Yesterday I attended a panel discussion, “Has the Religious Right Lost Its Way? Religious Leaders from the Left and Right Discuss the Future of Faith in Politics,” featuring Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Bishop Harry Jackson, chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition; Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; and Rev. Jim Wallis, president and executive director of Sojourners. The event was held to discuss the forthcoming book, Personal Faith, Public Policy, co-authored by Perkins and Jackson, in which the pair argues that the Evangelical movement is not, in fact, dead (as so many pundits are quick to report) but merely regrouping and expanding in breadth to include issues such as poverty, the environment, race, and immigration to its primarily pro-life/pro-marriage platform. They also made the point that “Religious Right” is actually becoming a misnomer—one of the Evangelical movement’s main focal points is to transcend categories of Republican or Democrat and to reconfigure themselves as Independents, or as Wallis put it, the “ultimate swing vote.”

I agree that—for better or worse—the power of Evangelicals isn’t extinguished, only perhaps waned. The pendulum will inevitably swing back. And in terms of socio-political movements, the power of faith should never be underestimated or devalued. As long as the wall between church and state remains strong I welcome the moral imperative to change society that can be derived from religion. We should be focused on protecting the environment and alleviating poverty, and if religion is compelling people to do so all the better. It’s only when religious movements try to impose rather than promote their morality by using the government to force it on others—such as in the case of trying to outlaw abortion—that I have a problem.

The most compelling portion of the event was an exchange between Perkins, Wallis, and moderator Michel Martin of NPR’s Tell Me More, during which health care made an entrance. Perkins made the argument that it’s wrong to force pregnant women to test their fetuses for Down syndrome but then not offer them government aid if the test turns out to be positive, leaving them in the heart-wrenching position to choose between abortion or the astronomically high cost of raising a Downs child. (My two cents: bravo for Perkins. It’s hypocritical to claim to want to reduce the abortion rate but then not make the costs of raising a child more affordable. Now when are we going to talk about comprehensive sex education?) Martin challenged that that’s a good argument for universal health care, which is eschewed by the Religious Right. Perkins said he agreed there needs to be more affordable health care but that it shouldn’t come from the government—do we really want to rely on an inept government for our health care needs? He called for more personal responsibility as a solution (so in a more free-market system people might be more likely to rethink eating from McDonald’s three times a week if they knew they’d have to pay later on if they developed heart disease). Wallis jumped in, arguing that health care should be a universal right—if a person is genetically predisposed to cancer it’s not a matter of personal responsibility. Wallis reasoned that government isn’t the answer or the enemy; we need to strike a balance between personal responsibility and the responsibility of society to take care of those in need.