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As the new Congress is sworn in, we take a look at the new power in politics: the Tea Party.
The morning following Election Day is always filled with winners and losers. But this past November, a surprising winner could have delivered an acceptance speech: the Tea Party.
Of the 60 seats turned over in Congress, Tea Party-endorsed candidates made up more than 30 of them. President Obama called it a “shellacking.”
As the new Congress gets sworn in today and we enter a non-election year, it’s easy to forget—but hard to overstate—the influence and momentum of this political amalgam. Formed as a grassroots reaction to the election of Barack Obama and policies such as the health care reform bill and the bailout of the auto and banking industries, the Tea Party is flying high. Nearly four in 10 Americans claim to be a part of the movement.
“Tea Party influence is likely to extend beyond mere numbers,” the L.A. Times reports. “By stiffening the anti-spending bloc in the House and Senate, the Tea Party members will put new pressure on conservative Democrats as well as members of their own party, impacting future legislative battles and the climate for 2012.”
But who are these people? Are they truly a third party or just a reinvigorated Republican conglomerate? What do Tea Partiers believe, and what do they want?
Some have speculated that the Tea Party is actually a new expression of the old Christian right. According to an October 2010 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 47 percent of Americans who support the Tea Party also say they identify with the Christian right. Additionally, the study found that nearly half of Tea Partiers believe America is “a Christian nation” and the Bible is the literal word of God.
“If you took the Christians and their values out of the Tea Party movement, it would no longer be a movement. It would no longer be a factor on America’s political scene,” says Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily and author of The Tea Party Manifesto. He notes that the movement recognizes America as a “self-governing Christian society” and points out that every Tea Party meeting he has attended began in prayer.
Additionally, some Christian leaders have fallen in line with the movement, and others have been quick to declare their affections for the party after the midterm results were counted. Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, held a post-election press conference and made it clear that the “Tea Party and evangelicals are not at odds.”
It’s what Robert Jones of PRRI has called a “shotgun wedding” between Christians and the Tea Party. “But these groups’ happy union is challenged by a classic relationship problem: misplaced worries that there are serious divisions where there are few, and blind confidence that there are no divisions where significant differences lurk,” he says. Christians need to ask just how “Christian” this movement is, so as not to rush off to the altar and wake up the next morning with regrets.
Who’s Throwing This Party?
The last time we saw a so-called “Republican revolution” was in 1994 when no Republican incumbent lost and America witnessed a 54-seat swing. In that year, Christian political leaders were among the most notable and vocal voices. Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, for example, was at its political peak and distributed 40 million copies of the “Family Values Voters Guides” in more than 100,000 churches nationwide.
But this movement is quite different in terms of leadership. “There are massive numbers of Christians, especially evangelical Christians, awakening as part of the Tea Party movement. Polls show a clear majority of them fit this category,” Farah says. “But, whereas the movement spurred by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell was an awakening led largely by Christian leaders, this movement arises in the midst of a vacuum of spiritual leadership.”
Rather than cheering for evangelical pastors on political talk shows, conservative evangelicals are now tuning into lectures from Mormon pundit Glenn Beck or downright offensive soliloquies from radio host Mark Williams (who was thrown out as a Tea Party spokesperson for making racially charged comments). Many Tea Partiers admit being influenced by the writings of philosopher Ayn Rand, who was both an atheist and anti-Christian and authored such best-sellers as Atlas Shrugged that de-emphasize humans’ moral obligations to others. And former U.S. Representative Dick Armey, who has been vocal over the years in his opposition to well-known Christian leaders such as James Dobson, is a prominent Tea Party leader.
Whether or not this movement can be called “Christian” may be up for debate, but we can say for certain that at least some of its leadership doesn’t fit the bill. And, as a result, not every Christian is falling in lockstep behind the ones throwing this party.
Sure, there are some evangelical Christians, including Sarah Palin, at the helm of this movement, but their involvement has often been eclipsed by others. It was Beck who delivered the commencement address this year at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and his “Rally to Restore Honor” was seen by some as an effort to mobilize religious voters behind his headship. Gallup reports that the Fox News host is now admired by more Americans than the pope. His rising popularity as a spokesperson for evangelicals has incited a backlash from many Christian leaders.
“I was disturbed to see huge sectors of American Christianity willing to repudiate the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the sake of a political movement,” says Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “Glenn Beck, who is a member of a church which denies that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, set himself up as a religious leader, leading a ‘revival.’ Some so-called ‘evangelical’ leaders empowered him to do so, and that is a scandal.”
This is not to suggest Christians should rush off to form their own political enclaves with their own self-appointed Christian generals. That’s an approach that was tried by previous generations, and the net effect on the Christian movement has been disastrous. Still, when evaluating any organization to which pundits apply the “Christian” moniker, we must ask whether the leaders are faithful to such a label. And in the case of the Tea Party, we find a mixed bag at best.
