Before we go to Third Way's "Leadership" list, I just want to point out a couple things from Dionne's article that make this column almost, but not quite yawn-worthy. I say "almost" not because it is mildly interesting, but because it would take an effort to build up to a yawn.
One of the "signs" that Dionne points to as a sign not only of the fracturing of the conservative Christian movement, but an opening for new alliances between conservative and "moderate" (I refuse to use the word "progressive" as Dionne does, because not to many progressive Christians of whom I am aware would want to make an alliance with fundamentalists) Christians is a recounting of the events around the collapse of the Rev. Joel Hunter's attempt to become head of the Christian Coalition last winter. The Rev. Hunter, as you may recall, was more animated by working on issues of environmental concern, and a more pastoral approach to questions of sexual identity than he was interested in promoting fetuses of bashing gays and lesbians as the true fruit of the Tree in Eden. Needless to say, his candidacy belly-flopped. While it might be noteworthy to include this story, perhaps we should remind people that Hunter's nomination failed. Along with James Dobson's announcement that he plans to lead a walk-out of the Republican Party should Giuliani get the nomination, it seems the fracturing of Christian conservatives, while something I have been talking about since last summer, still has some mileage to it - it isn't quite time to discuss building new coalitions until the old ones die very painful, public deaths.
Another point in Dionne's piece is the first issue he addresses - Third Way's approach to stem cell research.
A new generation of evangelical leaders, tired of the rancid partisanship, is breaking away from the culture wars. The reach of this new evangelical politics will be tested with the release tomorrow of a statement under the very biblical title "Come Let Us Reason Together." The question for the future is how many in the evangelical ranks will embrace this call.
Organized by Third Way, a group that is close to many leading moderate Democrats, the statement calls for "first steps toward bridging the cultural divide between progressives and evangelicals."
Third Way's effort is not happy boilerplate about how religious Americans and liberals share a concern for helping the poor, protecting the environment and reaching out to the victims of HIV-AIDS -- although these areas of agreement are important and too often overlooked.
Rather, the statement, co-authored by Robert P. Jones, a progressive religious scholar, and Rachel Laser, director of the Third Way Culture Project, takes a step toward religious conservatives by acknowledging the legitimacy of many of their moral concerns. For example, while not backing away from Third Way's support for stem cell research, the statement urges a series of restrictions to prevent the sale or manipulation of human embryos and reproductive cloning.(emphasis added)
"Americans have a deep faith in science but also worry that scientific advances are outrunning our best moral thinking," Jones and Laser declare. Worrying about ethical issues raised by science is not the same as being anti-science.
First of all, in reference to the highlighted section, I'm really not sure what the references are about here, but except for Ayn Rand-style imbeciles, I have never heard anyone in the US advocate selling human embryos. In fact, human embryos created for purposes of in vitro fertilization or (currently privately funded) stem-cell research remain under tight controls as the property either of the parents who contributed the seed cells, or the laboratories in question. As for human cloning - we are decades, if not more, away from anything like real human cloning, and even then, one doubts whether it will remain anything other than a cell-level ability simply because of the complexity involved. I am troubled more by scientific ignorance than I am whether or not the group's statement could be characterized as "anti-science". The idea that scientists involved do not operate under moral and legal strictures is ludicrous; scientific and medical ethics are a highly specialized, lively and robust practical discipline. That folks at Third Way would not know this only betrays ignorance, rather than some kind of breakthrough for a new coalition of conservatives and moderates.
As for Third Way's "Progressive" leadership and relationships (which Dionne is at least honest enough to call "moderate"), you can see the multiple lists, from management to "Honorary House/Senate Chairs" here. Not exactly a bunch of flaming lefties, are they?
I suspect that Third Way's "announcement" tomorrow will be about as memorable as all the other manifestos we see coming out in Washington - because it has no constituency other than some moderately influential people inside the beltway, it will disappear as quickly as the Baker/Hamilton Report.
This last point needs to be made more explicit. The pundit love-affair with "centrism", with "moderation", misses one crucial aspect of political life - except for the pundits themselves there is no constituency for "centrism" in the United States right now, whatever merits such a position might or might not have. As long as the Beltway-types continue to push such non-starters, ignoring the general publics' oft-stated desire to push back against the Bush Administration and it's policies, the agenda of such groups as Third Way will continue to be the fancies only of the elite. The elite, in turn, will scratch their heads in wonder at the public who simply ignore the irrelevancies put forth as possible solutions.
