James
Dobson has taken a
very pessimistic turn. Looking at the results of the 2008 election and the early days of the Obama administration, he says: “We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action. We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”
Dobson may be too gloomy. A decade ago, Paul
Weyrich said something similar, only to see Christian conservatives have a resurgence.
But both friends and foes of the Christian right might remember what Tocqueville wrote:
[W]hen a religion chooses to rely on the interests of this world, it becomes almost as fragile as all earthly powers. Alone, it may hope for immortality; linked to ephemeral powers, it follows their fortunes and often falls together with the passions of a day sustaining them. Hence any alliance with any political power whatsoever is bound to be burdensome for religion. It does not need their support in order to live, and in serving them it may die.
