The religious right, lacking a charismatic leader and fresh from its success in keeping a Republican in the White House, may be in danger of being pushed out of the political arena by an old foe: apathy.
The Rev. Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, who each spent more than a decade leading evangelicals out of the political closet as architects of the Moral Majority, contend in a new book that religious conservatives are searching for new leadership."I think the vast majority of fundamentalists . . . are kind of in neutral," said Dobson, once considered the successor to Jerry Falwell's evangelistic empire.
With Falwell announcing his withdrawal from politics and Pat Robertson's unsuccessful presidential candidacy, Dobson said, "There is no charismatic person to put it together."
Dobson and Hindson, authors of "The Seduction of Power: Preachers, Politics and the Media," discussed the emergence of the religious right as a political force at a recent conference sponsored by the Center on Religion & Society.
"They (conservatives) don't see themselves threatened by the political party in power," said Hindson. One poll showed more than 80 percent of white evangelicals supported Bush, he said. "I think the average fundamentalist-evangelical is thinking, `Hey, eight more good years. Why worry about it?' "
The exception to the political inertia among religious conservatives is the abortion issue, Hindson and Dobson said.
Operation Rescue - a series of protests outside abortion clinics - shows increased activism among "younger, more radical" religious conservatives, said Hindson, of the Center for Biblical Counseling and Education in St. Louis.
For evangelicals who believe abortion involves the taking of a human life, Hindson said, "It is the ultimate moral issue of our times."
The march on Washington of at least 300,000 people advocating legalized abortion may jar more evangelicals back into the political arena, he added.