On Faith Panelists Blog
September 23, 2010
A natural, if complicated, alliance
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
Q: What is the Tea Party? Is it "a recession-era version of the religious right?" Is it something else? And if the Tea Party is not a religious movement, why is it raising up candidates like O'Donnell who has a strong background of religious activism?
The animating principle behind the Tea Party is opposition to the growth of government. Anger over ballooning deficits, sprawling bureaucracy, rising taxes – and the politicians who promote or enable them – is what unifies Tea Partiers. The throngs that gather from St. Louis to Sacramento to wave their yellow Gadsden flags, protest Obamacare and the $787 billion stimulus package, and criticize “RINOs” as well as the Democrats controlling Congress do not see themselves as a reincarnation of the religious right. Nor do their gatherings feature much discussion of social issues, though the constitutionalism that characterizes Tea Party activists predisposes them to defend the right to life of all American citizens, including the youngest and oldest among us.
Despite the libertarian rhetoric and fiscal focus that characterizes Tea Party gatherings, the movement includes many social conservatives who also oppose abortion, embryonic research, euthanasia and the redefinition of marriage as a unisex institution. They resonate with Tea Party resistance to big government because they know that a domineering federal government threatens their most cherished freedoms: the freedom to worship as they wish; to speak publicly of their moral and religious convictions on controversial issues; and to educate their children in the faith and values that they hold dear. Their belief in original sin makes many religious conservatives suspicious of the idea that our human condition can be perfected through the right government program or political ideology. And although religious conservatives tend to be among the most generous Americans, their respect for the principle of subsidiarity inclines them to look first to the private sector, faith communities and charities for solutions to social problems rather than to the state.
All of these impulses make religious and social conservatives natural allies of a Tea Party movement that seeks to limit government. But the two groups are not synonymous. As rhetoric at last week’s Values Voter Summit revealed, some social conservatives fear that the Tea Party’s influence will marginalize their own. Others recoil from the more libertarian extremes of the Tea Party movement that seem to favor a dismantling of America’s social safety net. Still others worry that the movement’s anti-establishment tenor fosters anti-intellectualism, as well.
How those tensions will resolve themselves remains to be seen. For now, many conservatives are pleased that this scrappy, grassroots movement has shaken up America’s political establishment, confounded pundits in both parties and sounded a call for fiscal responsibility that resounds well beyond the Values Voter and Tea Party tents.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is author of “The New Faithful,” an ex-presidential speechwriter, op-ed columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and host of “Faith & Culture,” a TV and radio show on EWTN.