Posts on Richard Cizik

Earlier this week, we noted that Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals wasn’t making any friends on the Right by blasting John McCain for completely selling out to them.  It looks like Cizik has no fear of rubbing salt in the wound, telling Dan Gilgoff that the Religious Right’s party-line commitment to the GOP is “unbiblical. It says you don't think. If you're simply voting on same sex marriage and abortion, you're not thinking. What I'm saying is that a lot of evangelicals don't think, sad to say.”

But more interesting, especially in light of the fact that Rob Schenck and the Family Research Council are accusing Barack Obama of snubbing evangelicals, is the fact that, according to Cizik, the McCain campaign is completely snubbing the NAE and other leaders:

The McCain campaign has beefed up its religious outreach efforts recently. How is their evangelical outreach going?

We put in a request with the McCain campaign and it was never responded to. Many figures in the Republican Party have reached out to the campaign stating their concern that the candidate has not reached out to evangelical leaders, but it went nowhere. And since we're so deep into the campaign, we can only assume that we're not going to get an answer. We had some people, including a governor and a major party official, who said to the campaign, "I think you should meet with some of these evangelicals." I have subsequently interpreted that they didn't think they needed to because they had an idea of their own and that maybe that was Sarah Palin.

Has the Obama campaign reached out to the National Association of Evangelicals?

We put in a request and an answer came back rather quickly: They wanted us to come to a meeting in Chicago with some 25 other leaders. And I went. One is left to conclude that the McCain people have concluded that they don't need such a meeting.

Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, has not been particularly popular with the leaders of the Religious Right in recent years.

For instance, last year James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bayer and other tried to get him fired from his job at NAE because they feared that his efforts to get evangelicals to care about issues like global warming would undermine their own narrow anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda. 

And then, earlier this year, when NAE tried to host a dialogue between Christian and Muslim leaders, the Right again reacted badly, calling it a “sellout” and accused those who participated of “betraying the Christian faith.&rdquo

And considering that, at the moment, the Right is busy fawning over John McCain and his decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate, it is probably safe to assume that Cizik’s already low popularity among Religious Right political powerbrokers is not going to be increasing any time soon:

Richard Cizik is one of the country’s most powerful and outspoken Christian evangelical leaders. He happens to be a Republican, and he has known the GOP’s presidential nominee for many years. “I thought John McCain was a principled person,” Cizik says. “But John McCain has backed off, not just on climate change but on torture and a sensible tax policy — in other words, he’s not the John McCain of 2000. … He seems to be waffling on issue after issue.

“It’s not illogical for someone to conclude that John McCain is going to be more like George Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000.”

…

“It is pretty obvious that the Palin nomination plays to identity politics and cultural war issues,” says Cizik. “Her selection is more than an acknowledgment that evangelicals are an important part of the Republican base, and everyone knows that John McCain is not that exciting to religious conservatives.”

Palin, Cizik says, has certainly excited the Republican base, and picking her was certainly a deft, if cynical, political move by McCain — at least in the short term. However, in the longer view, his running mate may do just as much to energize the opposition and prove a turn-off to independents.

“Not everyone in the evangelical movement is fawning over Sarah Palin,” Cizik says … “He’s playing that card, and many of us thought he didn’t need to do it — it just polarizes the country,” Cizik says. “The irony of it is that John McCain can’t speak with an evangelical voice of faith — let’s face it, it’s just not his thing — so I guess the substitute is this other [Palin]. I guess that’s pretty cynical, but maybe his actions are cynical.

“The consequences of going to identity and culture-war politics is that experience is denigrated, authority is questioned and ignorance is strength,” Cizik says.

Sons Jonathan Falwell, Gordon Robertson, Paul Crouch Jr. join Cizik, Hinn, Ralph Reed.

In a brief press release, Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean commemorated Easter by saying, “During this time Christians are called to remember who they are as people of faith, and that even the greatest of evils will not have the last word.” He also said that “peace, redemption and renewal” is a “theme which brings hope to people of all faiths.” The latter sentiment is driving some commentators to read all kinds of meaning into the press release – Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals claims that the lack of specific use of the name of Jesus is “a sad reflection of a 'lowest common denominator' religious outreach of the Democratic party” which “will not pass the smell test of any evangelical.”

More partisan activists on the Religious Right, however, go as far as accusing Dean of heresy-by-press-release by “redefining” Easter. He’s “taking Easter and making it into a nondescript, universal, nonexclusive religious celebration for all religions,” warns Don Wildmon of the American Family Association. According to Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, Dean’s press release proves that “the Democratic leadership is in fact secularist by philosophy and worldview” – and it’s part of a larger conspiracy against faith:

"And we see it here in Washington, where I'm located," Schenck adds, "that there is a growing hostility towards religious faith in the public arena, and this is more indication of that." Dean has attempted to redefine the meaning of Easter, the Christian spokesman contends, by "dumbing it down to a universal, New Age spirituality."

In addition to ascribing devious motives to a one-paragraph press release, Schenck also offers his discernment on Dean’s own belief:

However, since Howard Dean is not a theologian or a student of the Bible, Schenck says the politician is not in a position to redefine the meaning of Easter. In fact, after talking with Dean personally and observing him in many public settings, the National Clergy Council spokesman says he has seen nothing that would indicate the DNC chairman has any "overriding religious sensibilities."