Thou Shalt Vote Republican?

With all the talk about evangelicals swinging last year's election for Bush, you'd think that the Bible somewhere contained a new commandment: "Thou shalt vote Republican."

I checked my concordance. It's not in there.

But do evangelical beliefs entail Republican politics? Certainly not according to voting statistics, argues Mark Noll, an evangelical historian of American religion at Wheaton University, an evangelical institution.

In American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction, Noll finds four characteristics of evangelical belief:

1) Conversionism (being born-again)
2) Biblicism (the Bible as the highest authority)
3) Activism (evangelism, sharing the faith)
4) "Crucicentrism" (a primary focus on redemption via Christ's sacrifice on the cross, as opposed to, say, the ethical teachings of Jesus)

In the 1996 election (the only one Noll examines) 48 percent of people holding all four of these beliefs voted for Clinton, according to a survey. Forty-six percent of people holding all four beliefs voted for Dole. More evangelicals favored Clinton than Dole.

Surprising, right? The differences we might expect showed up only when church backgrounds were taken into account. Of people belonging to conservative, largely white, Protestant denominations (Southern Baptists, for example), 57 percent favored Dole, and 37 percent favored Clinton.

In contrast, 95 percent of members of black Protestant denominations voted for Clinton. Since African American Protestants (members of A.M.E. churches, for example) hold evangelical beliefs in even higher percentages than members of mostly white evangelical churches (Noll's analysis), this is striking.

Doctrinally, African American Protestants and white evangelicals are nearly the same. Politically, they are worlds apart.

The reason why is obvious: context. African Americans live out their beliefs in a context that remembers the history of slavery and Jim Crow, as well as the racism that continues with us today. White evangelicals are often middle class, suburban, and, well, white. Such backgrounds give radically different understandings of what the Bible means -- and what it means for politics. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., many African Americans hear Amos's call to "let justice roll down like waters," as a divine call to fight the injustice of racism. If this is so, taking the Bible seriously may mean supporting traditionally Democratic policies, like affirmative action.

For now, the key is this: Don't let anyone tell you that evangelical beliefs require you to vote Republican (or Democrat, for that matter). Chances are good that they're hiding ideology and self-interest in the shadow of the cross.