by William Trollinger 

Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, attend a campaign rally at Giant Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on October 28, 2008. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

It was the evening of October 06, 2008. The highly-respected and long-time Washington Post and Commonweal columnist, NPR and PBS commentator, and Georgetown University professor E. J. Dionne gave a public address here at the University of Dayton on “Faith and Politics in the 2008 Presidential Race.” Borrowing heavily from his recently published book, Souled Out, and reflecting the fact that the polls made clear that Obama was going to win the election decisively, Dionne argued that the era of the Christian Right had come to an end. As noted in the press release accompanying the lecture, “Dionne claims many Christians feel like they have been used to push a narrow agenda of causes such as opposition to gay marriage and abortion, but now those Christians are discovering common ground with secular Americans on issues of social justice, peace, and the environment.”

Sue and I were sitting in the front row of the Kennedy Union Ballroom to hear Dionne’s address. And when it came time for the Q and A I was one of the first – if not the first – to ask a question: “If the Christian Right is dead or irrelevant, why did John McCain select Sarah Palin as his running mate?” 

After a brief pause, he averred that he could not answer that question. Whether or not Dionne really could not answer the question – and I am pretty confident he actually could – I definitely knew that McCain’s choice of Palin had much to do with the fact that the Christian Right was alive and well. While it was not a good fit for him, and he came to regret his choice of running mate, McCain was trying to ingratiate himself with those voters. And after the 2008 election the Christian Right became an even more important — the most important, I would argue – constituency within the Republican Party. 

But now it’s 2026. Just one week ago, the “blue tsunami” swept through American politics. And as Lauren Jackson and numerous other commentators have pointed out, the Religious Left played a crucial role in the Democratic landslide, the result being seven Democratic clergy members now serving in Congress (not to mention three Democrats who attended divinity school or seminary). Interestingly, “two Black pastors already in Congress, Representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia – who calls himself a ‘Matthew 25 Christian’ after the Gospel chapter that says we’ll be judged by how we treat the vulnerable,” serve as models for their white counterparts, showing them how to “fuse their faith with their politics.”

The “blue tsunami” is a wonderfully encouraging moment. A moment worth celebrating. But, at least for now, it’s not more than that. Not only is the Christian Right not extinct, it is not close to dying. And this will be crystal clear in the months and years ahead. While many of us would like it to be otherwise, I am afraid that American politics and religion will be afflicted by the Christian Right into the foreseeable future.

I concluded my first book (God’s Empire) – which  was published in 1990, and which is coming out next year in a second/revised edition – by observing that “the funeral for fundamentalism . . . in America seems a long, long way off.” Still true, for fundamentalism, and for the Christian Right.