An American Christian Democratic Movement?

Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race for president this week after he lost to John McCain in the Texas and Ohio primaries.  This was not unexpected.  What was unexpected was Huckabee’s success with many conservative voters.  Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, appealed to voters with his humor and his frank expression of Christian faith.  But it is a different brand of evangelical Christianity than what we have become accustomed to America from the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right.  Huckabee spoke about his humble beginnings in Arkansas, the poverty he encountered there, the struggles of working people across America.  Government, Huckabee insists, has a duty to help people in need. Furthermore, this is the duty of every Christian.   As governor of Arkansas he actually raised taxes to fund programs that helped poor people in the state.  The Republican establishment was outraged, calling Huckabee a "Christian Socialist".  The establishment Republican doctrine is that taxes (especially for the wealthy) must be cut – always.

President Bush originally came to office with the promise of "Compassionate Conservatism". which in theory appealed to many evangelical Christians.  In practice, however, the Bush White House attempted to mobilize the Christian base by hate-mongering against gays and lesbians, while stepping up anti-abortion rhetoric.  But a new generation of evangelicals have much broader concerns: social and economic justice, torture, stewardship of the environment, pre-emptive wars.  These issues are integral to their faith.  Huckabee tapped into this change among evangelicals:

"Unquestionably
there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It
doesn’t mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional
families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we
have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that
these are issues that people of faith have to address."

This brings Huckabee and the new "movement" much closer to the ideologies of the European Christian Democratic parties.  The German CDU (Christian Democratic Union – party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) promotes both private enterprise and the principles of the social economy (Sozialwirtschaft). In its statement of 10 Key Principles, the party combines conservative values with a "Christian view of man".  Can Huckabee take what he began to the next stage and nurture this new approach into a political program aligned with Christian Democrats in Europe?

It will be interesting to see whether these younger, more open-minded evangelicals support John McCain in November.  This week McCain sought and received the endorsement of one of most bigoted representatives of the Religious RIght: Pastor John Hagee.  Hagee is well known for calling the Roman Catholic Church a "Satanic Cult" and for explaining Hurricane Katrina as God’s wrath against the "Gay Culture" in New Orleans.  Looks like Republican politics as usual.