, the generation of politically active, high profile evangelists such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell is giving way to new preachers such as Joel Osteen and Rick Warren, who shun partisan politics or are willing to embrace Democrats. [...]

In elections, the organizations that once gave political focus to Christian conservatives and turned their passions into votes have splintered or disappeared.

The biggest of them all, the Christian Coalition, is a shell of its former self. Its budget has crashed from a 1996 peak of $26 million to about $1 million. Its new director wants to expand to issues besides abortion and marriage. And state chapters in Alabama, Georgia, Iowa and Ohio have parted ways with the group they think is now too liberal.

The fall of political religious conservatism looms large as the 2008 primaries approach, and will only be exacerbated by the candidates leading the GOP pack.

For example, yesterday Robert Taylor -- dean of South Carolina's evangelical Bob Jones University -- announced his support for Mitt Romney. It was a stunning endorsement, given that in 2000, Bob Jones' then-president denounced Mormonism -- Romney's faith -- and Catholicism as "cults which call themselves Christian."

It's not that religious conservatives will likely swing Democratic in 2008. But they are no longer the highly-energized voting block they once were. In addition to the reasons above, Thomma also finds they're also losing their identity on the issues:

In the country, many people have shifted priorities. Even among white evangelical Christians, Iraq and other domestic issues are now more important than social issues, according to a recent poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

One reason could be that religious conservatives are victims of their own success. They managed to win a ban on late-term abortions and see it upheld by the Supreme Court. They helped drive dozens of states to adopt constitutional amendments or laws against gay marriage.