A question of black & white.

• Author: Jackson, Harry R.
• Position: Political Landscape

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"The black-white division is the U.S.'s most intense racial divide. It is freighted with bitterness and suspicion.... We have allowed the worst and, arguably, smallest representations of the races to shape how we see one another."

IN MAY 2006, there was a summit that proved to be a turning point in the relationship of evangelicals to the Republican Party. By that time, the Religious Right was restless. Pres. George W. Bush and Congress had failed to follow through on the "values" agenda. The Administration seemed to be backing away from its original commitment to pass a Constitutional amendment that defined marriage as a union between only a man and a woman. The President's priorities over the previous 18 months had not included any of the evangelical community's major concerns. In fact, we had been told repeatedly that Pres. Bush would get around to addressing the issue of marriage as soon as he won the battle for Social Security reform. That victory, of course, never came. Then his response to Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast radically shifted the nation's view of the Administration's competence and character. In addition, the Iraqi war by this time was a constant source of emotional turmoil for many Americans.

As the President's credibility slipped, in many ways so did his commitment to the moral agenda of the evangelical Christian community. Many evangelicals felt as though they had been faithful foot soldiers for the Republicans in an expensive war for political turf, but now had little to show for it. While what was accomplished was not insignificant--with two solid Supreme Court justices (John Roberts and Samuel Alito) in place--Pres. Bush also held the line against congressional efforts to expend taxpayer funded research on human embryos. Congress did pass, and the President did sign into law, the unborn victims of violence act, a partial-birth abortion ban, and the born alive infant protection act, but there was so much more promised and so much more needed.

For us, the first confirmation that there was little to show for all we had done came in the disheartening discussion with various members of the Bush Administration, the Republican National Committee, and senators and congressmen at this summit. Several major national leaders spoke up and voiced their displeasure with the Administration's lack of follow-through on the issues like marriage that were featured prominently in the 2004 campaign, only to disappear after the election.

A few days later, I was a part of a group of 14 people in the West Wing of the White House for a meeting in which the President opined that he had done everything he could to protect marriage. He implied that the Senate was not doing its share. He ended the 45-minute discussion by asking the group to educate its constituencies and stated that he needed help to change the nation. In our opinion, the Administration effectively was "passing" on the debate. It had been written out of the agenda.

(As for the present day, this issue certainly has the attention of Pres. Barack Obama and his Administration; too bad they have come down on the wrong side of the issue with their backing of the Washington, D.C., City Council's illegally denying residents the right to vote on same-sex marriage with the passage of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009.)

Obviously, our movement against same-sex marriage has failed with two Administrations. Under Bush, we lost this strategic battle became we had not leveraged our influence for fear of losing what stature we had with the Republicans. For many evangelical leaders, this led to a painful self-examination about the fruit of this close alliance between the Religious Right and the GOP. What had been accomplished in this 30-year courtship? The three most visible goals of this alliance over the last three decades were to pass the Human Life Amendment, a school prayer amendment in the early 1980s, and, most recently, the Federal Marriage Amendment. None succeeded. In hindsight, we must acknowledge our need to impact both major political parties.

The church is not to be a mouthpiece for a political party; rather, it...